Christmas Holiday

12/27/2014

Christmas Holiday (1944) Vacationing with the troubled and the forlorn. Christmas Holiday is directed by Robert Siodmak and adapted to screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz from the novel of the same name written by W. Somerset Maugham. It stars Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly, Richard Whorf, Dean Harens, Gale Sondergaard and Gladys George. Music is by Hans J. Salter and cinematography by Elwood Bredell. The title is a bit of a bum steer, the presence of Durbin and Kelly a splendid slice of red herring casting, and the written notices on the internet announce that the source material was watered down for this filmic adaptation. All of these instances mark Siodmak’s film out as a fascinating oddity, and certainly of high interest to film noir lovers. Plot essentially has Durbin telling H

4/9/2026

Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin, Gene Kelly and a film called 'Christmas Holiday' does lead you to expect a decent doze of cheesy, breezy, snow-capped seasonal romance. Instead, we get something altogether different and I was pleasantly surprised. It all starts rather brutally as the loved-up 'Lt. Mason' (Dean Harens) is unceremoniously dumped by his fiancée on Christmas Eve, just as he is about to fly to San Francisco to propose. Despondent, he boards his plane only to have it diverted to New Orleans by a storm. Put up in an hotel for the night, he is befriended by a local journalist who in turn introduces him to 'Jackie/Abigail' (Deanna Durbin). He isn't interested in drink or anything else, really, but he does agree to accompany her to midnight mass and that's when she starts to regale him