Top 5 Holiday Movies
Published:The holidays are the absolute best time of year to hang out with friends and family and watch movies together! And every family has their list of favorites that they can't go one holiday season without watching at least once! What are some of your favorite holiday movies? Did any of your favorites make our Top 5 Holiday Movies list?
1) It's a Wonderful Life
- An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed
- Nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director
- A photograph of James Stewart at the age of six months donated by his parents was included in the Bailey home set
- James Stewart and Frank Capra both said that of all the films they made, this was their favorite
- Despite being set around Christmas, it was filmed during a heat wave. It got to be so hot that Frank Capra gave everyone a day off to recuperate
2) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
- When a nice old man who claims to be Santa Claus is institutionalized as insane, a young lawyer decides to defend him by arguing in court that he is the real thing
- Nominated for 4 Oscars, winning 3 of them, including Best Supporting Actor & Best Screenplay
- Young Natalie Wood was completely thrown at the film's wrap party when Edmund Gwenn showed up without his beard
- The film's original title was "Christmas Miracle on 34th Street" but because the release date was moved to the summer, the Christmas from the title was dropped
- Shot during a bitterly cold New York winter. On several occasions, the cameras literally froze
3) Home Alone
- A young troublemaker must protect his home from a pair of burglars when he is accidentally left home alone during Christmas vacation
- Nominated for two Oscars, including Best Original Score
- Joe Pesci deliberately avoided Macaulay Culkin on set because he wanted Culkin to think he was mean
- The line "You guys give up, or are you thirsty for more?" was improvised
- Daniel Stern agreed to have the tarantula put on his face for exactly one take. He had to mime screaming because the noise would have scared the spider, and the scream was dubbed in later. Macaulay Culkin also had a hand double for close-up shots of Kevin handling the spider
4) A Christmas Story
- Ralphie has to convince his parents, his teacher, and Santa that a Red Ryder B.B. gun really is the perfect gift!
- To find an American city resembling an Indiana town of the 1940s, director Bob Clark sent his location scouts to 20 cities before selecting Cleveland
- When the character of Scut Farkas first appears, the "Wolf" music from Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" plays in the background. The name "Farkas" is derived from the Hungarian word for "wolf"
- The people of Cleveland were incredibly cooperative during filming, donating antique vehicles from every corner of the city. These vintage vehicles helped to enhance the authenticity of the production design
- Ralphie says that he wanted the "Red Ryder BB Gun" 28 times
5) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
- The Griswold family's plans for a big family Christmas predictably turn into a big disaster
- Chevy Chase appears in some scenes wearing a navy blue Chicago Bears ball cap. He wears the same cap throughout all four Vacation movies
- When Clark is in bed trying to read the People Magazine with sticky fingers from the tree sap, the person shown on the cover of the magazine is Matty Simmons, this film's producer
- Diane Ladd, who plays Clark Griswold's mother is actually only eight years older than Chevy Chase
- Despite being a "Christmas movie," Christmas Day is never actually seen. The film ends on Christmas Eve
