Christmas in July

Christmas in July (1940)

If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee - it's the bunk!

An office clerk loves entering contests in the hopes of someday winning a fortune and marrying the girl he loves. His latest attempt is the Maxford House Coffee Slogan Contest. As a joke, some of his co-workers put together a fake telegram which says that he won the $25,000 grand prize.

Date of release
1940-10-25
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (92)
Runtime
1h 7m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Preston Sturges

Casting

Interesting facts

Christmas in July is a 1940 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Dick Powell and Ellen Drew.

Production

The working titles for Christmas in July were The New Yorkers, Something to Shout About and A Cup of Coffee, the latter of which was the name of the play Sturges wrote in 1931 on which the film was based.

In 1934, Universal hired Sturges to direct a film based on the play, but that project fell through when the studio found other work to assign him, including doctoring the script of Diamond Jim. Once that task was completed, Sturges' mentor at the studio, producer Henry Henigson, left, leaving nobody at Universal to champion Sturges' project. Sturges moved to Paramount, and made a deal with the studio to buy the script for $6,000.

William Holden and Betty Field were slated to played the leads, with Arthur Hornblow Jr. as producer.

Production on Christmas in July began on June 1, 1940, and continued through June 29. According to author Donald Spoto in his book Madcap: The Life of Preston Sturges, Sturges directed the film wearing a straw boater and carrying a bamboo cane.

Christmas in July was the only time Sturges worked with Dick Powell and Ellen Drew, but many actors from Sturges' "stock company" appeared. Headed by William Demarest, they included George Anderson, Al Bridge, Georgia Caine, Jimmy Conlin, Harry Hayden, Arthur Hoyt, Torben Meyer, Charles R. Moore, Frank Moran, Franklin Pangborn, Victor Potel, Dewey Robinson, Harry Rosenthal, Julius Tannen and Robert Warwick.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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