She's one of those actors equally comfortable in comedy, 'women's pictures', film noir, or westerns. As a leading lady during a time when adult women were a large part of the film-going audience (i.e. before TV), she got a lot of meaty parts, and acted them with gusto and intelligence.
Anyway, this is a pretty cute comedy. Short description:Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an unmarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his Christmas on her farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?
Stanwyck is great, Sydney Greenstreet (as the publisher) is great, Dennis Morgan is adequate as the sailor.
To my horror, as I was looking for pictures for a post about this movie, I found this television remake from 1992:
"Elizabeth is the star of a successful cooking show and author of several cookbooks. But when her manager, Alexander sees forest ranger Jefferson, who lost his cabin in a fire, comment on TV about wishing he could get a home-cooked Christmas dinner, he arranges for a special live show on Christmas, for Elizabeth to cook him Christmas Dinner. Only Elizabeth can't cook, and trying to keep Jefferson and the viewing public from finding out on a live show may be a little difficult."Yikes! Obviously, the plot is similar to the first one. But a poodle-headed Dyan Cannon in the lead, plus a latter-day Kris Kristofferson in a story set in the 1990s--that's not cool, man. And worst of all--Directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Also, their heads are obviously pasted onto those bodies! And where is Dyan's right hand? You can't hold a pie like that!
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