Some Christmas Films I've Enjoyed

I don’t feel holidayish, for reasons you may share, so let’s just revisit some of the films that have lightened our spirits often over the years.

Maybe I so enjoyed Home Alone (1990) because I saw it with a kid.

The Shop around the Corner (1940), starring Jimmy Stewart likely inspired You’ve Got Mail.

Silent Night (2002) may belong here. A German woman with a son enforces a Christmas truce between three German and three U.S. soldiers who somehow happen to be in her cabin. I dimly remember liking it.

In Remember the Night (1939), district attorney (Fred MacMurryy) delays prosecuting a shoplifter, because a jury might let her off with Christmas coming, but takes pity on her, a stranger in town, and takes her home with him to his mother’s for Christmas. Yep, you guessed it. But it’s fun.

In Christmas in Connecticut (1945) a magazine writer (Barbara Stanwyck), whose columns have portrayed her (wholly fictional) delightful farm life with husband and son, (but nonexistent) country life suddenly has to make it all look real when her boss and a returning war hero are coming for Christmas dinner.

Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) is dopey, but endearing: Kris Kringle is put on trial to prove his identity, which we all know is phony, but he does it, with us rooting for him.

In Frank Capra’s last film, Pocketful of Miracles (1961), New York gangster (Glenn Ford) thinks apples from an alcoholic street peddler bring him luck. Apple Annie’s illegitimate daughter has always lived in Europe, believing Annie is an upper-class New York matron. So when Louise plans to visit, bringing her aristocratic Spanish fiance, the Duke and his pals have to concoct a convincing scene, complete with wealthy “husband.”

Holiday Affair (1949) features Robert Mitchum as a seasonal department store clerk who catches a woman in a fraudulent shopping scheme but lets her go because she’s a war widow with a young son. He gets fired, but befriends her son. Mitchum’s footloose and casually defiant manner help the film avoid sappiness. – and confuse Janet Leigh, whose fiance is nice but dull.

Love Actually (2003) jauntily explores varieties of love in ten interlinked stories set in London. The ensemble British cast has fun and provides fun. It’s goofy, but irresistible. I know, audiences have loved it more than critics have; but it’s just a lot of fun. Irresistible.

In It Happened on 5^th Avenue (1947) hobo Aloyisius T. McKeever, sneaks each winter into a rich New Yorker’s boarded-up home while the owner is in Virginia, then spends summers in the rich man’s Virginia vacation home. Each year, he and his dog carefully leave everything just as they found it. But this winter, he can’t resist taking pity on several others, each with a moving tale of woe, and lets them move in, with results full of comedy, discovered and rediscovered love, and a comeuppance for rich folks.

Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is a delightful reverse Christmas Carol: instead of Scrooge being forced to face his greed, the grief he’s caused everyone, and his pathetic aloneness, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), standing by the Bedford Falls bridge ready to jump, is shown how much good he’s done for everyone, and how much they love him. It’s the sort of reminder we each sometimes need that we have much to be grateful for.

So be grateful, despite surrounding tragedies.

                                                     --30--

[The above column appeared Sunday, 3 December, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/).

[Almost neglected to do this, because today doesn’t feel like a Sunday, because Monday will be even quieter. ]

[Anyway, that’s my list. I’m not sure Joyeux Noel might be interesting, too, but I’ve never seen it. ]

[Since I haven’t spend many Christmases with kids (and the last time I did, there was no TV in the house), my list likely omits some really well-done films for kids. ]

[We happened to watch Pocketful of Miracles this weekend. I’d forgotten that Edward Everett Horton was in it, as the butler. Probably I’d last seen the film before I discovered what a fine character actor he was, enjoying him in The Front Page (1931), Holiday (1938), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), and others I can’t recall just now.

I'd seen and enjoyed the film without realizing (or, at least, recalling) that it was Capra's last. I certainly hadn't realized that, sub nom Lady for a Day (1933), it was also one of his early successes, and earned him his first Academy Awards, for Best Director and Best Production. (That is, the 1961 film was a remake of his own 1933 film, which I'm now curious to see.) That it was based on a 1929 Damon Runyan story explains the gangster backround, which felt a little anachronistic in a 1961 film. Damon Runyan's brilliance was one of the few things my father (who'd have been a ten-year-old kid in Brooklyn when the story was published) and I always agreed on. (One of the last books he picked up, on a weird night when he got up out of bed, a night or two before his death, was an old Runyan collection.) I think that by the late 1950s Capra felt at sea, aware that he and popular culture were no longer in any kind of synch, and started reading back into his own past works to see if something might still have some magic in it. ]

 

Give Thanks You Live in New Mexico -- if You're a Woman Needing Medical Care!

As our New Mexico Supreme Court prepares to decide whether New Mexico cities can enforce anti-choice ordinances, two high-profile cases in other states teach us how cruelly states will enforce their war on women’s health choices.

In Texas, a pregnant woman learned not only that delivering the fetus she was carrying could endanger her health, but also that the fetus couldn’t survive. Her doctor would normally have treated her, but feared someone might apply Texas draconian law to prosecute her. Her client needed medical treatment; but providing it could earn the doctor life in prison.

A Texas court ruled she should be allowed to have the procedure; but corrupt Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton appealed, warning area hospitals not to permit the abortion. The Texas Supreme Court blocked the order pending its decision.

A pregnant woman who sued Kentucky, claiming Kentucky’s near-total ban on abortions violates her rights to privacy and self-determination, has discovered that her embryo has no heartbeat. ACLU lawyers representing her said the bans inflict irreparable harm, jeopardize pregnant Kentuckians’ safety, and are “are an affront to the health and dignity of all Kentuckians,”

I sympathize with these ladies, who left their states for basic medical care; and with their doctors, trying to save patients’ lives and health but threatened with jail if they misread the law as permitting needed medical care. And consider the women in similar situations who can’t travel out-of-state.

The zealots who rushed to make these laws, insisted the laws wouldn’t interfere with medical care. Time has proven that those claims could have emerged from a bovine rectum. We’re getting a crash course in why the Roe v Wade decision was not only correct but wise.

Views change. In 1897, Plessy v Ferguson said Negroes could legally be made to sit away from the whites on trains. In 1954, Brown v Board of Education said “separate but equal schools” were an oxymoron: if you were the group being separated from the powerful folks’ children, your education was already undermined. Later, cases and laws improved the legal rights of women, gay folks, and others; but those gains are temporarily in eclipse.

In New Mexico, where abortion is completely legal, local governments’ efforts to sabotage women’s health face a heavy lift in our Supreme Court. NMAG Raul Torrez will argue not only that the ordinances exceed the authority New Mexico law delegates to counties and municipalities, but that New Mexico’s Constitution demands equal protection and due process, such that a woman has a right to bodily autonomy.

Helped by Texas politicians, Hobbs, Clovis, and Lea and Roosevelt counties passed ordinances and argued that the (federal) 1873 Comstock Act provides authority. That law was used in 1916 to jail Margaret Sanger for disseminating birth control information. Men didn’t want their women knowing that sort of thing, so it was declared obscene. The law became a laughingstock, then was largely ignored, then became irrelevant with Roe v Wade. It seems a slim reed on which to base ordinances that could devastate people’s lives. No one could imagine the state supreme court would buy such silliness, but the zealots likely figure that the current U.S. Supreme Court might grab onto anything that fits the justices’ ideologies. (Anthony Comstock must be jumping around joyfully in his grave.)

But local governments, as creatures of the state, cannot enact penal provisions that contradict the state’s statutes. That’s fortunate; but let’s stay vigilant.

                                                       – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 3 December, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[If you’re in a really depressing moment, having learned that your hoped-for child could never survive, and that giving birth could do you seriously harm, I wonder if the pain is exacerbated at all by contemplating that some of your medical decisions now get made by a guy whom even many of his fellow Republicans think should have been sacked for his greed and corruption. In a just world, Texas Attorney Ken Paxton should perhaps be in jail. At minimum, it’s a disgrace that he won a close impeachment vote to stay in office. So it would seem to add insult to injury that such a person is involved in trying to jail women and their doctors for seeking or providing necessary medical care. The injury is potentially so grave, that the insult is probably hardly noticeable. But the irony looms large, to an outside observer.]

 

December 6, 1941

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, the Wonder Woman comic had just begun publication, and secessionists had declared the State of Jefferson in Yreka, California, with John C. Childs as governor.

You could buy a new car for $850 and a gallon of gas for 13 cents. A loaf of bread or gallon of milk cost 8 or 54 cents, respectively. “Two bits” (a quarter) bought a movie ticket. M&Ms, just invented, let soldiers enjoy chocolate without it melting, and were sold only to the military. Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) invented a radio guidance system for torpedoes, with a frequency-hopping signal to prevent the enemy from tracking or jamming it.

The Soviet Army had just launched a huge counter-offensive that would save Moscow from the Germans. December 6, the submarine Perseus and the SS Greenland hit mines, in the Ionian and North Seas, respectively, killing 60 and nine men.

The submarine’s sole survivor was John Capes, a non-crew-member hitching a ride to Alexandria. Three escaped. Only Capes survived the painful ascent to the surface. He swam five miles to Cephalonia Island, where folks hid him for 18 months. A diplomat’s son British authorities had sent to the Navy rather than prison after his automobile hit a horse, Capes lived until 1985. Few believed his tale until a 1997 dive confirmed it. Cephalonia became famous as the setting for the marvelous novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin(1994)

December 6, in Kirkwood, Illinois, Richard Speck was born. Speck became famous the night of July 13, 1966, when he stabbed, strangled, and/or slashed to death eight student nurses in their Chicago residence. (He had no AR-15.) His death sentence commuted, he died of a heart attack in 1991, the day before his 50^th birthday. Speck’s beloved father had died of a heart attack at 53. Had his father lived, had his Christian Teetotaler mother not married an alcoholic traveling salesman with a long criminal record, whom she had met on a train, or had Speck’s July 13th ship assignment come through, the eight would have become nurses. One survived, by crawling under a bed while Speck was out of the room.

Joan Baez, Neil Diamond, Buffy St.-Marie, and Dick Cheney were also born in 1941.

Folks watched Sergeant York, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, recently-released The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, or the short, Elmer's Pet Rabbit, Bugs Bunny’s second film appearance, and the first with his name on a title. Or listened on radio to the hillbilly music show Grand Ol’ Oprey, the drama Gangbusters, or Arthur Godfrey’s or Jack Benny’s comedy/variety shows – or Edward R. Murrow’s chilling report from Europe on CBS. Folks were reading James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce, James Hilton‘s Random Harvest, or perhaps the latest Batman comic. Or Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer.

In New Mexico, weeks earlier, Ansel Adams had stopped beside the road and shot the wonderful black-and-white photograph, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. New Mexicans had no clue they’d soon flock to enlist, some destined for the Bataan Death March. (Within four years, the federal government would shatter a peaceful New Mexico morning by exploding a test bomb that would destroy thousands of lives here.

Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto, his fleet having miraculously crossed the Pacific unseen, reflected on the twist of fate that had him initiating a war he had vigorously argued against, attacking a country he knew well and loved.

                                                         – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 3 December, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website (“Saturday, December 6, 1941”), as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[Some who know a bit about history may ask why I mention Gone with the Wind, a 1939 film, in late 1941 or why I say folks watched Citizen Kane, which actually bombed at the box office in 1941, Disney’s Dumbo was a huge hit. Fact is, Gone with the Wind was finished in 1939, but apparently spent more than a year touring the country before being released generally to theaters in 1941. What is a bit inaccurate, perhaps, is saying some New Mexicans who enlisted in December might end up on the Bataan Death March. In fact, although the U.S. was not yet in the war, New Mexico’s National Guard forces were already in the U.S-controlled Philippines, just in case; and invading the Philippines was high on the Japanese To-Do List. That’s why New Mexicans were so disproportionately represented among the prisoners of war.]

[I’d known a lot of this 1941 stuff, but not that Speck was born that year or anything about Cape. A reader might wonder why no one believed his account. First, there have been few such events. Second, while stumbling around the engine room before he got out of the sub, he noticed the depth meter read 270 ft. Rising so fast from 100 feet could kill, and did kill his wounded companions, and nearly killed him. The 270 feet seemed excessive, and perhaps locals knew the sea wasn’t so deep around there. Too, the local Greeks, though allied with Britain to try to throw out their Italian occupiers, didn’t really trust the United Kingdom either. However, when the divers found and entered the ship, they found that the depth-meter had apparently broken from the impact, and indeed read 270 feet, though that was wildly inaccurate. Cape had died a dozen years earlier.]

[I know from other research what a complete shock Pearl Harbor was.
Yamamoto’s brilliant concept, that the Japanese 5th Fleet might travel so far undiscovered, was a hell of a gamble. Yamamoto was an interesting fellow (played by Toshiro Mifune in three different films). I read a biography, long ago. I also was particularly impressed by a historian’s account of the war from the Japanese perspective. Unfortunately, it was written decades ago and I’ve forgotten the author’s name, but will plug it in here if I run across it on our shelves.]

[Sadly, since my recent column on the Downwinders, House Republicans have stripped from the defense bill the proposed amendment to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that would have expanded it to cover the folks who got exposed first and worst to radium, New Mexicans who lived anywhere near the Trinity Site.]

Let's Help Ensure the U.S. Does the Right Thing for our Fellow New Mexicans

Compassion makes strange bedfellows.

I loathe some of U.S. Senator Josh Hawley’s views. Neither his conduct on January 6 nor his sympathy with the Trump scam alleging voter fraud are remotely justifiable, or good for our country.

But we agree that if you harm people, intentionally or with reckless disregard for their safety, justice may require you to compensate those folks for their injuries, medical expenses, even their pain and suffering.

Well, our country harmed our fellow New Mexicans. And some Missouri folks, too.

In July 1945, the U.S. exposed New Mexicans to a new, poisonous force our leaders knew could cause great harm to anyone in the vicinity. The government planned to deploy the same force to win World War II. So it knew there could be serious harm to U.S. citizens who lived in danger zones, raising their children and growing their crops. Those residents were not told that they were about to be subject to a historically poisonous event. If it didn’t kill them, it poisoned their crops and their animals and their water, and made their very homes poisonous. Many would die slowly and painfully. While the government wrongly figured people wouldn’t be hurt, that’s like me killing that motorcyclist because I hoped I could run the red light. What arrogance! Like a kid trying a highly explosive experiment in his yard, and being sure he had everything under control.

Much is debatable. You can visit the Trinity Site, the Library of Congress, or the terribly moving Hiroshima museum right near the epicenter of the bomb dropped on August 6, 1945. My father and others who fought in the war felt “the Bomb” saved at least 500,000 lives. Other evidence suggests maybe the Japanese military was on its last legs, its most fanatical leaders were even beginning to see that, and the Bomb was a stern message to our next enemy, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. All that is interesting, but perhaps immaterial.

The circumstances explain the secrecy: if you’re about to try a surprise weapon on the Japanese, warning people around the test site might endanger national security. And the neighbors were mostly a bunch of Mexicans, so who cared?

Having an urgent reason to keeping the potential victims in the dark doesn’t make them any less victims. It cures none of the cases of various forms of cancer the U.S. caused its own citizens to suffer, some fatally. Yet for nearly 80 years, we’ve added insult to injury: we’ve let ‘em suffer and die unacknowledged. Not covering their medical costs. Long after any need for secrecy. Whether that was to save face or money, could any government official justify it? Sure haven’t heard anyone try.

Finally, the U.S. may add those folks to the other covered by the Radioactive Exposure Compensation Act. The Senate approved that, 66-31. A majority in the House apparently agrees; but there are fears that Republican House leaders will slyly remove this from the Defense Bill behind closed doors. That ain’t my suspicion, but Senator Hawley’s, a conservative Republican. He’s warned fellow Congresspersons they might be in Washington all through Christmas if they try.

What can we do? Write or call U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at (202) 225 4000. Urge them to ensure the RECA amendment stays in the final Defense Bill.

It’s the least we can do.

                                                – 30 --

[The above column appeared Sunday, 3 December, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[Do try to call. We owe it to our friends and neighbors – and it’s just the right thing to do. ]

[ Updates on earlier columns:

> with regard to efforts to get the book Jack of Hearts and other Parts tossed out of the Mayfield High Library (see column 3 September 2023), the Las Cruces School Board will here a final appeal by the folks wanting to ban the book, Friday at 9 a.m. at school headquarters. Attendance is a good idea, but to comment you’ll have to write or call or email in advance with what you have to say, because no audience comments will be permitted at the appeal hearing.; and

> with regard to the column on the NMSU Aggies Football Team:

1. The Aggies lost a tough game for the conference championship at Liberty;

2. The Aggies will play Fresno State in the New Mexico Bowl at 3:45 pm on 16 December. The game will also be aired on ESPN.

3. The Aggies whipped Auburn, as described in the column. Auburn then had Alabama beaten until Alabama connected on a last-second 4^th down miracle touchdown pass.

4. Alabama the beat No. 1 (and two-time defending champion) Georgia. But for that Alabama miracle play, we could say NMSU whipped 41-10 the team that beat the team that beat the top-ranked team in the nation this year. Again, congratulations, Aggies! And good luck the 16^th! ]