when love and life was black and white

Sometimes the simpler things seem better.

For instance, to me it seems that times were simpler back in the old days. Like back in the day when problems on TV were solved in 22 minutes (ala the “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” episode from the Brady Bunch). Before today’s teen shows where 15 year olds are pregnant or in rehab.

Or even further back when movies, and life, were truly black and white. It’s extra prophetic perhaps that on this, Pearl Harbor Day, I’m in particular thinking about one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time, Christmas in Connecticut. It starred a young and lovely Barbara Stanwick and a storyline that is just as relatable today as it was back in 1945 when it was first released to a nation of movie goers embroiled in World War II and looking for comfort.

The premise was this, Stanwick portrays Elizabeth Lane, a famous magazine writer, the Martha Stewart of that day. She is expert in all things regarding homemaking, setting the impossibly high standard all housewives of the time strive to live up to. So of course when her publisher, seeking publicity, seeks the perfect home for a hero returning from the war to spend Christmas, he thinks of Lane’s farm in Connecticut, where she writes of cooking incredible meals for her husband and baby. The only problem is, Lane is a fraud. She lives in an apartment in Manhattan, has no husband, no baby, no farm and worst of all, she can’t cook. All of her recipes are fed to her from her restauranteur uncle. So what does she do when faced with being exposed and losing her job? She fakes it all and gets herself a farm, and a husband, and a baby (or two) and attempts to throw the perfect Christmas for both her boss and the incredibly sexy and charming war hero who is bound to capture her heart at first sight.

Of course it all works out all right in the end. The heroine falls in love with and gets the hero sailor, but not without a series of misunderstandings that lead to hilarious situations.

Watching Stanwick/Lane sweeping through her bucolic, bedecked, borrowed farmhouse in her long gown playing holiday hostess, I had to sigh and think life looks so lovely back then. None of the glaring harshness of today’s problems. War in Afghanistan. The struggling economy. Tiger Woods’ marriage. What to order online for my long Christmas list and will it get here in time. Will the needles stay on my tree until Christmas or will I have a bare stalk with a pile underneath it? How much longer before they invent a pill to cure gray hair? Whatever, you get the picture…

Of course, this movie was a product of Hollywood in its hay day, and I have to remember it was made as an escape for a country still reeling from their losses and a wartime economy. But it still makes a person grateful that just for a little while we too can escape back into a time when things, on the surface at least, were simply black and white.

Cat

Tags: holidays, life, movies, romance

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 3:58 pm and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.