Although my love of the festive season has receded over the last few years, I have maintained my love of Christmas films. Of course it is well known that I collect different versions of A Christmas Carol (as well as being part of that canon with my own audio book version) but I enjoy any well made Christmas film. One of the best, if not the best of the bunch is a little known American made for television film from 1979 called The Man In The Santa Claus Suit. I have told a lot of people about this film yet nobody has heard of it despite the casting of Fred Astaire in the lead role and (pub quiz question of the future) the fact that the Blues Brothers band makes a brief appearance in a fashion show scene.

It was made by NBC and was shown on BBC2 in either 1979 or 1980, I may be wrong on both counts. My parents taped it off the television when it was shown and this became a staple of our Christmas. The VHS tape from that broadcast (along with a hooky DVD from EBay) are in storage and I probably haven’t seen the film for about ten years, so understandably I can’t remember it in too much detail. To be honest, the shine came off it when my parents split up as this film was so routed in our household to the point where we started to believe that nobody outside our family had heard of it, including the people in it. Very little information exists on the Internet aside from a couple of short entries on Wikipedia and the IMDB, and to my knowledge it hasn’t been shown on television since my parents had the foresight to tape it. There was a limited release on VHS as far as I can make out but it has never been released on DVD so sadly a great piece of work will remain a mystery for many people.

With this in mind, you can imagine how happy I was when I tried to find a copy of the script (with a view to attempting to adapt it for a radio play) and found this instead. I know that watching films on a computer screen isn’t quite as nice as old fashioned television but if it means being able to watch one of my all time favourite Christmas films again then it is better than nothing.

The Man In The Santa Claus Suit follows that well worn Christmas film formula of taking people with troubled lives and weaving a touch of magic in order to help those in need to see what is really important. Fred Astaire (in one of his final roles) plays an everyman who always appears at exactly the right moment to subtly push people in the right direction. Whoever wrote this story must have spent months surrounded by notes and markers because the layers in the script are a work of genius. Without giving the end away, everything works out well in the end and I guarantee you that there will be tears.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

My Sherwood Radio archive is here, why not listen and donate?

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.