Movie Monday: The "Not Your Normal Christmas Movie" Edition

Yes, I know. It's almost Christmas. I wasn't going to do this, because I mostly don't like Christmas movies. But, you know, I was in a store earlier today (no, not Christmas shopping - I needed toilet paper), and found myself singing along to the Christmas music they were playing. So, here are a few movies that have something to do with Christmas. Maybe not much, but you get what you get, and I despise movies like "It's a Wonderful Life".

I wasn't aware of the existence of "It Happened on Fifth Avenue" (1947) until I saw it a few weeks ago on The Hallmark Channel (I think) as part of a package of Christmas-themed movies they began showing in November. I don't even know that I would really call it a Christmas movie, except that it extolls extending all those Christmas-like good things like reaching out and helping one another, and that the story resolves around the Christmas holiday. The story revolves around a hobo who takes up residence in a boarded-up mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City and ends up taking in several people who have nowhere else to go (including, it turns out, the rebellious daughter of the rich man who owns the home). After the usual convolutions, which I will not describe here because I don't want to spoil the film for any of you who might decide to watch it, a happy ending ensues for all.

It's kind of a sappy movie as only a 1940s movie can be, but it kept me watching. The film stars Don DeFore, Charles Ruggles, Ann Harding, Gale Storm, and Victor Moore. This clip contains a scene from the beginning of the movie and shows how one of the less-than-legal residents of the mansion ends up homeless before meeting the man who has made a habit of squatting in the mansion:



Another movie that isn't really, exactly an Christmas movie but takes place around the holiday season is "Bachelor Mother" (1939), which stars Ginger Rogers as a department-store salesgirl who loses her job at the end of the Christmas rush. She rescues an abandoned baby, is mistakenly assumed to be the baby's mother, after which a whole series of mistaken identities and the complications that arise lead to an eventual happy ending. The film also stars David Niven and Charles Coburn, and is a sweet little comedy with a Christmas connection, making it perfect for viewing this time of year. Here's the trailer from the film's original release:



"Bachelor Mother" was remade as "Bundle of Joy" in 1956, starring Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. With those two in the film, of course they made it into a musical, which I don't really think served the story that well, but that might just be me. Otherwise, you can see from the trailer, the story from the 1939 movie, and even some of the lines, were kept pretty much intact:



A more recent movie that, while not a Christmas movie takes place during the Christmas season and takes advantage of that, is 1987's "Lethal Weapon". Yeah, I know. Mel Gibson. But this film was made before the extent of his...issues...were known. It's a good action movie, though. And, hey, how often do you find a good Christmas-connected action flick? It also stars Danny Glover, which is a good thing.

Another movie that really has nothing to do with Christmas, although a child's Christmas gift provides the central mystery of the film's story, is the 1941 classic "Citizen Kane" which, of course, starred Orson Welles. I'm not going to argue, as some do, that this is the best movie ever made, because I don't really think it is. However, it is very, very good, and if you haven't seen it, you should. In case you haven't, I won't clue you in about the gift. Here's the trailer from the time of the film's original release. It really doesn't tell you much about the movie, but I think that was the whole point:



And here's a scene from the movie, to give a little bit of a better hint about it:



I wrote a little bit about "The Lion In Winter" last week, in connection with the death of Peter O'Toole, one of its stars. What I didn't mention is that the movie takes place during the holiday season and shows the holiday reunion of a dysfunctional family in the 1100s probably wasn't all that different than Christmas with your own dysfunctional family today, except that the father of that dysfunctional family was the king, and so the dysfunction assumes a whole other level of consequence. Again, "The Lion in Winter" is a good movie, and if you haven't seen it you should.

In Threes?...

There's this thing that is sometimes called the "Rule of Three", which states that celebrities die in groups of three. People are always pointing this out, and sometimes it seems to really be a thing. But is it, really?

I've always figured that this mostly has to do with the human habit of finding patterns in things, and to impose them even when they aren't really there. There are lots of examples of this; constellations of stars and seeing images in places like tree bark and grilled cheese sandwiches are only two of many.

In Western culture, the number three has assumed a certain significance, and so we tend to see patterns of three. We list things in threes - morning, noon, and night, for example. We've got "The Three Bears" in fairy tales, "Three Blind Mice" in children's rhymes, and the Triple Crown in horse racing. In the Christian religion, there is the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Among Wiccans, there is the Threefold Law that states that whatever you put out to the universe, good or bad, will come back to you three times. I could go on. "Three" is a really big thing, culturally speaking, and that probably has transferred to the Rule of Three.

But, there are problems with the rule of three. How do you define who counts as a celebrity? Does the person have to have actually done something to earn their celebrity, or do you count people who are famous for being famous? Can the person be someone who has been famous for Warhol's fifteen minutes, or do they have to have been famous over a particular period of time? How long does that have to be? Do you only count entertainers, and are athletes considered entertainers or not? Or, do people like politicians and famous scientists and people famous in other fields count as well?

What about time frame? Do the three celebrities have to have died on the same day? Within a few days? If so, how many? Is three days too long? Is a week too long?

As you can see, it can be complicated to analyze whether the Rule of Three is valid, and if it is in operation in any particular circumstance.

And what in the world brought this up, you might be thinking right about now.

In reading the news from the past few days, it seems as if the Rule of Three - if you believe in it - has been in operation once again, specifically in the film community. In the past few days, three actors have died: Peter O'Toole, Joan Fontaine, and Tom Laughlin. Depending on how old you are and what kinds of films you watch, you might or might not be asking "Who?" about one or more of these names. All of them have made a mark, however, of some kind in film. Fontaine was an Academy Award-winning actress, the only person to have won an acting Academy Award for work in an Alfred Hitchcock film, and also one-half of the only sisters to have both won Academy Awards (her sister is Olivia de Haviland). Peter O'Toole holds the record for the number of times he was nominated for an Academy Award without winning one (he was nominated eight times in his career), but he was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2003 for his body of work. And Tom Laughlin...well, his film work never won any awards; his films generally didn't even get that many positive reviews, but how he marketed some of them are credited for changing the way films are marketed and one of his films, "Billy Jack" was, as of 2007 at least, the highest-grossing independent film in history.

So, do these deaths count as fulfilling the Rule of Three? All three have clearly made their mark in the film industry. But their deaths came over four days, with Laughlin passing first, on December 12 at age 82, followed by O'Toole on December 14 at age 81, and Fontaine on December 15 at age 96. Or are we once again, just creating a pattern where there really isn't one?

Here is a trailer for Suspicion (1941) which starred Fontaine and Cary Grant and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock:



Although she continued to do television until the mid 1990s, one of Fontaine's last film roles came in the science fiction film "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961), in which she played a doctor studying stress on the crew of the nuclear submarine Seaview. Here is the trailer:



One of O'Toole's Academy Award nominations came for 1968's "The Lion in Winter", a brilliant film with brilliant performances from both O'Toole and his co-star, Katharine Hepburn.



In "A Lion in Winter", O'Toole plays Henry II, the same role he had played four years earlier in "Becket" (1964). Since "The Lion in Winter" is one of my favorite historical dramas, here is another scene:



O'Toole also played the title role in the 1962 epic "Lawrence of Arabia", which is considered by many to be one of the most influential films ever made. It was one of O'Toole's first film roles, and it brought him his first Academy Award nomination, although he lost the award to Gregory Peck, who won for his role as Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird":



In "Billy Jack", Laughlin played a half-Native American Vietnam veteran who has taken on the task of protecting an alternative school that the local powers-that-be want closed. Although the school is all about love and peace and non-violence, Billy Jack isn't shy about using violence to defend the students and the school's headmistress, played by his real-life wife, Delores Taylor. This scene shows some of that violence, which came in for a lot of criticism from critics at the time the film was released in 1971:



Made for a budget of just $800,000, "Billy Jack" had earned $32.5 million as of 2005, largely due to Laughlin's innovative marketing of the film after he won back the rights to the film after Warner Brothers' marketing of it didn't please him on it's first release, which had come after American International Pictures had reneged on its agreement to distribute it because Laughlin wouldn't de-politicize the film.

Looking back now, "Billy Jack" was a naïve film in many ways, a product of its times. It probably wasn't a "good" film, however one assess and defines that. But, I have to admit that when I saw it as the second feature with another film that I can't even recall now, when I was in high school, I went back to see it twice more in the week before it moved on to the next theater, back in the days when most films only played for a week in any one theater.

So, I guess the question of the day is, what do you think? Is the "Rule of Three" a thing, or is it an artifact of our culture and our human need to impose patters, and meaning, on the universe?