Oscar Profile: Christmas Movies Revisited

With a plethora of lame Christmas movies available on TV at this time of year, it’s rare to find one that compares favorably to the classics that were produced by Hollywood of old, most of which are still available on DVD and Blu-ray.

While no film with Christmas as its main theme has ever won a Best Picture Oscar, one film in which the holiday is prominently featured did win the big prize. That was 1960’s bittersweet comedy, The Apartment, which takes place primarily from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Kruschen were nominated for their performances and the film won five of the ten it was nominated for, including Best Picture, Director (Billy Wilder) and Original Screenplay (Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond).

A more recent winner, 2018’s Green Book features a climax built around getting home for Christmas but is not specifically built around the holiday.

The first film in which Christmas plays a prominent role to be nominated for Best Picture was 1934’s The Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy in the first of a series of films they starred in through 1947 in which they played married couple Nick and Nora Charles who solve murders in a comedy mode.

It wasn’t until 1946 that a film that centers on the holiday itself was nominated for Best Picture. That film was, of course, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life in which James Stewart is guided by his guardian angel (Henry Travers) to see what the world would have bene like if he never existed, a modest hit in its day, now amongst almost everyone’s list of favorite films of all time.

The following year two Christmas movies, Henry Koster’s The Bishop’s Wife starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven about an angel come to Earth and George Seaton’s Miracle on 34th Street starring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne and Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn as the real Santa Claus, were nominated for Best Picture. Koster’s Come to the Stable two years later earned a sizeable haul of nominations, seven in all, including acting nods for Loretta Young and Celeste Holm as French nuns and Elsa Lanchester as one of their benefactors, but missed out on a Best Picture nomination.

Anthony Harvey’s 1968 film, The Lion in Winter, starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn as bickering 12th Century British royals was the last film centered around Christmas that was nominated for Best Picture. It won three of its seven nods include Hepburn’s third award for Best Actress.

Significant Oscar nominated films in which the holiday is either fully featured or plays a major part in the film include 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis starring Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien; 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman in the sequel to 1944’s Oscar winning Going My Way starring Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald; 1954’s White Christmas starring Crosby and Danny Kaye in the remake of 1942’s Holiday Inn starring Crosby and Fred Astaire in which more than the one holiday was celebrated, 1958’s Auntie Mame in which Christmas comes early one year and 1987’s The Dead, John Huston’s film of James Joyce’s signature work which takes place at a Christmas dinner held in January on the Feast of the Epiphany or Little Christmas, as it is sometimes called.

One of the last Oscar nominated films in which Christmas plays an important role was John Crowley’s 2015 film, Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson.

Then of course there were the four talkie versions of Louise May Alcott’s Little Women, all of which received Oscar nods, the first and last of which were nominated for Best Picture. The 1933, 1949, and 2019 versions all won one Oscar. The 1994 version is the only one that went home empty-handed.

In addition to the thirty Oscar nominated films listed at the end of this article, there have been many unforgettable films that celebrate the holiday that went without Oscar nominations. Here are a few of them:

ESSENTIAL CHRISTMAS FILMS WITHOUT OSCAR NOMINATIONS

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and REMEMBER THE NIGHT (1940), directed by Mitchell Leisen

Legend has it that Christmas movies are supposed to open no later than Thanksgiving because once the holiday passes, people are no longer interested in seeing them until the holiday draws near again. These two classics defied the legend, opening days apart in January.

James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan were at their peak as the assistant manager and clerk who can’t stand each other on the job but are secret pen pals outside of work in The Shop Around the Corner, the Christmas romance that was remade as the musical In the Good Old Summertime in which the holiday completely disappears, then as the Broadway musical She Loves Me and once again on screen as You’ve Got Mail.

Four years before Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray starred in the first great film noir, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, they were a shoplifter on parole and the D.A. who convicted her, now responsible for her until after New Year’s in this charmer that features great character work from Beulah Bondi and Elizabeth Patterson as MacMurray’s mother and spinster aunt, and Sterling Holloway as a family friend.

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (1945), directed by Peter Godfrey

Stanwyck again, this time playing a Good Housekeeping-like writer who can’t cook, but whose scrumptious meals, which are the work of chef S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, entice magazine publisher Sydney Greenstreet to invite himself to her “house” for Christmas. Dennis Morgan plays the soldier who is also invited for the holiday and Reginald Gardiner plays Stanwyck’s longtime fiancée who owns the house she calls hers. Una O’Connor is Gardiner’s exasperated cook.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951), directed by Brian Desmond Hurst

The definitive version of Dickens’ tale of the miserly businessman who is forced to relive his life by the visit of the ghost of his former partner and three other apparitions on Christmas Eve features a priceless lead performance by Alastair Sim as Scrooge. The film’s lack of Oscar recognition is primarily due to poor marketing. Just a modest hit when first released, it didn’t become a major success until it started appearing on TV later in the decade.

LOVE ACTUALLY (2003), directed by Richard Curtis

“Love Is All Around” sings Bill Nighy, and so it is in London in the month before Christmas affecting everyone from the new Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) to his sister (Emma Thompson) to her husband (Alan Rickman) to Rickman’s employee (Laura Linney) to a writer (Colin Firth) to newlyweds (Chiwitel Ejiofor, Keira Knightley) and their best man (Andrew Lincoln) to a recent widower (Liam Neeson) and his son (Thomas Brodie-Sangster).

THE FAMILY STONE (2005), directed by Thomas Bezucha

Marketed as a comedy, this family drama with comic undertones was so far above the plethora of theatrical and made-for-TV dysfunctional family films that show up every year around the holidays, that it is a shame that it isn’t better known. Family members and friends include Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermott Mulroney, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Ty Giordano, Brian White, Paul Schneider, Elizabeth Reaser and Claire Danes.

CHRISTMAS AND OSCAR

Little Women (1933) – three nominations – one win

The Thin Man (1934) – four nominations – no wins

Meet John Doe (1941) – one nomination – no win

Holiday Inn (1942) – three nominations – one win

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) – four nominations – no wins

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) – eight nominations – one win

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – five nominations – no wins

The Bishop’s Wife (1947) – five nominations – one win

It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) – one nomination – one win

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) – four nominations – three wins

Come to the Stable (1949) – seven nominations – no wins