Posted by on December 23, 2019 4:59 am
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Categories: µ Newsjones

Alamy

No Eggnog, no mulled wine… Not even a drop of hot apple cider! To delve into the classic Christmas movies from the 1940s and 1950s is to venture into a dry county.

Take It’s a Wonderful Life, the most yuletide film of them all, whose character Mary Bailey (Donna Reed) is as sweet and lovely as vermouth in a Manhattan. And yet nary a drink is poured in the course of the film. Just one lone bottle of Champagne is bought by Bailey for an anniversary celebration with her husband George (James Stewart), which remains unopened. But that’s more than you’ll find in Miracle on 34th Street, even though the plot relies on an intoxicated Santa creating trouble at Macy’s—his firing opens the way for Kris Kringle.

So it comes as a relief to find that one Christmas classic has something to say about drinks. Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-winning The Apartment is not only a favorite of other filmmakers—from Wes Anderson to Cameron Crowe—but it’s also a perfect holiday movie, set neatly between early December and New Year’s Eve. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.