It Happened on Fifth Avenue *** (1947, Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charles Ruggles, Victor Moore, Gale Storm) – Classic Movie Review 13,932

Squatters Victor Moore and Don DeFore take over millionaire Charles Ruggles’s vacant New York City mansion during the Christmas holidays, in the 1947 American romantic comedy film It Happened on Fifth Avenue.

Producer/ director Roy Del Ruth’s 1947 Allied Artists Productions black and white Christmas-themed romantic comedy film It Happened on Fifth Avenue is written by Everett Freeman, and stars Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charles Ruggles, Victor Moore, and Gale Storm.

Squatters Victor Moore, Don DeFore and others take over millionaire Charles Ruggles’s New York home, and the group includes the man himself and his runaway daughter Ann Harding in disguise.

Victor Moore plays vagrant Aloysius T McKeever, who takes over the Fifth Avenue mansion of the world’s second richest man Mike O’Connor (Charles Ruggles) when he is away at his Virginia estate. McKeever allows ex-GI Jim Bullock (Don DeFore) and 18-year-old runaway Trudy (Ann Harding) to live in the vast mansion. Jim and Trudy fall in love. There is a postwar housing crisis, so Jim invites his wartime buddies Whitey Temple (Alan Hale Jr) and Hank (Edward Ryan Jr) with their families to share the mansion till they find their own homes.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue is an odd but interesting social comedy with songs, which amuses and diverts. Charles Ruggles is a guaranteed showstopper, Victor Moore is a charmer, and the rest of the fine cast of character actors entertain too.

The title recalls Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, and the film recalls themes from his movies, and, while it lacks Frank Capra’s charm and incisiveness, it still entertains. Actually, it nearly was a Capra movie. Liberty Films optioned the story in 1945 for Capra, but he passed and instead directed It’s a Wonderful Life. Roy Del Ruth acquired the story later in 1945.

It was shot from August 5 1946 to mid-October 1946 and bizarrely released at Easter 1947 (April 19, 1947) despite the film’s Christmas theme. It later had a lavish Hollywood premiere on May 16, 1947 at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures had just started a new, more upmarket division called Allied Artists Productions and this was its first film. It cost a riskily high amount of more than $1,200,000 when the average Hollywood film cost about $800,000, though it took $1.8 million at the box office, so it may still have been profitable.

Cast: Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charles Ruggles, Victor Moore, Gale Storm, Grant Mitchell, Edward Brophy, Cathy Carter, Edward Ryan Jr, Dorothea Kent, Arthur Hohl, Alan Hale Jr, Chester Clute.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue is directed by Roy Del Ruth, runs 116 minutes, is made by Roy Del Ruth Productions, is released by Allied Artists, is written by Everett Freeman, Frederick Stephani (story) and Herbert Clyde Lewis (story) and Vick Knight (additional dialogue), is shot in black and white by Henry Sharp, is produced by Roy Del Ruth, and is scored by Edward Ward.

Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani were nominated for the Best Story Oscar but lost to Valentine Davies for another Christmas-themed film, Miracle on 34th Street.

Monogram Pictures’ musical star Gale Storm rehearsed the film’s four songs before production, but she was told by Roy Del Ruth that her singing would be dubbed by another singer. She recalled: ‘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.  It was humiliating.’

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,932

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com