Miracle On 34th Street (1947) Gave Us Christmas in June Because Studios Are Dumb

Hello, reader. Jeremy here. For today’s guest post, my editor John is back for the…fifth time? Sixth time? I don’t remember anymore, and I’m too lazy to look it up. Anyway, John reached out to me months ago to ask me if I realized that Miracle On 34th Street was a summer movie, to which I replied “What the hell are you talking about?” Needless to say, he did his research, and he got to the bottom of this bizarre marketing misdirect. And now you’ll have a reason to watch a Christmas movie for Memorial Day Weekend. Take it away, John!

We’re a few weeks into the Writers Guild of America strike.* And apparently all the heads of major studios are too busy rebranding themselves as something stupid, shoving content back into their vaults, getting booed at college graduations, and dunking on Ron DeSantis to actually come to the negotiating table.

The last time this happened, we wound up with a scourge of new reality TV shows that never really left us. This time, executives seem hung up on the possibility of letting artificial intelligence write their movies. 

The future sure sounds great! But guess what, friends. I think the problem is that film executives may have just always been idiots.

Exhibit A: Miracle on 34th Street, a film that has become a beloved holiday classic over the past 75 years. It’s a winsome tale about a daughter and her workaholic mother having their lives transformed by Santa Claus and a handsome bachelor. It’s one of those stories like Polar Express or Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus that are sappy enough to make grown men briefly believe that Santa may be real.**

You may be asking yourself “Why am I reading about a Christmas movie when it’s Memorial Day Weekend?” The answer is easy but profoundly dumb: Because 20th Century Fox released this movie on June 4th.***

Yes, this movie that is very explicitly about Christmas and Santa Claus came out 204 days before Christmas. As the story goes, Fox executive Darryl Zanuck simply didn’t think audiences would go to a movie during the winter. So what did Fox do instead? They decided to cover up the fact that Miracle On 34th Street is a Christmas movie.

Take a look at the original poster above. It looks like a screwball romance starring Maureen O’Hara and John Payne. Edmund Gwenn would go on to win an Oscar for his performance as Kris Kringle in this movie, but to promote it according to their agenda, they buried his name below the title and made him the size of an Elf on the Shelf on the poster. And he’s just wearing a regular old suit. He looks like he’s playing Natalie Wood’s grandfather or something.

And the trailer for the film is absolutely insane. It doesn’t include any clips from the movie. Instead it’s just a bunch of execs sitting around watching a reel of the film, laughing to themselves and saying things like “Wow! This might be the best movie we’ve ever made! We’ve got to get people to see it!” Sometimes mystery is the best marketing.

Look, I have a healthy level of respect for advertising stunts that trick audiences into going to see movies. But this wasn’t Psycho. Kris Kringle being Santa Claus isn’t a twist. It’s the plot of the movie!

This cover-up happened for one reason and one reason only: Fox executives were too stupid to think that people would see a Christmas movie at Christmas time. Hell, that same year, Paramount Pictures released It’s a Wonderful Life on January 7th! You almost can’t get any further away from Christmas than that.**** It’s worth noting that January is also winter. Make it make sense.

But it doesn’t stop there. White Christmas came out in October, 1954.***** Two months early, but at least they were getting closer. By the time you get to 1990, Fox had finally wised up, releasing Home Alone in November. And the greatest Christmas film of all, The Muppet Christmas Carol, was released in December.

So if you ever find yourself thinking “Hey, maybe these suits have a point!” when studios are churning out one bad idea after another, just remember that they wanted you to watch a secret Santa Claus film when it was 87 degrees outside. Merry Christmas!

*Except for Jeremy because he’s apparently actively working on his next screenplay. Scab!

**Reader, the grown man I am talking about is me.

***There is actually some ambiguity here. This is the date that IMDb cites as the day of the New York premiere, but Google claims the movie came out May 2, 1947. So, I don’t know, maybe it was released in Los Angeles in May and New York in June? Like I said, film executives are stupid, and I couldn’t find a satisfying answer. If you want answers, email Leonard Maltin or something.

****Before you come at me with any December 26th nonsense, I’ll remind you that there are traditionally 12 days of Christmas, and the final day falls on January 5th.

*****I hate to bring up this tired debate, but according to studio logic, the best argument that Die Hard is in fact a Christmas movie is that it was released in July. Since apparently summer is the Christmas movie season.

Miracle On 34th Street is now streaming on Disney+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.