None but a blockhead writes but for money. -Samuel Johnson
21 December 2010
The world has changed...
The Edmund Gwenn version
AMC is running Miracle on 34th Street every night. As I watched I thought of a couple things. If it were made today, the movie looks like a 96 minute paid product placement for Macy's Department Stores.
But I also thought — and this is sad — about how the world has changed. In the first act, Cleo (Theresa Harris, the housekeeper, lets Phillip Gailey (John Payne), a single man with no children of his own who Mrs. Walker (Maureen O'Hara) has never met, take little Susan Walker (Natalie Wood) into his apartment to watch the Thanksgiving Parade.
Neither the housekeeper or Mrs. Walker is the least bit concerned.