Aunt Matilda Reed is a strange, rich old lady living in a New York mansion, with a nephew who want to get hold of her dough, but is she strange enough that he can get a court order giving him power over the estate? Not if she can get her 3 adopted sons back by Christmas time to stop him....
This basic idea was probably old even by 1947 and there have certainly been many variations on the theme done since, but probably few of them are made up of more disparate elements. George Brent is the first of the sons we meet, a ne'er-do-well playboy intent on dumping vivacious but poor Joan Blondell for a dull but wealthy new playmate -- his segment is essentially screwball; next up is George Raft in a really intense, noir-spy story involving ex-Nazis in South America and quite a bit of gun violence and fisticuffs -- not what you'd expect in a typical Christmas story! Finally Randolph Scott comes along with his cowboys swagger to New York to get involved in a baby adoption ring and pick up a fair maiden who's trying to bust it, and they all meet up (with 3 new adoptees-to-be) at Aunt Mathilda's, apparently just in time.
There's nothing exciting about the plodding direction here by Edwin L. Marin, and the stories are fairly preposterous and seem lifted right out of other movies, but the cast is charming enough and I had fun wasting two hours -- I guess that's enough for a Hollywood Christmas movie sometimes.
This basic idea was probably old even by 1947 and there have certainly been many variations on the theme done since, but probably few of them are made up of more disparate elements. George Brent is the first of the sons we meet, a ne'er-do-well playboy intent on dumping vivacious but poor Joan Blondell for a dull but wealthy new playmate -- his segment is essentially screwball; next up is George Raft in a really intense, noir-spy story involving ex-Nazis in South America and quite a bit of gun violence and fisticuffs -- not what you'd expect in a typical Christmas story! Finally Randolph Scott comes along with his cowboys swagger to New York to get involved in a baby adoption ring and pick up a fair maiden who's trying to bust it, and they all meet up (with 3 new adoptees-to-be) at Aunt Mathilda's, apparently just in time.
There's nothing exciting about the plodding direction here by Edwin L. Marin, and the stories are fairly preposterous and seem lifted right out of other movies, but the cast is charming enough and I had fun wasting two hours -- I guess that's enough for a Hollywood Christmas movie sometimes.