It Happened on Fifth Avenue

Remind me to nail up the board in the back fence...

It Happened on Fifth Avenue is directed by Roy Del Ruth and the screenplay adapted by Everett Freeman & Vick Knight from a story by Herbert Clyde Lewis & Frederick Stephani. It stars Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charles Ruggles, Victor Moore, Gale Storm, Grant Mitchell and Alan Hale Jr.

Aloysious T. McKeever (Moore) is a hobo gentleman who squats in empty mansions while their rich owners are away for the holiday seasons. This Christmas in New York he's having one of his stays at the home of Michael O'Connor (Ruggles), the second richest man in the world. But where once it was just him and his dog, McKeever opens up his adopted home to Jim Bullock (DeFore), an ex Army veteran who has fell on hard times. This sets the wheels in motion for old friends to also find their way to the mansion, so too does O'Connor's daughter, Trudy (Storm), who in all the confusion falls in love with Jim. But that's not all, this opens the way for Michael O'Connor to be coerced into posing as a hobo in his own home! Which in turn gets extra complicated when Mary O'Connor (Harding), Trudy's mother and Michael's divorced wife, also rocks up to be part of the homeless furniture. It's a nutty Christmas for sure, but Christmas is a time of miracles after all.

The back story to the film sees it as the first release from "B" movie studio Allied Artists. The story was first optioned by Liberty Films as a project for "Frank Capra", who instead chose to make "It's a Wonderful Life". It's no surprise that Liberty thought it a good project for Capra because the story is very Capraesque, but as it turned out, Del Ruth acquired the story and made the film for A A. Though receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Original Story (It lost out to "Valentine Davies" for "Miracle on 34th Street"), Del Ruth's film has remained largely unknown in the pantheon of the Christmas movie. Obviously not helped by the success of Capra's film over the years, thus it...