Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a writer for a woman's magazine in which she writes a column that outlines her happy life on a farm as a wife, mother and excellent cook. The only problem is that she is single, lives in a small apartment in Manhattan and orders in from a restaurant and gets her recipes for her articles from her "Uncle Felix" who owns a restaurant.

The film opens with a couple of sailors floating in a life raft. They are rescued and Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) is hailed as a hero for giving the last of his food to his fellow sailor Seymour Sinkiewicz (Frank Jenks) before they are rescued. While floating on the raft, they have dreams about food. While they are recovering in the hospital he tells his nurse Mary Lee (Joyce Compton) that he doesn't know what a real home is like. Mary writes to Mr. Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), the publisher of Elizabeth Lane's magazine, and asks if Jefferson can spend Christmas at Mrs. Lanes Farm. Mr. Yardley thinks that this will be great publicity for the magazine.

Elizabeth's editor calls her and tells her the situation. She knows that Mr. Yardley is a stickler for accuracy in his magazines and knows that she and her editor will be fired if the truth comes out. She goes to Mr Yardley to tell him the truth and ends up agreeing to have not only the sailor come to her farm, but Mr. Yardley as well. Fortunately she has a friend, John Sloan(Reginald Gardner) who owns a farm in Connecticut. He is a rather pompous architect who wants to marry Elizabeth and she agrees to marry him after turning him down so many times to save her job. Felix will come along to cook the meals.

They get to the house and meet Nora the housekeeper and see that she babysits a baby that they can use as their baby to try and fool Mr. Yardley. Just as Elizabeth is about to marry John, Jefferson Jones the war hero shows up and it is love at first sight for Elizabeth and Jefferson. Most of the rest of the movie is Elizabeth and Jefferson trying to resist each other as he thinks that she is married and he is engaged to Nurse Mary. Elizabeth also must cover up the fact that she knows nothing about cooking, babies or domestic duties.

In the end, Nurse Mary shows up to reveal that she has married Sinkiewicz. It soon comes out that Elizabeth is not married either and all ends happily. A light, entertaining movie! I own it.

There was a remake that was directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger that was widely panned. Duh!!! A second remake is apparently in the planning stages with Jennifer Garner attached to it for a 2012 release.

103 Minutes. Not Rated. I give this movie FOUR STARS!