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This week featured an annual favorite, the Christmas Quiz. Those who play Dan's Screen Shot Movie Quiz are aware of this ritual, and plan weeks in advance for the event. In other words, they begin making up a list of Christmas movies, and carefully checking it, not once but twice (as the saying goes). Well, so much for preparation. I had my list, based on Videohound's thematic guide, and a search of public databases for keywords such as Christmas, holidays, etc. Then I click into Dan's website on Saturday night, and voila, I don't recognize 3 of the five movies! These movies are three times older than me. Nevertheless, I do not become dismayed. First I used speed viewing to guess the above picture. No, I didn't gang load a VCR and push fast forward. I programmed a macro to sequence through the pictures in Cinemania, looking for a scene match. At 0.5 sec per picture, I reached the best match in about 200 seconds. The fireplace mantel looks like a good fit! The man's robe also matches. The Films of Bette Davis, by Gene Ringold, also contains matching photos. Then I consulted the review at TV Guide's website, and while perusing their detailed writeup, I also got the answer to the bonus question, i.e., what's inside the crate? Penguins, silly. Now, all was not smooth sailing, figuring out this picture. Initially, I thought the guy in the robe was Fredric March, as opposed to Monty Wooley. Also the delivery guy, the hayseed, looked like Percy Kilbride. Not Percy, of course. This is known as the bamboozle effect, where your eye interpolates the image of another actor, to fit a visual pattern in your memory. |
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Unfortunately, the internet contains little pictorial information on the above film. But it does show up in Cinemania, when you search for Christmas or tree. The cast also has plenty of boys (Ted Donaldson, Teddy Infuhr, Mickey Kuhn, etc.). To nail this movie, I needed positive ID. I located a Laserdisc copy of this movie, and on the back cover was a photo of the boy on the left, with a matching cap. Case closed. |
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Surprisingly, this movie held me up the longest. When I blew up the scene, I noticed a crucifix and a picture of a nun. Thus, I knew this was a Catholic or religious school scene. Obvious choices would have been Boy's Town or Going My Way. Except that these films are not co-ed. This is frustrating, because there is a kid who looks like Carl Alfalfa Switzer in the background. He appeared in Going My Way, as a tall teenager. Anyway, I next did a word search in Cinemania for nun or sister. After a good deal of slogging around, I zeroed in on Bells of St. Mary's. I was confident this was the movie because the nun's picture matches Ingrid Bergman's face. It took a day to locate a copy of the movie to verify the answer. So that's how I spent the week before Christmas. |