Stuart Elliott: In Classic Movies It's Always Christmas in Adland

By Stuart Elliott Report Archives
Cover image for  article: Stuart Elliott: In Classic Movies It's Always Christmas in Adland

At this time of the year, there's always a lengthy list of brands seeking to climb aboard Santa's sleigh and associate themselves with Christmas in the minds -- and wallets -- of consumers.

Among them are perennials such as Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Folgers, Lexus, Miller, Philips Norelco and Wells Fargo, along with newcomers including Microsoft.

As someone who is as much of a film buff as a follower of marketing, and who delights in tracking the interplay between advertising and popular culture, I'm struck by how so many brands, real and make-believe, are part of the popular Christmas movies we keep watching again and again. What follows is a look at how Madison Avenue has woven itself into those holiday classics.

"A Christmas Story" (1983): The plot is centered on young Ralphie Parker's obsessive quest to make sure his parents get him an "official Red Ryder" air rifle for Christmas. There are cameo appearances by Higbee's department store, Lifebuoy soap and, memorably, a Secret Society decoder pin from the "Little Orphan Annie" radio serial, sponsored by Ovaltine, that teaches Ralphie a lesson about branded content: a message pitched as crucially important may be just "a crummy commercial."

 

 

"Christmas in Connecticut" (1945): Barbara Stanwyck plays a writer who pretends to be a doyenne of domesticity, fooling not only the readers of her monthly column in Smart Housekeeping magazine, but also her employer, the powerful publisher Alexander Yardley, played by Sydney Greenstreet. Yardley and his firm, Yardley Publications, seem modeled on Conde Nast (the man) and Conde Nast (the company); in one scene Yardley refers to another of his magazines, Home & Garden, clearly a riff on the Conde Nast publication House & Garden.

"Elf" (2003): The star of this movie, which has inspired a Broadway musical and an animated TV special, is Buddy the elf (Will Ferrell); Buddy's name is inspired by a make-believe brand of diapers, Little Buddy. Buddy leaves the North Pole for New York City and winds up at Santa Land in Gimbels department store. Gimbels was a real-life retailer that had gone out of business in 1987, unable to compete with rivals including Macy's. In an ironic twist, the scenes set in Gimbels actually were filmed in Macy's, then digitally altered to resurrect the Gimbels brand. There's also a comic cameo by a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, which Buddy chugs, producing a prodigious burp.

 

 

 

"Holiday Affair" (1949): The focus of the plot of this romantic comedy is the work of a comparison shopper (Janet Leigh) at Christmastime. She's employed by an imaginary New York department store, Fisher & Lewis, and tangles with a clerk (Robert Mitchum) at another such retailer, Crowley's. Interestingly, Crowley Milner & Company, an actual department store chain in the Detroit area that went under in 1999, was known as Crowley's. The dialogue is interspersed with references to actual Gotham department stores of the era, including Bloomingdale's, Gimbels, Macy's, Saks and Wanamaker's.

"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946): In the flashbacks to George Bailey's life as a boy, Gower Drugs is decorated with promotional items for Coca-Cola, including signs, a tray and a Tiffany lamp, and George shows young Mary his copy of National Geographic magazine. There's a display of packs of cigarette brands like Camel and Lucky Strike, and young George is prompted to seek his father's advice by an ad for Sweet Caporal cigarettes bearing the slogan, "Ask Dad, he knows." There are signs for Schlitz beer ("in bottles") at both Martini's and Nick's bars. And grown-up George's youngest daughter, Zuzu, whom he fondly calls "my little ginger snap," is named after Zu Zu ginger snaps, sold by the National Biscuit Company.

"Miracle on 34th Street" (1947): The quintessential mash-up of Hollywood and Madison Avenue is almost an infomercial for Macy's. Many scenes of this beloved movie were filmed on location at the flagship Herald Square store and during a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade; the heroine is a Macy's executive played by Maureen O'Hara. A crucial plot point involves the long-time rivalry between Macy's and Gimbels, which became part of the vernacular in the form of a phrase, "Does Macy's tells Gimbels?" meaning that competitors don't share secrets. The retailers' confrontations are transformed into a seasonal spirit of collaboration by Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn), who believes he's really Santa Claus. "Imagine a big outfit like Macy's putting the spirit of Christmas ahead of the commercial," says a shopper (Thelma Ritter), startled by the new attitude. "I never done much shopping here before, but I'll tell ya one thing. From now on I'm going to be a regular Macy's customer." There are also shout-outs to other actual New York department stores of the era, among them Hearns, McCreery's and Stern's.

When Macy's decided against coopering with the production of a 1994 remake, also titled "Miracle on 34th Street," Macy's was replaced by a fictitious chain named C.F. Cole, or Cole's -- no relation to the real-life discount department store chain Kohl's.

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