On Christmas Movies
One of my all-time favorite Christmas movies is Miracle on 34th Street, the black-and-white 1947 version with Natalie Wood and Maureen O’Hara. Among other reasons, the lawyer in me loves the ending. To sum up, nice old man Kris Kringle is in a hearing to determine whether or not he should be committed to a mental hospital because he believes he’s Santa Claus.
His attorney, Fred Gailey, establishes first that the guy can’t be insane if he believes he’s Santa if he in fact is Santa. Then he gets the state prosecutor to concede the existence of Santa Claus. (The conflicts attorney in me wonders if you could really get away with calling the prosecutor’s small child as a witness in the modern world, but that’s better than the remake, in which Kringle’s attorney calls the guy’s wife. Marital privilege is a thing, you guys).
Having won that concession, however, things look bleak when the prosecutor says, okay, Santa’s real, but can you prove on the basis of competent authority that this specific guy is Santa Claus? That’s when you get the classic ending: Natalie Wood sends a Christmas card to Kris Kringle, co-signed by her mother (Maureen) to the courthouse; this leads two random post office employees to decide hey, why not send all the Santa Claus letters to the courthouse? As a result, Fred Gailey gets to deliver a dramatic summation in which he observes that the United States Post Office has recognized Kris Kringle, his client, as Santa Claus, as they have delivered bags and bags of mail to him as Santa. Thusly, competent authority says: he’s Santa. The judge agrees, and bam! Case dismissed.
I have to say, I like that one a lot better than the Rankin-Bass special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in which Santa comes off as a bit of a mean-spirited jerk, and the day is saved by Hermey the elf performing forcible dental surgery on an unconscious Abominable Snowman. Even if he doesn’t have his teeth, he’s still got really big arms, and he’s liable to be even madder now than he was before. I don’t think that helps you much, Hermey.
But that’s just me.
Closing Time
As much as I love Miracle on 34th Street, it does have one factual mistake. When Kris is mentioning to Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara’s character) that he’s aced all the psych examinations), he says that Daniel D. Tompkins was John Quincy Adams’ vice-president. Actually, that was John C. Calhoun. To borrow a line from The Pushcart War, a minor error in an otherwise impressive effort.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Until next time,
Michael