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Since Christmas is almost here, this week on «Film Friday» I thought I would bring you a Christmas movie. Well, it is set during the Christmas season, anyway. Directed by Garson Kanin, Bachelor Mother (1939) tells the story of Polly Parish (Ginger Rogers), an ingenious salesgirl who gets fired from her seasonal Christmas job at Merlin's department store. On her way home, she sees a woman secretly leaving an infant on the steps of an orphanage. Fearing the cold will harm the baby, Polly picks it up and is mistaken as its mother by an attendant who opens the door. After protesting that she is not the mother, Polly leaves the orphanage, but the authorities track her down at her work. Feeling sorry for her, David Merlin (David Niven), the playboy heir to the store, arranges for her to get her job back. When Polly still refuses to keep the baby, David threatens to fire her and she reluctantly accepts motherhood.   Ginger Rogers and David Niven as Polly Parish and David Merlin in Bachelo...

To celebrate Judy Holliday's 95th birthday, which was on Tuesday, this week on «Film Friday» I bring you the film for which she is best remembered, the one that gave her the Academy Award for Best Actress. This also happens to be one of my favourite films of all time. Directed by George Cukor, Born Yesterday (1950) begins when wealthy, but crooked, junk dealer Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) and his brassy girlfriend, former showgirl Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday), arrive at a swanky hotel in Washington, D.C. Harry proceeds to instruct his attorney, Jim Devery (Howard St. John), to buy votes in the U.S. House of Representatives to get a bill passed that will save him millions of dollars in federal taxes. For Harry's protection, Jim puts his business holdings in Billie's name and asks her to sign all of his legal documents, which she does without questioning. Jim also warns Harry to marry Billie since, legally, wives cannot testify against their husbands in a court of law. ...

My initial plan for today was to write about a Vivien Leigh film in celebration of her 102th birthday, which was yesterday. However, since I already did that for The Vivien Leigh & Laurence Olivier Blogathon , I decided that today I would honour instead Vivien's «birthday twin,» Joel McCrea. So, this week on «Film Friday» I am going to tell you a little bit about one of Joel McCrea's most iconic films, which also happens to be the first film I ever saw with him. Directed by George Stevens, The More the Merrier (1943) concerns Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur), a young government worker who reluctantly agrees to rent out half of her apartment to an older gentleman, Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn), in order to ease the housing shortage in wartime Washington, D.C. Without Connie's knowledge, Mr. Dingle then sublets half of his half of the apartment to Sergeant Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), a handsome aircraft technician waiting to be shipped overseas. When Connie learns about t...