A Not-Made-for-Christmas Christmas Classic
If you were in a theater before June in 1947 and saw the trailer for the upcoming 20th Century-Fox film Miracle on 34th Street, starring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood, you would not have realized it was a movie about Christmas at all.
In the trailer, the movie was described as “Hilarious! Romantic! Exciting!” but the stars of the film were not featured. Rex Harrison, then filming , and Anne Baxter, who had recently won an Oscar for her performance in , were in the trailer; so were Peggy Ann. The only scenes from the movie that were shown in the trailer were the opening credits and a clip of O’Hara and Payne with the words “The End” plastered over their final embrace/kiss. (Spoiler alert: happy ending!) There was certainly no image of Edmund Gwenn in a Santa suit.
