Aloysius T. McKeever, a hobo, makes his home in a seasonally boarded-up Fifth Avenue mansion, each time its owner—Michael J. O'Connor, the world's second richest man—winters at his Virginia estate. McKeever winds up taking in ex-G.I. Jim Bullock, who has been evicted from an apartment building O'Connor is tearing down for a new skyscraper, and later 18-year-old Trudy "Smith", who is actually O'Connor's runaway daughter. Jim and Trudy fall for each other. Due to a housing crisis, Jim eventually invites war buddies Whitey, Hank and their families to share the vast mansion when they are unable to find homes of their own.
When Trudy encounters her father, she tells him she is in love with Jim. She has not revealed her real identity to Jim because she wants to win his love without her wealth. Trudy persuades her father to pretend to be a homeless man named "Mike" and have him move into the house. McKeever reluctantly takes him in, but treats him like a servant. When Mike becomes fed up and wants the squatters vacated, Trudy calls her mother Mary in Palm Beach (who divorced O'Connor several years earlier) for help. Mary comes to New York and pretends to be another homeless person to join the squatters. Sensing Mary and Mike have feelings for each other, McKeever nudges them together. Eventually, Mike reconciles with Mary and re-proposes marriage. She accepts.
Earlier, McKeever had given Jim, Whitey, and Hank an idea to convert unused post-war Army barracks into much-needed housing, and persuaded Jim and the others to bid for an Army camp on the outskirts of New York City. Jim and his friends raise money from hundreds of other ex-G.I.'s in the same predicament. O'Connor also wants the property to build a transportation hub, and a bidding war ensues before O'Connor finds out who his competitors are. Attempting to get rid of his daughter's suitor, who is still unaware of Trudy's real identity, O'Connor arranges to have the construction company that Jim approaches about his conversion plan reject it. Instead, they offer Jim a well-paying job in Bolivia, on the condition that he be single. Jim rejects the offer, proud that he has fought for America and has no intention of leaving it.
Celebrating Christmas Eve together, the residents are caught by the two patrolmen who check the mansion every night at 10 p.m. McKeever convinces them to let the families stay until after the New Year. Soon, Jim sadly reveals that the camp has been sold to O'Connor, and later tells Trudy that he is considering taking the job offer in Bolivia for a year or so, in order to earn enough money to marry her. Trudy breaks up with him. When Mary and Trudy find out that Mike manipulated the situation, Mary tells him she and Trudy will leave for Florida in the morning.
Ashamed, "Mike" tells Jim that he has arranged a meeting with "O'Connor" at O'Connors office in an hour. Jim is dubious but gladly accepts. At the meeting, Jim, Whitey and Hank find Mike sitting at O'Connor's desk; they believe Mike is delusional, and stuff him into a closet before "O'Connor" arrives. Mike is rescued by his assistant, who reveals Mike's true identity to the three friends. Mike then transfers ownership of the camp to them, provided that they do not reveal his identity to McKeever.
That night, everyone shares a New Year's Eve dinner before restoring the house just as they found it. Mike and Mary reconcile again, Trudy and Jim reconcile as well, and the four bid farewell to McKeever and his pet dog as he leaves to squat at O'Connor's estate in Virginia, still unaware of the truth. Mike tells Mary to remind him to nail up the board in the back fence through which McKeever gets onto his property, saying that McKeever will come in through the front door next winter.
Abe Reynolds as Finkelhoff the Tailor (uncredited)
Production
Monogram Pictures was trying to shed its reputation for low-budget films by setting up a new division, Allied Artists Productions (renamed Allied Artists Pictures Corporation in 1953, replacing Monogram entirely). It Happened on 5th Avenue was Allied Artists' first production. At a time when the average Hollywood picture cost about $800,000 (and the average Monogram picture cost about $90,000), the Christmas-themed comedy cost more than $1,200,000.[1] It was rewarded with an estimated $1.8 million box office return.[3]
The story was originally optioned by Liberty Films in 1945 for director Frank Capra (who decided to direct It's a Wonderful Life instead);[4] later that year, producer-director Roy Del Ruth acquired the story.[5]
The casting of Ann Harding and Victor Moore was announced in June 1946,[6] Don DeFore and Gale Storm in July, and filming proceeded from August 5 to mid-October 1946.[7][8] The production schedule and Christmastime climax of the story suggest the studio planned a Christmas release, but for an unknown reason, the movie's release was delayed until Easter 1947.
Songs
Four songs were featured in the movie, but Gale Storm was not allowed to sing them. She rehearsed them before filming started, but was told by director Roy Del Ruth that she would be mouthing to someone else's vocals. Storm, who had been the studio's musical star for years, recalled in her 1981 memoir: "I couldn't believe it. I thought that maybe the director didn't know I'd been singing and dancing in films, and that if I spoke to him he'd let me do my own numbers. Well, I asked him, and he said no. I asked him to look at some of my musicals, and he said no. I asked him if I could sing for him, and he said no. His theory was that if you were a dancer, you didn't sing; if you were a singer, you didn't dance; and if you were an actor, you didn't sing or dance. It was humiliating."[9]
The Washington Post thought the celebrity endorsements (by Frank Capra, Orson Welles, Al Jolson, Constance Bennett and others)[11] used in the movie's advertising to be "high-flown" and "Hollywoodesque"; instead, the movie was a "mild, pleasant little film which probably will find many admirers."[12]
Time wrote: "Most plausible explanations for the picture's success are: 1) the presence of Victor Moore, past master of creaky charm and pathos; 2) a show as generally old-fashioned, in a harmless way, as a 1910 mail-order play for amateurs; 3) the fact that now, as in 1910, a producer cannot go wrong with a mass audience if he serves up a whiff of comedy and a whirlwind of hokum."[13]
It Happened on 5th Avenue was part of a package of 49 Monogram and Allied Artists features from the late 1940s and early 1950s that were licensed for television broadcast in 1954.[18]
Around 1990, the film essentially disappeared from TV and retail availability. Despite an Academy Award nomination, a cult following through a dedicated fan website, and many requests to Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics to show the movie, it did not appear on American television for nearly 20 years. It aired on Turner Classic Movies in 2009 and beginning in 2014, it is shown frequently during the Christmas and holiday season. Hallmark Movie Channel also carried the movie in 2014.
Home media
On November 11, 2008, Warner Home Video released the film on DVD. In 2014, the film was made available for streaming and download in the digital format. On December 22, 2020, it was released on Blu-Ray by Warner Archive Collection.
The Bells of St. Mary's is a 1945 American musical comedy-drama film, produced and directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. Written by Dudley Nichols and based on a story by McCarey, the film is about a priest and a nun who, despite their good-natured rivalry, try to save their school from being shut down. The character Father O'Malley had been previously portrayed by Crosby in the 1944 film Going My Way, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film was produced by Leo McCarey's production company, Rainbow Productions.
Josephine Owaissa Cottle, known professionally as Gale Storm, was an American actress and singer. After a film career from 1940 to 1952, she starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show. Six of her songs were top ten hits. Storm's greatest recording success was a cover version of "I Hear You Knockin'," which hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1955.
Charles Sherman Ruggles was an American comic character actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films, often in mild-mannered and comic roles. He was also the elder brother of director, producer, and silent film actor Wesley Ruggles (1889–1972).
Monogram Pictures Corporation was an American film studio that produced mostly low-budget films between 1931 and 1953, when the firm completed a transition to the name Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. Monogram was among the smaller studios in the golden age of Hollywood, generally referred to collectively as Poverty Row. Lacking the financial resources to deliver the lavish sets, production values, and star power of the larger studios, Monogram sought to attract its audiences with the promise of action and adventure.
Edward Santree Brophy was an American character actor and comedian, as well as an assistant director and second unit director during the 1920s. Small of build, balding, and raucous-voiced, he frequently portrayed dumb cops and gangsters, both serious and comic.
Donald John DeFore was an American actor. He is best known for his roles in the sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet from 1952 to 1957 and the sitcom Hazel from 1961 to 1965, the former of which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Heinz Roemheld was an American composer.
Swing Parade of 1946 is a 1946 musical comedy film directed by Phil Karlson and released by Monogram Pictures. The film features Gale Storm, Phil Regan, The Three Stooges, Edward Brophy, and musical numbers by Connee Boswell and the Louis Jordan and Will Osborne orchestras, including "Stormy Weather" and "Caldonia".
Ramrod is a 1947 American Western film directed by Andre de Toth and starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Preston Foster and Don DeFore. This cowboy drama from Hungarian director de Toth was the first of several films based on the stories of Western author Luke Short. De Toth's first Western is often compared to films noir released around the same time. Leading lady Veronica Lake was then married to director de Toth. The supporting cast features Donald Crisp, Charles Ruggles, Lloyd Bridges and Ray Teal.
Victor Fred Moore was an American actor of stage and screen, a major Broadway star from the late 1920s through the 1930s. He was also a writer and director, but is best remembered today as a comedian, playing timid, mild-mannered roles. Today's audiences know him as the star of a Christmas-themed movie that has become a perennial: It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947). Moore plays a vagrant who occupies a millionaire's mansion—without the millionaire's knowledge—while the owner is vacationing.
Frank Jenks was an American actor and vaudevillian.
Ben Welden was an American character actor who played a wide variety of Damon Runyon-type gangsters in various movies and television shows.
Francis Charles Moran was an American boxer and film actor who fought twice for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, and appeared in over 135 movies in a 25-year film career.
Wheeler Oakman was an American film actor.
Joe Sawyer was a Canadian film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1927 and 1962, and was sometimes billed under his birth name.
Robert O'Connor, also known professionally as Robert Emmett O'Connor and Robert E. O'Connor was an Irish-American actor. He had a lengthy career as a stage actor on Broadway and in vaudeville from 1905-1931; using the stage name Robert O'Connor in both musicals and plays. After transitioning to film, he also used the names Robert Emmett O'Connor or Robert E. O'Connor for his screen credits. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1919 and 1950; specializing in portraying policemen. He is probably best remembered as the warmhearted bootlegger Paddy Ryan in The Public Enemy (1931) and as police Sergeant Henderson pursuing the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935). He also appeared as Jonesy in Billy Wilder's 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. He also made an appearance at the very beginning and very end of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon short Who Killed Who? (1943).
All in a Night's Work is a 1961 American Technicolor romantic screwball comedy film directed by Joseph Anthony and starring Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine.
The KCET Studios, located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California is the longest continuously-producing studio in Hollywood. Since its establishment in 1912, the studios located at the site have been the home of motion picture producers, including Lubin, Essanay, Willis and Inglis, J.D. Hampton, Charles Ray, Ralph Like, Monogram Pictures, Allied Artists, and ColorVision. Since 1970, it has been the home of public television station KCET, but in April 2011, KCET announced that it had sold the facility to the Church of Scientology.
Silver River is a 1948 American western film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan and Thomas Mitchell. The film is based on a Stephen Longstreet story that was turned into a novel. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros.
Forever Yours is a 1945 American drama film directed by William Nigh and starring Gale Storm, C. Aubrey Smith and Johnny Mack Brown. It was made by Monogram Pictures. Although the studio concentrated on low-budget films, this was one of the company's more prestigious releases of the year.
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