Christmas in Connecticut
A "hunky dunky" holiday must
I can’t go through the holidays without seeing this film at least once! "Christmas in Connecticut," is pure holiday charm and joy, a beloved romantic comedy from 1945. I started watching this every year over the holidays as a teenager (long ago). This film follows the antics of an unmarried city writer who poses as a farm wife and finds serendipitous love with a returning war hero at Christmastime.
Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyk) is a renowned lifestyle writer from New York City. Her column about her fabricated Connecticut farm, husband, and baby is published in a Smart Housekeeping magazine run by publisher, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet).
Yardley is unaware of the masquerade and insists that Elizabeth host a Christmas dinner for her fan, war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan). Jones read her column describing the perfect Christmas dinner menu in Smart Housekeeping while in the hospital. His mouth was watering while reading about the menu and the farm so his nurse/fiancée, Mary Lee (Joyce Compton) wrote a letter to Yardley about how much he liked Lane’s Christmas column and asks if Yardley would arrange a meeting between the two.
To save her job and the job of her editor, Dudley Beecham (Robert Shayne), Lane is forced to agree to host a dinner. Elizabeth’s friend John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner) happens to own a Connecticut farm, so Elizabeth agrees to marry him. She also enlists the help of her chef friend and "honorary uncle" Felix Bassenak (S.Z. Sakall), who has been providing her with the recipes for her articles. Felix accompanies Elizabeth to the farm and, in a lighthearted and chucklesome scene, tries to teach her how to toss flapjacks (or to “flip-flop the flop-flips” as he explains the activity).
At Sloan's farm on Christmas Eve, Elizabeth meets Norah, the housekeeper, and they use a neighbor's baby pretending the baby is their own. The plan is to marry immediately by the local judge ( Dick Elliott) who lives down the road but are interrupted by Jefferson’s arrival. Elizabeth is immediately attracted to the war hero.
While everyone is at a dance, the baby's real mother arrives to pick up her child, and Alexander Yardley assumes she's kidnapping the baby.
Elizabeth and Jefferson spend a night in jail for accidentally taking a neighbor's horse and sleigh for a joyride after the dance. They returned to the farm the next morning. Alexander Yardley chastises Elizabeth for being out all night and accuses her of neglecting her child. Elizabeth finally confesses all. Furious, Yardley fires her from Smart Housekeeping.
Mary Lee, the nurse/fiancée arrives at the farm. It breaks Elizabeth's heart to find out that Mary Lee and Jefferson are engaged. But Mary Lee came to tell Jefferson that she’s married his best friend. Felix tricks Yardley into thinking another magazine has interest in Elizabeth and offers her more money so Yardley hires her back. Jefferson and Elizabeth share the truth with each other, and they kiss and plan to marry. Everything is “hunky dunky” as Felix likes to say!
This synopsis is wacko and almost hard to follow but I think that if you like classic films, this holiday gem will be something you’ll look forward to watching each year.
Directed by Peter Godfrey
Released July 27, 1945 in New York City
To go along with this Flicks & Forks post, I’m including Elizabeth Lane’s Christmas Roast Goose and Bernoise recipes below:
Roast Christmas Goose
Ingredients
1 large goose, halved lengthwise by your butcher
6cm/2.5in piece of ginger
6 large sticks of cinnamon
6 star anise
2 teaspoons whole cloves
olive oil
2 oranges
red wine vinegar
Instructions
Get your meat out of the fridge and up to room temperature before you cook it. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.
Peel and finely slice the ginger, then, keeping everything quite coarse, lightly crush it in a pestle and mortar with the cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves and a good pinch of sea salt and black pepper.
Rub into the skin of the goose halves, then put both halves skin side up in your biggest deep-sided roasting tray and drizzle with a little oil.
Roast for 3 hours (depending on the size of your goose), basting every hour. After the goose has been in for 2 hours, slice the oranges and carefully add to the tray. The goose is cooked when the leg meat falls easily off the bone.
Now you’ve got two choices. Leave it to rest, covered, for 30 minutes, then serve up while it’s hot and crispy-skinned, in which case simply remove the meat to a board, shred the leg meat and slice the breast.
Pour all the fat into a jar, cool, and place in the fridge for tasty cooking another day, such as roast potatoes. Stir a good swig of vinegar into the tray to pick up all the sticky goodness from the base, then drizzle over your meat. Serve with spuds, veg and all the usual trimmings.
Your second choice is to let everything cool in the tray, then place it in the fridge for up to 2 days, with the goose submerged and protected in its own fat, ready to reheat when you need it, getting you ahead of the game and saving you time and oven space another day.
To reheat, put the whole tray back in a preheated oven at 180°C/350°F and let the goose crisp up for around 30 minutes, or until heated through, then shred, slice and serve as above.
Bernoise Sauce
Ingredients
¼ cup butter
2 large egg yolks, beaten
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced onion
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 pinch dry mustard
1 pinch cayenne pepper
Instructions
Gather all ingredients
Place butter in a microwave-safe glass bowl. Cook in the microwave on high until melted, about 30 seconds. Whisk in egg yolks, heavy cream, white wine vinegar, lemon juice, and onion. Season with tarragon, parsley, salt, mustard powder, and cayenne pepper; mix well.
Continue cooking in the microwave, stirring every 20 to 30 seconds, until thickened, about 1 1/2 minutes.
I love this film and hope you will enjoy it as well. If anyone out there decides to embark on cooking a roast goose to enjoy with this holiday movie, I’d love to hear all about the venture!
Happy Holidays to everyone!
...Jill
Just subscribed. This is a great idea for a substack and I love Christmas in Connecticut! Merry Christmas 🎄