The Lemon Drop Kid

Every winter break, I try to offer an alternative Christmas movie for people who want to break the monopoly of the holiday trifecta of It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and Elf. I love each of those films, and there’s nothing wrong with them other than their profound ubiquity at this time of year. A film that is touching or hilarious the first time becomes less so when you’re in hour 14 of a 24 hour, round-the-clock marathon of it being played over and over again. 

 So if you’re looking for a fun holiday movie for the days leading up to Christmas, my recommendation this year is 1951’s The Lemon Drop Kid starring Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. It’s based on a short story of the same name by Daymon Runyon, the newspaperman and writer who wrote short, funny sentimental stories about gamblers, dance hall girls, Irish cops, gangsters, and losers. His stories were the basis for the great Broadway musical, Guys and Dolls, and you can see a lot of the same material in The Lemon Drop Kid.

The Kid, as played by Hope, is a gambler and hustler who makes his dough at a Florida track, touting horses and bilking rubes. Everything’s hunky dory until he accidentally convinces a beautiful dame to switch her bet. The new horse finishes in last place and the original horse wins, meaning the woman and her gangster boyfriend, Moose Moran, lose out on ten grand. Moran tells the Kid to pay him back by Christmas or else.

He flees to New York, his hometown, and decides to take advantage of the season by posing as a street corner Santa in hopes of collecting enough cash to keep his head from ending up in his stocking by New Year’s. He gets busted pretty quick and realizes that if he’s a Santa collecting for a specific charity, he can get away with it. So The Lemon Drop Kid quickly dreams up the Nelly Thursday Home for Old Dolls, a retirement home for older women. Of course, he has no intention of handing over the dough, but none of the gangsters, gamblers, and low-lifes who help him know that. Throughout all this, the Kid strings along his long-suffering, on-again, off-again girlfriend, Brainey Baxter played by Marilyn Maxwell. She’s definitely the brains of the two, but she has a soft spot for her slick-talking, constantly conniving man.

The film is feather light. Hope, as the Kid, is breezy and fun, playing every threat on his life and run-in with the law like a stern talking to from his mother. His palpable chemistry with Maxwell should come as no surprise as the two of them had an ongoing, real-life affair that was such an open secret, most of Hollywood simply referred to Maxwell as the other Mrs. Bob Hope.

The gallery of wonderfully named Runyon characters like Oxford Charlie, Straight Flush Tony, and Sam the Surgeon fill out the cast and fill every interaction on screen with funny asides and cartoony gangster talk. It’s the sight gags and physical comedy that are the highlights of the film – Bob Hope standing over a heat register after coming in from the cold and having his white suit balllon up, the giant wad of knitting he pulls from his bag when he’s posing as an old woman, a cow with a Christmas wreath around its neck wandering out of a room that just exploded. Sixty six years old and it still made me laugh.

The other notable thing about The Lemon Drop Kid is that it featured the premiere of the classic holiday song, “Silver Bells.” Hope and Maxwell sing a lovely version, and it’s fun to see that seemingly ageless songs like that actually came from somewhere.  

The Lemon Drop Kid is lighthearted and silly and not a bad way to spend a free winter afternoon or evening with your family. Enjoy it and have a very happy holiday and Merry Christmas.