Director: DON HARTMAN. Screenplay: Isobel Lennart. Based on a story, "Christmas Gift", and a novelette called "The Man Who Played Santa Claus" by John D. Weaver. Photography: Milton Krasner. Film editor: Harry Marker. Art directors: Albert D'Agostino and Carroll Clark. Set decorators: Darrell Silvera and William Stevens. Miss Leigh's costumes: Howard Greer. Music composed by Roy Webb, directed by Constantin Bakaleinikoff. Hair styles: Larry Germain. Make-up: James House. Assistant director: Sam Ruman. Sound: Frank Sarver and Clem Portman. Producer: Don Hartman.Copyright 23 November 1949 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. U.S. release: 24 December 1949. New York release at Loew's State: 23 November 1949. U.K. release: 6 February 1950. Australian release: 6 April 1950. Sydney release at the Esquire: 10 March 1950. Australian length: 7,943 feet (88 minutes). U.K. length: 7,812 feet (87 minutes).SYNOPSIS: Comparison shopper inadvertently gets toy salesman fired from New York department store. Salesman romances shopper and her six-year-old son.COMMENT: A slight little Christmas romance with a foregone conclusion that seemed a lot more entertaining and engrossing back in 1950 than it does now. Admittedly, the two principal characterizations are fairly intriguing - Mitchum is likeably off-beat at first but becomes more conventionally outspoken as the film progresses; Miss Leigh's profession is refreshingly original - but the rest of the players are handicapped by their strictly clichéd roles, particularly Wendell Corey's stuffy attorney and Gordon Gebert's gap-toothed wonder. The players are not helped by direction that only comes to life with fluid camerawork in some of the crowd scenes, elsewhere letting the cast and the dialogue do all the work in a series of long takes. The dialogue is occasionally witty or pointed but mostly it and the situations are dull to the point of boredom. Even the episode in the police station which could have been fairly amusing seems somewhat strained as Henry Morgan makes heavy weather out of rather thin clouds. Miss Leigh looked good to indulgent males in 1950, but Father Time has stripped a lot of her illusion away, forcing her to rely on a charm and personality that is otherwise blandly inadequate. Photography and other credits are capable enough - even occasionally attractive. A Holiday Affair also has some historical interest as Mitchum's first starring essay into the field of romantic comedy and it must be admitted that he handled the lightweight part with a professional flair of delightful nonchalance (when he wasn't buried under sticky dialogue of the sentimental kind). However, despite mildly enthusiastic reviews and a domestic release that coincided with Christmas, Mitchum's fans were unimpressed and A Holiday Affair added little to RKO's coffers. It was not until his final RKO film, She Couldn't Say No (1954) that Mitchum was again cast in a comedy.

With a cast list containing Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum and Wendell Corey you think this would be a crime thriller. It is a romantic comedy.Leigh is a widow with a young boy and works as a comparison shopper, regarded at the time to be a despicable profession.She meets Mitchum in a department store who works there as a toy salesman over the Christmas holidays to earn enough money so he can return to the west coast. He is selling toy trains but although he guesses she is a comparison shopper, he does not report her and gets fired for his non action.Wendell Corey is a lawyer who has been courting Leigh for years but she has never got over her husband and her boy does not seem to like Corey. However something stirs when she encounters Mitchum and they keep on meeting and he also purchases a train set that her son wants for Christmas.This is not a whimsical or sentimental film, the people feel real with real problems of the post years, poverty or bereavement or just trying to get the girl.Despite the cast, this is a low key film, where everybody is nice to each other. Corey does have the thankless role as the nice guy who has go up against Mitcham for the girl. At one point he even defends him in court. However Mitcham the drifter with a dream of building boats is the one who sizes up Leigh.

This is very much a 'film of its time', but it was designed to be precisely that. It dealt with one of the major social issues of the immediate postwar years, the problems of the grieving young women whose husbands had been killed in the War. The main character in this film is just such a pretty young war widow, played by Janet Leigh. She keeps framed photos of her husband in uniform all round her apartment and beside her bed, and can't let him go. Her little boy Guy is turned into what she calls 'the man of the house'. She cannot come to terms with her loss or make a new life for herself, despite the fact that three or four years have gone by. America was full of women in her condition at this time, women who had been deeply in love with their husbands, lost them in combat, and were then expected to find a new man. Janet Leigh just can't do that. A boring and 'stable' admirer, played by Wendell Corey, has been patiently courting her for two years and keeps telling her that friendship is enough for a marriage and she doesn't need to love him. She is gradually bringing herself round to accept this kind of a future and even says yes to him at last, convincing herself that it will give her 'a quiet life' and a father for her boy (who does not like Corey and keeps insulting him). This film was given a misleading title, because there is no 'affair' and the 'holiday' refers merely to the fact that it is Christmas time. However, this is not, as some imagine, just 'a good Christmas film'. Christmas is merely the convenient background for the story. The story is really about Janet Leigh's struggle to come to terms with her loss. Through an amusing, if somewhat hectic, series of circumstances, Leigh meets Robert Mitchum. He is working in a New York City department store selling toy trains and she is a 'comparison shopper' working for a rival department store. She goes around buying things, taking them to her employer for study, and then returning them and getting a refund. Mitchum discovers this and is about to turn her in, but when he hears she is a war widow with a child, he takes pity on her and lets her go. This is spotted by the floorwalker, and Mitchum is instantly fired. Then a highly complex relationship develops, involving the boy, a train set, various misunderstandings and comic coincidences, and Fate, which obviously had it in mind all along, brings them closer and closer together. This gets up the nose of Corey, who takes it very badly indeed. Little Guy adores Mitchum, and the story is really very ingenious and amusing, as to how things go on from there. I can't reveal what happens in the end, but you could say Leigh is really on the spot and struggles between boring safety and passionate uncertainty. Mitchum proposes too, and which one will she, can she, choose? This film would have gone straight to the heart for many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of young American widows in her position at that time. As social history it is very important. The film is very sensitively done and must have been a big hit when it came out. It is entertaining to watch, has many amusing moments, and excellent performances.

Looking back at my record in 2010,and seeing that I only watched one Christmas-themed film that year (the likable Elf),I felt that for this year,I should really try to get hold of some "X-mas classics" which I had never seen before.Whilst searching on Amazon Uk for some of the more well known titles,I suddenly got a rec from the site for a film that I had never heard of before.Checking the cast,and seeing that "The King of Noir" and Norman Bates favourite Blonde had starring roles in the film,made this sound like the perfect start for my Christmas classics viewings.The plot:Struggleing to makes ends meet for her and her young son,(who both have also been trying to deal with the death of their husband/father in the war)Connie Ennis decides to become a "comparison shopper" for a big company,with her main job being to buy one of a rival stores "big sellers",and return it the very next day,after the "comparison shopper" company has gotten all of the details about the item.For her latest fact-finding mission,Connie has been told to pick up a toy train set,which has become one of The must-have toys of the year.Interupting the stores toy seller Steve Mason from his latest demo of the toy.Ennis quickly makes a run for it after getting the set,due to Mason getting suspicious of her.Arriving home,Connie tries and fails from hiding the set from her son Timmy,whose sneaky look at the toy,starts to get him excited in receiving it as his main Christmas present.After getting a refund for the toy,Ennis is shocked when she runs into Steve Mason,and discovers that he has been fired due to refunding her!Wanting to cheer him up a little,Connie spends the whole day with Steve,until they are separated by rush hour traffic.Returning home,Ennis starts to plan spending Christmas with her son,and her long-term patient boyfriend Carl Davis. With Davis and Timmy each ready to take Connie out for a special meal,they are all stopped in their tracks when Steve Mason suddenly appears.Arriving with some items he had picked up with Ennis,Steve starts to relax,and attempts to introduce himself to her son Timmy and her now very uneasy boyfriend Carl. View on the film:When checking the DVD case to this film,my initial excitement for the movie experienced a bit of a drop,when I discovered that along with Mitchum and Leigh the film featured that old chestnut the slowly kills off any TV Comedy series:a kid.Impressively,child actor Gordon Gebert avoids most of those pit falls by making the character pretty balanced,with Timmy never completely becoming an "aw shucks" kid,or an annoying little brat,but instead walking that fine line of being in between.Looking at the rest of the strong cast,Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh show a very natural chemistry,with the scenes of Leigh and Mitchum spending the day together,allowing for Robert to show a pretty under rated comedic side with his very good dialogue delivery.Although Leigh and Mitchum do take centre stage in the film,Wendell Corey (who,like Leigh would work with director Alfred Hitchcock on the movie Rear Window and an episode of Hitchcocks TV show)is able to steal some of the films best scenes thanks to performing Connie's ambitious lawyer boyfriend role with a real relish.Whilst the cast do their best to cover up the cracks in Isobel "This Could Be The Night" Lennart's screenplay,some of the 'cracks' in the film are sadly left open,with Connie's job of being a "comparison shopper" for a company not having even the smallest appearance of someone from the company who she works for. (which could have been a nice little role for a character actor)And with the second half of the film hinting that the life of Mitchum's character is more troubled then it originally seemed (such as him being homeless),the film sadly leaves most of that mood behind,with the final moments of the film being a chase to a train station. Final view on the film:A very enjoyable,flawed Christmas Comedy-Drama,with great performances from the whole cast.