Oscar Profile #575: Thanksgiving 2021

For the first time in years there is a new film about Thanksgiving on screens in celebration of the holiday, the film version of the 2016 Tony award-winning play, The Humans.

Holidays have been celebrated in films since their inception. There have been films about virtually all of them, 1942’s Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire is in fact a celebration of all of the U.S. holidays.

We have had films that celebrate those we honor on their birthdays – George Washington (1942’s George Washington Slept Here with Jack Benny and Ann Sheridan) and Abraham Lincoln (1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois with Raymond Massey and Ruth Gordon) in the days when those two presidents’ birthdays were separate holidays and more recently, Martin Luther King Day (2014’s Selma with David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo). Who hasn’t spent at least one 4th of July watching 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney and Joan Leslie and/or 1972’s 1776 with William Daniels and Ken Howard?

We’ve had films about Passover (1956’s The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner), films about Easter, both secular (1948’s Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire) and religious (1961’s King of Kings with Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Ryan), films about Election Day (1958’s The Last Hurrah with Spencer Tracy and Jeffrey Hunter), films about Halloween (1978’s Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance) and films for Memorial Day (1962’s The Longest Day with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum) and Veteran’s Day (2017’s Last Flag Standing with Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne).

We’ve had more films about Christmas than any other holiday from the religious (2006’s The Nativity Story with Keisha Castle-Hughes and Shoreh Aghdashloo to the secular (1951’s A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern) and everything in-between (1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart and Donna Reed). There are TV networks that play Christmas themed films non-stop beginning in late October or early November to the end of the year.

We all have holiday favorites we tend to watch over and over. For me, the holiday season isn’t complete without a re-viewing of the afore-mentioned It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, as well as 1940’s Remember the Night with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien, 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan and Sydney Greenstreet and The Bells of St. Mary’s with Ingrid Bergman and Bing Crosby, 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven, 1954’s White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney, 1960’s The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine and 1970’s Scrooge with Albert Finney and Alec Guinness among others.

There are many films in which Thanksgiving celebrations are an integral part of the plot as well as a handful of films in which Thanksgiving is the focus of the film. Here are a few of the most memorable ones.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947), directed by George Seaton

Although it’s generally thought of as a Christmas movie, and it certainly is that, this beloved film not only begins with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but spends a good part of its time on the day as Kris Kringle (Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn) steps in to replace a drunken Santa in the parade, charming the parade’s organizer (Maureen O’Hara) and getting to know her, her daughter (Natalie Wood) and her new neighbor (John Payne). He then gets the job as Macy’s store Santa convincing everyone he is the real Santa except for the skeptical Wood until, well, if you don’t know, you need to stop what you’re doing and watch this classic now.

ALICE’S RESTAURANT (1969), directed by Arthur Penn

Taken from Arlo Guthrie’s 18 minute, 34 second song, the film revolves around 18-year-old Guthrie’s Thanksgiving at the home of his friends Alice and Ray. As a favor to Alice, takes her trash to the dump. When the dump is closed, he drops it on top of another pile of garbage at the bottom of a ravine. When the local sheriff finds out, he conducts a major manhunt. Guthrie manages to survive the courtroom experience, but it haunts him when he is to be inducted into the army via the draft. The movie follows the song with Guthrie’s voice over as both music and narration. Penn received an Oscar nomination for his direction.

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986), directed by Woody Allen

Set set between three successive family Thanksgiving dinners with an emphasis on the first and last, Mia Farrow is the titled Hannah, Barbara Hershey and Oscar winner Dianne Wiest her younger sisters. Hershey is having an affair with Farrow’s current husband, Oscar winner Michael Caine, while trying to end her Svengali-like romance with artist Max von Sydow. Wiest is frustrated by her lack of career fulfillment and her increasing dependence on Hannah’s largesse, while being courted by hypochondriac Woody Allen who was Farrow’s first husband. Maureen O’Sullivan and Lloyd Nolan are the sisters’ elderly parents.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1951), directed by Jodie Foster

Foster’s second film as a director stars Holly Hunter as a 40-year-old single mother from Chicago who spends Thanksgiving with her dysfunctional Baltimore family while worrying about her teenage daughter (Claire Danes) who is spending the day with her boyfriend. Mischievous gay brother Robert Downey Jr. brings friend Dylan McDermott home, leaving Hunter to wonder if he might be straight while her mother (Anne Bancroft) tries to hook her up with an old boyfriend (David Strathairn). Charles Durning is her father, Geraldine Chaplin her crazy aunt and Cynthia Stevenson and Steve Guttenberg her sister and brother-in-law.

PIECES OF APRIL (2003), directed by Peter Hedges

Not only is the family dysfunctional in this one, so is the oven in April’s (Katie Holmes) lower east side New York apartment which won’t cook the turkey she and boyfriend Derek Luke have invited her whacky family from suburban Pennsylvania to share. Patricia Clarkson (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Oliver Platt are her parents, John Gallagher Jr. and Allison Pill her brother and sister and Alice Drummond her grandmother. The budget on this one was so tight that writer-director received just $20 salary, $10 for writing it and another $10 for directing it. Clarkson’s character is based, in part, on his own mother.