Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

In this hilarious screwball Christmas comedy, the great Barbara Stanwyck stars as Elizabeth Lane, a famous expert on marriage, cooking and homemaking (shades of Martha Stewart!) who is asked by her hard-driving publisher (Sydney Greenstreet, The Maltese Falcon) to host a returning war hero (Dennis Morgan, In This Our Life), for Christmas dinner at her equally-famous Connecticut farmhouse as part of a publicity stunt. It should be simple, but she must scramble to keep her big secrets: that she’s happily single, doesn’t own a home, and can’t even boil an egg! Certain that her career will be over if the truth comes out, Elizabeth hatches a plan, and with a lot of help, meticulous planning and split-second timing, the urban sophisticate just might pull off the hijinks-filled hoax … but the unforeseen happens when she falls in love with her guest, and this year, Christmas in Connecticut is about to get hilariously complicated! (Dir. by Peter Godfrey, 1945, USA, 101 mins., Not Rated)