Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Director: George Seaton
Honors:
It is a holiday classic for the ages, having become one of
the season’s most popular feel good movies. Many American practice the
tradition of yearly viewing to chime in the holiday season. Yes, it’s a silly
story. Yes, it’s a picture that pries the audience’s nostalgia. Yes, it’s a film
that promotes one the nation’s largest department stores during a heavily
commercialized time of year. But it’s Miracle
on 34th Street, a film that finds roots childlike fantasy and imagination while still enduringly mature
enough to tug at the heartstrings of parents who watch their children grow
through the annual festive season. Most
of all it is a movie about faith and love, manifested within the jolly old elf
known as Santa Claus.
Miracle on 34th
Street is a holiday drama/comedy about a department store Santa Claus who
believes he is the genuine article. The joyful and whiskered older gentleman
who claims to go by the name of Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is hired as the
newest Santa Claus for the flagship department store of Macy’s in downtown
Manhattan, quickly becoming a sensation for the store and the city. His
no-nonsense boss, single mother businesswoman Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara),
begins to question Kris’ sanity as he claims to be the real Santa Claus. It is
when Doris’ daughter Susan (Natalie Wood), who inherited Doris’s non-fantastical
look at the world, begins to believe in Kris is the genuine Santa Claus, that Doris
too begins to see the magic in the man’s kind, festive demeanor.
However, Kris finds himself in trouble, committed to an
asylum for his claims, finding his greatest ally in attorney Fred Gailey (John
Payne), Doris’ neighbor and love interest, who sinserly believes in the power
of Kris’ holiday kindness as a good thing for all. Fred defends his case in
what turns out to be a high prfile hearing for the city on how Kris can be seen
as the true Saint Nick. With the aid of faith from millions of children and a
little help from a surprise provision from the United States Post Office of
letters address to Santa Claus being delivered to Kris during the trial, the
case is dismissed. The film concludes with one final sentimental beat as Susan appears
to get the gift she wished from Kris, while Fred proposes to Doris, beginning their
new lives together as a family with a hint that Santa was their possible
matchmaker.
The picture has nearly every ingredient of an ideal
Christmas classic. It’s fantasy story of a real Santa Claus interrupting the
everyday world of with his spirit of the season, set to the backdrop of New
York City. The story is bookended by the ever popular Macy Thanksgiving Day
Parade, the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season, and concluded with
the big day itself. Its charm, heartwarming story, and ability to still leave
enough room for the thinking viewer to question the character of Kris Kringle’s
validity as a sane gentleman while still winning you over compassionate spirit
hits various audience on different levels.
The plot of the picture spawn from the idea of story creator
Valentine Davies’ thoughts on what the real Santa Claus would think about the
modern American Christmas, which following World War II was more commercialized
than ever. The story was handed off to director/screenwriter George Seaton whose
script brought set the story within the pageantry of season in New York City
beginning with the Thanksgiving Parade that ushered in the highly lucrative Christmas
shopping season.Tied into the story was the presence of Macy’s, the organizer
of the parade and home of the story’s Santa, and even its major competitor Gimbels.
Both entities were not sponsors in any way to the picture, but would allow for
their appearance in the film upon viewing a rough cut of the picture that displayed
both organizations in positive lights.
The film swayed actress Maureen O’Hara to return from her
native Ireland back to Hollywood. Following a series of recent frustrating
projects O’Hara retreated to her homeland, but found the script for this
picture to contain a special heart to it, inspiring her to return to work for her
contracted studio. Playing her romantic co-star was second tiered Fox actor
John Payne coming off recent success of The
Razor’s Edge and hoping to become a regular leading man. Both performances
were admirable, but are overshadowed by other, more heart filled performances
in the picture.
The ever important role of Santa Claus, or Kris Kringle, is
portrayed by the lovable English character actor Edmund Gwenn, whose natural
demeanor won over the hearts of the cast, crew, as well as audiences. Gwenn’s ability
to be so kindhearted on set as the lovable figure for Christmas would even
convince the child actors that he was the genuine Santa Claus, that is until
the wrap party when they saw him in his street clothes and no beard. Gwenn’s
performance proved so well enjoyed that he was awarded that year’s Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor, accepting it with the words of “now I know
there’s a Santa Claus.”
Wrapping up the primary cast would be eight year-old child actress
Natalie Wood as Susan, whose character embodies how any audience may have come
into this picture for the first time. That is to say at first not willing to
believe in such a fantastic idea of Santa, but allows the childlike wonder and
imagination to take over and believe in the good of the man and the season.
Wood’s career would only be beginning, becoming one of the most successful child
actors of her day.
The film premiered in June of 1947 with the idea from Fox that
believed more audiences go to the movies in the summer than the cold of the
winter. To effectively release the picture all promotional materials lacked any
ties to Christmas and its plot revolving around a Santa Claus, focusing on the
love story between O’Hara and Payne’s characters. It was not until much later,
after the film became a holiday classic that the promotional material featured
dominantly the images of Gwenn as Santa and the adorable Natalie Wood.
Critics gave the feature general positive reviews and aiding
in resolving some of the cynicism in American culture following the war. It
delivered a sense of nostalgia for audiences that looked back on the carefree
days of the years prior along with the newly free flowing and strong economy
America was blossoming into. The strongest moral objection towards the picture was
the portrayal of O’Hara as a single mother divorcee, which was looked down by
that pesky Catholic Legion of Decency.
Miracle on 34th
Street would discover its greatest legacy in the form of television,
becoming a common holiday staple with Thanksgiving airings on NBC. With that
scores of American homes became accustomed to the motion picture, ingraining it
into the culture around the holiday season helping it to become one of the
greatest cherished pictures in American cinema set during the holiday season.
Its classic status and portrayed of the typically colorful
season made the feature the prime subject as one of the first black and white
films put through the controversial colorization process in the mid-1980s. It
reintroduced the movie to television audiences in a new form, with the
intention that the colorization process would reinvigorate the picture with the
color that was not afforded by filmmakers at that time. Many filmmakers and
cinema purists feel this process goes against the intended form of the original
product, for if the filmmakers wanted it to be in color it would have been, and
the films would have been shot differently if otherwise. In either case the
picture remains in circulation with both versions readily available.
Today Miracle on 34th
Street remains a staple of the season, inspiring its fair share of knock
off Christmas movies and a well received remake in 1994 with Richard
Attenborough as Kris Kringle retelling the tale for a new generation. The 1947
continues to receive admiration with every Christmas season despite the
relative inundation of newer holiday material flooding the market in recent
years, manifesting just how much this picture left its mark on American holiday
consciousness.
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