A Gift-Wrapped Boxful of Classic Christmas Movies Quiz

Answer: Miracle on 34th Street

Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) takes the place of a drunken Santa in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and is hired to the be Santa at Macy's Herald Square, the store's flagship store on 34th St. in Manhattan. Kringle becomes embroiled in the conflict between Macy's and rival department store, Gimbels. Central to the story, however, is how Kringle transforms the lives of Macy's event director Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara) and her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood) -- though along the way he ends up in a nursing home and is put on trial.

Edmund Gwenn as Kringle won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He was the cousin of Cecil Kellaway and the brother of Arthur Chesney. "Miracle on 34th Street" was originally released as "The Big Heart" in the UK. The film was remade in 1994 with Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle, both versions being released by 20th Century Fox. Macy's refused to participate, and Gimbels had gone out business, so the rival stores were the fictitious Cole's and Shopper's Express.

Answer: Scrooge

Alistair Sim is regarded by some aficionados as the the definitive Scrooge. Released in the USA by United Artists as "A Christmas Carol", the film was considered too grim and insufficiently family-friendly to play at Radio City Music Hall. The classic has since appeared on television in North America with either title, and sometimes colorized.

The movie makes some interesting additions to Dickens' plot. For example, Patrick Macnee, better known as Steed in "The Avengers" (1961-69), appears as a younger Jacob Marley, who conspires with the younger Ebenezer Scrooge (George Cole) to forcibly takeover their employer's firm. Kathleen Harrison as Scrooge's housekeeper provides hilarious comic relief.

Answer: A Christmas Story

The whole of "A Christmas Story" consists of an adult fondly recounting his childhood Christmas adventures in the 1940s. Peter Billingsley plays the young Ralphie who desperately wants a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle, but his mother (Melinda Dillon) and his teacher and even a department store Santa repeat, "You'll shoot your eye out". Besides the stuck tongue and the lamp of dubious taste, memorable scenes include Santa kicking the poor lad down an exit slide and a confrontation with bullies. Darren McGavin steals the show as the boy's father. It was released in 1983, appealing both to people old enough to remember a 1940s-50s childhood and to youngsters who could appreciate its humor and its charm (and its hilarity).

The movie is based on the semi-autobiographical book "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" (1966) by Jean Shepherd (who also narrated the film). The house where the movie was filmed in Cleveland is open to the public for tours. In 1997 the TNT network (and in 2004 the TBS channel) began airing an annual all-day marathon of the film: "24 Hours of 'A Christmas Story'".

Answer: White Christmas

Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen join Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in this fanciful Technicolor musical that has held up since Paramount released it in 1954. At the time of its release, "White Christmas" was the highest-grossing film of the year, and the highest-grossing musical of all time.

The title song "White Christmas" was written by Irving Berlin and first used in the movie "Holiday Inn" (1942), where it won the Oscar for Best Original Song. The film "White Christmas" was meant to be a reunion between Crosby and Fred Astaire, who had appeared together in "Holiday Inn". Astaire disliked the script, so it was offered first to Donald O'Connor, then to Danny Kaye.

"White Christmas" was the first movie to be filmed in VistaVision, which used a sideways orientation to yield a larger surface area yet a sharper picture than the standard 35mm print of its time. The original "Star Wars" film of 1977 used repurposed VistaVision cameras for its high-resolution visual effects.

Answer: The Bishop's Wife

Cary Grant was the angel, the bishop's wife Loretta Young, and the bishop himself the inimitable David Niven. Also released as "Cary and the Bishop's Wife" and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, the 1947 romantic comedy faced a lot of troubles during production and initially didn't fare well at the box office. Nonetheless, it received several Oscar nominations, including Best Film Editing (Monica Collingwood) and Best Director (Henry Koster), and it won Best Sound (Gordon E. Sawyer). It was filmed on location in Minneapolis, Minnesota and featured the Robert Mitchell's Boy Choir. (Organist Robert Mitchell was one of the last living silent-film accompanists.)

"The Bishop's Wife" was based on the 1928 novel by by Robert Nathan. There were several radio adaptations in the 1940s-50s, often with at least some of the three main stars reprising their roles, though in a 1949 broadcast had Tyrone Power as the bishop. Whitney Houston, Denzel Washington, and Courtney B. Vance starred in the 1996 remake, "The Preacher's Wife". Its soundtrack that year broke the record for the best-selling gospel album, a record which it maintained decades into the 21st century.

Answer: Babes in Toyland

Walt Disney originally intended this to be an animated feature, but it ended up being a live-action film, though with a central animated sequence during the number "March of the Toys", lasting about 15 minutes. Besides Annette Funicello and Ray Bolger, the film starred Ed Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Tommy Sands, Kevin "Moochie" Corcoran, Henry Calvin, and mime artist Gene Sheldon. Several songs of Victor Herbert's original 1903 operetta were discarded or modified, sometimes beyond recognition. Herbert wrote the iconic "Toyland" song ("Toyland, toyland, beautiful girl and boy-land...") as a gentle ballad, but Disney made it a fast march.

A.H. Weiler of the "New York Times" charged that Disney's "packaging of Victor Herbert's indestructible operetta is a glittering color and song and dance-filled bauble artfully designed for the tastes of the sub-teen set." Another critic lamented that the quaint "Toyland" of childhood memories and stage productions had become "gaudy and mechanical 'Fantasyland'" and that the movie should have been titled "Babes in Disneyland".

Answer: Christmas in Connecticut

It's a delightful little screwball romantic comedy, with Barbara Stanwyck as Elizabeth Lane the ersatz farm-wife trying to fool publisher Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) and handsome Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan). The plot is really more farcical than I can convey here, with Una O'Connor as a housekeeper and Reginald Gardiner as the Connecticut farm-owner whom Elizabeth in desperation decides to marry to pull off her charade. This Warner Bros. film does not receive the same kind of airplay as "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Miracle on 34th Street" or any of the innumerable "A Christmas Carol" adaptations, but it is very Christmas-y and has a happy ending.

There was a made-for-TV remake in 1992 starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, and Tony Curtis, with a cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger (who also directed it).

Answer: Lady in the Lake

Although the original Raymond Chandler novel was set in summertime, the movie "Lady in the Lake" is set during Christmastime, and the many holiday elements and motifs contrast sharply with the gloomier aspects of the plot. This is one of the few Christmas movies of the film noir genre made during the Golden Age of Hollywood. It paved the way for Christmas-themed movies of later eras that feature horror, action, espionage, etc.

For most of the film we see only what the detective (Robert Montgomery) sees, and his face only when looks in the mirror. This first-person technique was something long discussed in Hollywood but never used before in a major film. Cinematographer John Arnold invented a new kind of camera dolly to go through doors and up stairs.
Unfortunately, critics of the time did not appreciate the innovation and dismissed it as a gimmick.

Additional stars of "Lady in the Lake" are Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, and Jayne Meadows, the real-life sister of Audrey Meadows (Alice Kramden in "The Honeymooners"). Kathleen Lockhart, mother of June Lockhart (Mrs. Robinson in "Lost in Space"), makes an appearance as well. Credited as playing Chrystal Kingsby is "Ellay Mort" -- a writer's joke as the character is never seen, and the name is a pun on the French "elle est morte", meaning "she is dead".

Answer: Meet Me in St. Louis

Part of "Meet Me in St. Louis" takes place during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, or the St. Louis World's Fair, but the film also features a Christmas when the Smith family learns to their sorrow that they will be moving to New York City, and so it is considered a Christmas musical and is listed among holiday films.

Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane wrote the popular song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to be quite poignant and sad, and a little uncertain about the future, but Judy Garland insisted the lyrics be changed. For example, "It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past" became "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight". (Frank Sinatra went even further in his cover and demanded that Martin remove "Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow". Martin wrote "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough", the line that most listeners have heard, and he altered the setting from the future to the present.) The revised song has become a widely played Christmas standard, though not long after the events of 9/11, James Taylor recorded a cover with most of the original, wistful lyrics in 2001.

"Meet Me in St. Louis" was the second biggest success of 1944 at the box office, and MGM's most profitable musical of the decade. It was nominated for Oscars in Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Color, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Best Song (not "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" but "The Trolley Song"). Even eight-year-old Margaret O'Brien garnered a Juvenile Academy Award.

Answer: It's a Wonderful Life

James Stewart gives a powerful performance as George Bailey, a man who devotes his life to building up his community through his Building & Loan company despite the greedy machinations of one Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). Donna Reed shines as George's wife and helper, and Henry Travers is charming as the angel, second class, sent to convince George not to end it all when things go sour.

"It's a Wonderful Life" got mixed reviews and barely broke even at the box office, but it the ensuing decades it became one of the most beloved films of all time. In fact, it was #1 on the American Film Institute's 2012 list of the most inspirational American films ever made. It was director Frank Capra's favorite film, and his family would watch it together every Christmas.