Trends are fun, but sometimes, we just want to spend a little time with the classics. Same goes for cinema. From Ginger Rogers and Lena Horne to Audrey and Katharine Hepburn, the decades of yore are brimming with heartwarming pictures featuring Old Hollywood’s brightest stars—all showcasing their iconic vintage holiday style to boot.
Of course, the best old Christmas movies aren’t complete without dapper leading men, so Bob Hope, Billy Dee Williams, James Stewart, and the like are all here too. Perhaps a movie marathon will even lead you to the originators of some of your favorite iconic Christmas movie quotes and jingles—“Silver Bells” ring a bell? You’ll see what we mean soon.
So settle in, mull some wine, and go back in time with the best classic Christmas movies even the Queen of Christmas would approve.
Better in color or no? That’s the only legit debate when it comes to Frank Capra’s classic, now a must-watch for the holiday season. It’s just too difficult to argue against five Oscars, an indelible message, James Stewart, and that amazing pool scene, am I right?
Deciding which adaptation of Charles Dickens’s tale is your favorite is an entirely personal journey. For us, one is Edwin Marin’s family-friendly version of Scrooge and his ghost squad. Made during the Golden Age of Hollywood, it’s light on yuletide fear, heavy on Christmas cheer, and we’re okay with that.
Winner of three Oscars, George Seaton’s Big Apple miracle, about Santa having to prove in a court of law he is actually Santa, was released on May 2, 1947—and has been played on a yearly loop ever since. Fun fact: Natalie Wood, who played nonbeliever Susan, was still a believer during filming.
Produced in the ‘70s but set in the ‘50s, A Dream for Christmas is a hallmark of classic Black holiday films. Starring Hari Rhodes, Beah Richards, and Lynn Hamilton, the movie follows a hardworking Southern minister who relocates his family to the West Coast to save a church. According to TCM, it was the extended pilot episode of what was supposed to be the next Waltons series.
Technically a TV special that could never have known its 50+-year endurance, Rudolph plus Frosty and their companion holiday classics count as a feature-length affair in our book. Plus, what’s a holiday viewing roundup without a stop-motion tale narrated by Burl Ives?
Not sure there’s a better fireside counterpart than chestnuts – except for Peanuts. And West Coast jazz. Both of which make Charles Schulz’s A Charlie Brown Christmas a holiday classic that’s as wonderful and modest as a certain top-heavy hero’s Christmas tree.
This whimsical Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy classic, also known by its reissue title, March of the Wooden Soldiers, isn’t so much a Christmas movie in the traditional sense—but it is set in a child’s dreamland, and a certain jelly-bellied man in red indeed makes an appearance. That said, the storybook plot, charming interludes, and nutty comedic stylings make for an ideal festive watch for the entire family.
A family gathering to celebrate the Christmas holiday are surprised when an unexpected member of the family shows up: the patriarch who’s given his loved ones the cold shoulder. It’s a heartwarming English tale that doesn’t skimp on all essentials that make up a holiday film: shots of heavy snowfall, close-ups of crackling fires, and endless notes of Christmas carols.
Judy Garland stars as daughter Esther Smith in this Technicolor musical about a family preparing for a permanent move to New York. The story covers the entire year before their relocating, so Christmas is only a small part, but the sorrowful rendition of Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is enough to land it a place on our list. Plus, the film is featured in another holiday fave: The Family Stone.
Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds take the lead in this delightful (albeit way outdated) musical about a department store clerk, the baby she finds at an orphanage, and the pickle her little one gets her into. Of course, there’s plenty of romance, show tunes, and dance numbers on the menu, but the real dish is beholding the chemistry between Reynolds and her real-life husband at the time, Mr. Fisher.
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There is no Sidney Poitier, but this small-screen follow-up to the 1963 hallmark film Lilies of the Field still holds its own. Starring Billy Dee Williams as Homer, the film is a gift that keeps on giving decades later. When Homer returns to the chapel he helped build years earlier, he sees that the nuns have opened their doors to homeless children. Moved, he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on a school and orphanage. Hearts will be filled.
Your annual office Christmas party has nothing on the romp on display in this Walter Lang classic. Stream-able in Technicolor that makes the jewel-toned palette suited to the season pop off the screen, the film stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as a pair of polar opposites at odds with the future of their network. Most of the film takes place at their Manhattan office place (the very famous 30 Rock, to be exact), and the iconic Rockefeller tree even makes a cameo.
Shirley Temple and the holidays are as synonymous as ginger ale and grenadine. Not a year goes by that we don’t see the curly-topped actress on the small screen singing something sweet and cheery. Here, however, she’s all grown up and starring opposite Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten in a David O. Selznick production about secrets, drama, and romance. Just what the holidays call for.
You know that classic carol “Silver Bells”? It was actually introduced in this crime comedy, and sung by Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. That’s reason alone to queue up the classic, but should you want to know more before committing, well, Hope plays Sidney Milburn, a racetrack scammer who has until Christmas to pay back the mob. Slapstick, sing-alongs, sour candy: What more could you want?
Screwball comedies of the ‘40s are a cause for celebration—and this diamond in the snow is proof. A twist on the holiday’s nativity story, the fun begins with a night of revelry at a sendoff party for American troops, and ends with a woman waking up to find herself married, pregnant, and with no memory of who the soldier boy is. (It sounds more scandalous than it actually is.)
A comedy of complicated love connections, Billy Wilder’s rom-com is about a man who allows his bosses to use his digs for trysts with their mistresses as an attempt to climb the corporate ladder. And though Christmas is more of a choice of setting than a driving plotline, the brilliant dialogue between its stars—Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon—is the very same magic that so often is celebrated this time of year.
You can’t do Christmas without Frank Capra, but there is more to his seasonal classic vault than his holiday stalwart starring Jimmy Stewart, It’s a Wonderful Life. Five years before George Bailey was dangling off a bridge, a man known only as John Doe was threatening to jump off City Hall on Christmas Eve. It’s a ploy designed to save the job of a journalist, played by Barbara Stanwyck, but it ends up igniting a populist movement and culminating in one of the prettiest, snowiest denouements on film.
Before young Ralphie was shooting his eye out, Nick Charles was popping off rounds on Christmas morning with his new air-rifle in a crime comedy about a retired detective, his wife, and the case they attempt to solve while soaking their banter in shaken dry martinis.
Though some would argue White Christmas’s snowy lookalike, Holiday Inn—the other Bing Crosby-and-Irving Berlin collaboration—deserves mention (it did come to life first, after all), it’s the former, starring Crosby and Danny Kaye, we simply can’t not watch. Blessings = counted.
Another Christmas-in-the-courtroom classic worth warming your heart? Mitchell Leisen’s black-and-white rom-com that unfolds in session—or rather, during court recess over Christmas. That’s when district attorney John Sargent falls in love with the shoplifter he’s prosecuting.
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There is no holly without jolly. And there is no Christmas without cookies. Bake up a batch and settle in for this comedy about a writer whose cover as a Susie Homemaker with Dominique Crenn-worthy oven skills is about to get blown over a holiday in the Northeast. Now, just add milk.
A pair of gift shop salespeople who despise each other anonymously fall in love via their pen-pal correspondence. Sound familiar? It should. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan’s onscreen tale is the inspiration for Nora Ephron's classic You’ve Got Mail.
Two of the five Oscar nominees in 1948 were holiday films: this one, and a certain miracle that happened in midtown Manhattan. Here, Henry Koster directs a tale about an angel with quite the to-do list: help a bishop, build a church, save a marriage. Sounds a lot like a job for Denzel.
The Fifth Avenue you know, but the “it” you may not. It refers to the Christmas when Trudy, the daughter of the second-richest man in the world, arrives home early to find drifters and NYC’s homeless residing in her family’s townhouse. Love and merrymaking, right this way.
Don Hartman’s rom-com forgoes the saccharine sentimentality Hallmark brings for the holidays (not that there's anything wrong with that), though seasonal sentiment is not all lost among a widow, two men, and partridge in a pear tree.
If you've found yourself with a frigid heart this holiday season, then a cranky green monster who discards his hate for Christmas is just what Dr. Seuss ordered. Fun fact: Seuss’s Grinch was black and white with pink eyes. Chuck Jones made him green for the screen.
Old Hollywood starlet Kim Novak takes the lead in this enchanting romantic comedy that uses December’s big day as its backdrop. As a shop girl with supernatural abilities, she casts a love spell on her neighbor (Jimmy Stewart) because she despises his fiancée. Of course, she never expected to fall in love with him herself.
Craving a little film noir with your spiked eggnog? Look no further than this 1944 crime drama starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly. Playing against type (sorry, no endurance dance numbers here), Kelly becomes Robert Manette, a crook with a killer secret, while Durbin takes on the role of his wife, Abigail. It’s a tale that unfolds over December 25 in New Orleans, but know: No one has a merry Christmas here.
A Spanish comedy classic, Luis García Berlanga’s 1961 film mingles with the wealthy inhabitants of a tiny town who have each decided to invite someone of lesser fortune to their Christmas Eve tables to share a meal. Chaotic and gloriously topsy-turvy, the narrative revolves around one guest in particular, the titular Plácido, a homeless man who drives a three-wheel motorbike.
Nutcracker loyalists, break from the sugarplum fairies for a sec to discover this enchanting fantasy from Czechoslovakia, which unfurls as the name-sake protagonist makes a trio of wishes via three magical nuts. We should note that, no, it’s not about Christmas (though gifts are involved). And, no, it’s not set during the holiday (though there is snow). But it is a European holiday tradition, and that’s good enough for us.
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Another film that airs annually around the holidays, The Wiz is an offshoot of The Wizard of Oz and stars an all-Black cast. And though its technical designation is “fantasy film,” the charm and allure of Sidney Lumet’s 1978 classic has solidified it as a celebrated holiday event for families across the country. A cast including the legendary Diana Ross, Lena Horne, and Mabel King will do that.
Starring Monty Woolley and Bette Davis, The Man Who Came to Dinner is a screwball comedy that hopped from Broadway to the big screen. As Sheridan Whiteside, an acerbic Scrooge who intrudes on an Ohio family for Christmas, Woolley is utter humbug perfection. Plus, the film has penguins, plotting, and piety aplenty. Just what the holiday ordered.
There's nothing quite like a love triangle for the holidays! In this 1954 classic, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire serenade their various love interests and the film's soundtrack is one that's not to be missed. The holiday tune "White Christmas" was composed specifically for the film and ended up later inspiring a film of its own (also starring Crosby).
Fans of Stanley Kubrick’s off-brand holiday odyssey, Eyes Wide Shut, will appreciate Éric Rohmer’s French philosophical tale. ’Twas the night before Christmas and devout Catholic Jean-Louis found himself stranded with a sensuous divorcée named Maud—his faith, morals, and rigid standards meeting their greatest match.
If you seek out historical dramas—like Lawrence of Arabia, The Passion of the Christ, Titanic—then consider The Lion in Winter one of the most epic epics you’ve probably never seen. Set over Christmastime in the year 1183, a sort of game of thrones unfolds as a queen (Katharine Hepburn) plots with her sons (one of whom is Anthony Hopkins in his screen debut) to force her husband (Peter O’Toole) to choose an heir.
This article originally appeared on Harper's BAZAAR US.