Thursday, November 24, 2016

Miracle on 34th Street ( 1955 )

My sister and I were planning on watching the perennial television airing of Miracle on 34th Street this morning but a quick look at the TV guide revealed to us that the film is no longer being aired on Thanksgiving morning....it looks like it hasn't been for over a decade ( I knew it was a while since we've seen the movie, but not that long! ). 

Anyway, since we are cheapskates and did not want to pay the meager $2.99 to rent the film on Youtube we started hunting for another version available for free. There were two television adaptations to choose from: a 1955 20th Century Fox Hour telecast, and one from 1978 featuring Sebastian Cabot, David Hartmann, Jane Alexander, Jim Backus, Tom Bosley, and Roddy MacDowall. Both have excellent casts, but before you scroll down the page to see the 1955 cast, just think about which actors you would place in the roles made so famous by Edmund Gwenn, John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, and Natalie Wood......then you'll know what a spot-on cast this one features! 
Did you cast MacDonald Carey in John Payne's place? That is sheer genius. Teresa Wright takes on Mrs. Walker, the doubting mother role, and 1950s child star Sandy Descher plays little Susan. Now the part of Santa Claus would have been really tough to cast in 1955, but the producers of this show decided to use Thomas Mitchell, and he does a really good job...even though his eyebrows make Santa look a bit scary at times. 

So how does this version stack up against the original? Well, you can't top a 20th Century Fox classic. Since Miracle on 34th Street had to be fit within a one hour time-slot, much of the heart of the original film was removed for the sake of condensing the story, which is a shame. Kris Kringle seems rather irate at times, probably because he is upset with how big businesses were commercializing Christmas but, since we aren't actually shown this, we are left just to assume that Kringle has an aggravation streak in him. 
MacDonald Carey and Teresa Wright are wonderful, but Sandy Descher lacked the charm of Natalie Wood. Our Oma ( "grandmother" in German ) considered Natalie Wood a plain-looking girl and always wondered why she became a star. Well, compared to many other child actors, Natalie had heaps of talent....so that explains that. Sandy just didn't have that spark needed for this role. 

Also cast in the movie is Hans Conreid as Shellhammer ( Mrs. Walker's co-worker at Macy's ), Ray Collins as the judge, John Abbott as Dr. Sawyer, Whit Bissell, and Maudie Prickett. 

In 1959 another one-hour television adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street was made, this time with Ed Wynn, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, and Orson Bean. That casting seems rather odd. The program was thought to have been lost for many years, since it was recorded on kinescope and aired live on television, but it was recently discovered among a lot of kinescopes donated by NBC to the Library of Congress, and in 2005 was screened at the LOC with Susan Gordon ( My Three Sons ), who portrayed Susan Walker in the production, in attendance. 

Ready to check out the 1955 version yourself? Simply click here to view the movie on Youtube.  

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers! 

8 comments:

  1. You probably could've found a copy of the 1994 version that they would PAY YOU to watch it. (Yes, I am among those that disliked that version. Mara Wilson was a blight on the cinema landscape...) I have this one on an 8 DVD collection of Christmas classics from TV in the 50's, 60's and 70's. And I only paid $2 for the entire collection. (And it has the wholly laughable but fun "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians").

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    1. $2... now that's a great deal, Quiggy. The version on Youtube is on the fuzzy side so you probably have a clearer picture too. I'll take your advice and stay clear of the '94 version. Remakes from the 1980s/1990s based on classics, tend to be either too mushy or too awful for my taste anyway. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

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  2. I would probably watch this just for Thomas Mitchell, but throw in Theresa Wright AND MacDonald Carey? Yes, please! Bookmarking to watch this weekend...

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    1. Let me know what you think of it. It doesn't live up to the original, but seems to be better than most tv productions.

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    2. Took me a while to get to it, but I finally watched this tonight, and awwww, it was great! Especially for a truncated TV production. They did a pretty good job of trimming it, I thought, so it still made sense, and the principals even got character arcs. Mitchell and Wright were good, but I thought Carey was actually better than John Payne in the original. Thanks again for spotlighting it! I never would have known about it otherwise.

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    3. I'm glad you enjoyed it, Hamlette, and I'm even more pleased that we were able to introduce you to something "new". It's fun exploring different shows/movies/books, isn't it?

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    4. Yes, I quite like seeing different adaptations of the same story, because really none of them are ever quite perfect, but so often one adaptation will hit what feels to me like the "right" note on one aspect, casting or pace or whatever, that another one didn't quite nail.

      Another thing I thought was fun about this was that it reunited Teresa Wright and MacDonald Carey -- I like them both so much in Shadow of a Doubt, so it was neat to see them together again.

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  3. 12/26/18 Saw some of this 1955 version,not much, though, on Tubi 2 dats ago. Two thumbs down & "no, thanks!" I'd rather stare at a blank screen. Give me the 1947 version any day!

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