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Christmas In Connecticut (Warners), for all its rattle and redolence of mothballs, is thoroughly moth-eaten. The caprice involves Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, S. Z. Sakall and a couple of babies who, though too young to know any better, are going to have quite a time living it down. The predicament: Miss Stanwyck, a highly publicized writer of recipes for a woman's magazine, has been pretending to her avid public (and to her honest publisher, Mr. Greenstreet) that she is a Connecticut country housewife, mother and cook. When the publisher insists that she entertain him and War Hero Morgan over Christmas, she is forced to make a hasty collection of the source of her recipes (Restaurateur Sakall), a phony husband (Reginald Gardiner), his Connecticut house, a neighbor's baby.
As the hours drag on, she is even forced to change a diaper, flip a flapjack, and act toward the hungry, amorous hero as if she were really a nice, contented matron. There are also assorted minor plot complications, thanks to which the players cheerfully cheat, blackmail and blood-squeeze each other like so many bargain-basement Borgias who, out of deference to the holiday season, have decided to draw the line just short of poison. Warner Bros., blithely presenting them as likable people and their behavior toward each other as funny, evidently assume that enough people will feel that way about it to justify the investment.
CURRENT & CHOICE
A Thousand and One Nights (Cornel Wilde, Evelyn Keyes; TIME, July 16).
Along Came Jones (Gary Cooper, Loretta Young; TIME, July 9).
Rhapsody in Blue (Robert Alda, Oscar Levant, Joan Leslie; TIME, July 2).
Blood on the Sun (James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney; TIME, June 25).
Murder, He Says (Fred MacMurray, Helen Walker; TIME, June 18).
Wonder Man (Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo; TIME, June 11).
We Accuse (Kharkov trials documentary; TIME, June 4).
The Way Ahead (David Niven; TIME, May 28).
A Medal for Benny (Dorothy Lamour, Arturo de Cordova; TIME, May 28).