By Dan Covell
The end of every calendar year leads many to list-making: The top films of the year, the top books, the top eateries, etc. A group of friends and I, self-dubbed the “Fantastic Four,” met at Jimmy’s, a terrific cigar bar/restaurant in New Jersey and got a jump on this exercise to discuss and debate our Top 100 all-time favorite songs. Later we reconvened at the equally terrific Carnegie Club in Manhattan to break down our Top 50 all-time albums. We are slated to meet again after the New Year, but I think the group is listed-out. I had suggested, for fun and for erudition, that we look at each of the other’s top five albums and provide a critique of each. Member Steve promptly dismissed the idea as “homework” (I’m a college professor so I’m versed in assigning such things, but did bristle at the inference that homework was somehow inherently bad), and the rest agreed. Member Katherine, getting a crash course in the generally male tendency to objectify and to catalogue stuff (much like Nick Hornby’s protagonist in his music-centric novel “High Fidelity”) offered, “Can’t we just hang out?”
Once I suggested the group list all-time favorite holiday songs, but the F4 aren’t as into holiday music as I (Member Jim went so far as to say he disliked holiday music entirely), so unlike Jesus’s birth, that idea didn’t merit worldwide recognition. My all-time favorite holiday album is Ella Fitzgerald’s “Ella Wishes You a Swingin’ Christmas,” a collection of secular seasonal tunes recorded in 1960 with a studio orchestra arranged and conducted by Frank DeVol, who worked with multiple other luminaries including Tonny Bennett, Nat “King” Cole and Sarah Vaughan. If you know the film “Elf” (and I’m sure you do, since it’s likely playing on TNT and/or AMC right now; like the former British Empire, the sun never sets on “Elf,” at least from October to January), you’ll recognize her version of “Sleigh Ride.” Fitzgerald’s rendition is needle-dropped when we see Buddy the elf (Will Ferrell) sleeping with animatronic elves in the Gimbels department store display window, and then when Buddy walks to the Empire State Building to give a gift to that “special someone,” his dad Walter Hobbs (James Caan). The song also has one of the best trombone solos I’ve ever heard in a pop tune, Christmas or otherwise.
So, ‘tis the season and given the above stated propensity for list-making, this of course leads us to thinking about the greatest Christmas movies of all time, while taking time to define whether a movie is indeed a Christmas movie, and on what criteria such a decision would be based. I’d suggest that to qualify as a Christmas movie, a film has to have most if not all of the following elements: The story and events therein unfold on or around Christmas, Christmas songs and decorations are liberally displayed, Santa makes an appearance in some form (the more the merrier), characters are transformed by the Christmas spirit, and there is gift shopping and/or gift-giving.
Based on these criteria, “Elf” is arguably the quintessential Christmas movie, and as such we should call my ratings system the “Elf Scale,” and can use it to settle the debate on whether a movie is or isn’t a Christmas movie. A fair amount of ink (digital and otherwise) has been spilled on debating the Christmas film bona fides of “Die Hard,” the 1988 cop/disaster movie starring Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman. Some (like F4 member Steve) state that “Die Hard” isn’t a Christmas movie. On the Elf Scale of one to five candy canes (five being the highest, “Elf” gets five), I’d suggest “Die Hard” would rank near the middle, since there is limited shopping (other than when Sgt. Al Powell buys Twinkies at a convenience store), and perhaps if Hans Gruber had been taken alive rather than falling to his death on to Nakatomi Plaza he might have encountered a Christmas spirit transformation while in prison. But since “Die Hard” hits on the other factors, including a needle-drop of “Christman in Hollis” by Run-DMC over the closing credits, I’d say we give it three out of a possible five candy canes.
In this space a while back I discussed the Ivy Style merits of last year’s film release, “The Holdovers.” Since then, the movie earned quite a few merits during awards season, including Da’Vine Joy Randolph winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. You might recall that I was drawn to see “The Holdovers” after I learned some of it had been shot at my alma mater, the Northfield Mount Hermon School (NMH), along with several other schools around Massachusetts. “The Holdovers” scores fairly high on the Elf Scale (I’d give it four and half canes): It is set during the holiday season of 1970, there are Christmas decorations, including a terrific silver artificial Christmas tree at a holiday party, and there is a little shopping and gift-giving (Paul Giamatti’s character gives copies of Marcus Aurelius’s Mediations at a Christmas dinner, a gesture that is somewhat diluted when we learn that he has a box full of them stashed in a corner in his small campus apartment). I don’t recall seeing Santa, but there are holiday transformations aplenty (again, no spoilers).
Also, in this space I have discussed “The Holdovers,” along with “Love Story” and “The Paper Chase,” because of their extensive and loving imbuement with Ivy Style. Maybe now is the time to create a metric for Ivy Style films akin to the Elf Scale. Perhaps we should call it the Kingsfield-Barrett-Ford Index (or KBFI for short). Although we have designated “Love Story” and “The Paper Chase” as the definitive exemplars, we have done so with no set formula. Let me suggest here that to rate on the KBFI, a film must have the following characteristics: Multiple examples of Ivy Style casual, business and party dress – both for indoors and out, displayed on most if not all characters, as well as dress for Ivy Style sports (tennis, squash, rowing, sailing, riding), with the action taking place in and around Ivy Style settings and activities (colleges, prep school, private clubs, drinking, hunting prints). A high KBFI would rate five out of five L.L. Bean boots.
Although their Ivy Style pedigrees are flawless given their KBFI scores (five Bean boots each), neither “Love Story” nor “The Paper Chase” would garner any Elf Scale candy canes (ok, maybe one for “Love Story” for the Christmas tree selling scene, just to reinforce that even though he went to Harvard, Oliver Barrett IV is not above scrapping for bucks by hawking trees and loading them on cars – wearing his Harvard crimson and white stocking cap – all for a 25 cent tip.
So, given its’ Elf Scale rating of 4.5 candy canes, and its heavy doses of tweed and ties, is “The Holdovers” the greatest Ivy Style Christmas movie of all time? While an argument can be made, I think the example smack dab in the Venn diagram overlay of all things tweed and all things Kringle is “Trading Places,” the 1983 comedy twist on “My Fair Lady,” complete with financial shenanigans, a pseudo-scientific wager and frozen concentrated orange juice futures. The film features an all-star cast, including Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Denholm Eliot, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Al Franken, Tom Davis and Bo Diddley. William Loger is credited with supervising men’s wardrobe, as he had on other well-known films such as “Raging Bull,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “The King of Comedy” and “The Warriors.” I’m betting he rang up a pretty big bill at all the Philadelphia-area Brooks Brothers stores outfitting not only the stars but the dozens of extras who populated scenes at Duke & Duke and the Heritage Club (150 men alone in the scene where Winthorpe is accused of theft and banished from the club, sending him into his Duke Brothers-orchestrated tailspin).
It seems to be a well-accepted premise that “Trading Places” is indeed a Christmas movie, given its situation in time and place, multiple Santa sightings, holidays tunes and décor, shopping (where Ackroyd’s Louis Winthorpe III exchanges a Rochefoucauld wristwatch for $50 then purchases a handgun from a concerned pawnshop owner played by Diddley). The holiday transformations are more fluctuations between wealth and poverty, most of which are motivated by luck, nefariousness, greed, and revenge. Not exactly a Christmas miracle of faith, but a series of transformations, nonetheless. At least the bad guys get their just desserts, including one being sent to Africa on a freighter in a gorilla suit as the life partner of a real gorilla (spoiler alert).
But how Ivy Style is “Trading Places”? It’s more Kingsfield than OB IV or Ford, but that should in no way lessen its score on the KBFI. Let’s look at some key moments:
- 0:17: A shot of three eight-man crews rowing on the Schuylkill River – it’s the film’s very first scene.
- 4:20: A shot of Winthorpe’s (Ackroyd) double-doored walk-in closet. adorned with a hunting print in the back wall, with no fewer than two dozen darkly hued grey, navy and brown suits, along with a half dozen shimmering wingtips in black and cordovan. Coleman (Elliot) selects a grey herringbone three-piece suit, to go with Winthorpe’s dark red BB #1 rep tie (with navy stripes) and light blue shirt with white Bengal stripes and white pinpoint collar and French cuffs). Coleman is wearing his own three-piece dark gray flannel, with my favorite piece from the film, a dark grey BB#1 rep tie with crimson stripes. I’ve been looking for one to purchase for a while. Are you listening, Santa?
- 6:30: Our first look at Randolph (Bellamy) and Mortimer (Ameche) Duke, marching down the steps in their mansion, then off in their limo to head to the office, showing off the matching or nearly matching outfits worn throughout the film. Randolph is always in bowtie, Mortimer always in neck ties (in this scene, silk navy, grey and crimson regimental stripe, running left to right in the British style). Their shirts match as well, each wearing a white shirt with navy hairline stripes and straight point collars, very similar to an old Hathaway version. Later in the film we see the brothers in matching camel hair topcoats, Randolph’s single breasted, Mortimer’s double.
- 11:09: Winthorpe walks into the Heritage Club with his grey double-breasted Chesterfield coat, jousts with four back gammon-playing peers after an invitation to play squash. Each of the quartet dons a natural shoulder, grey flannel suit, some with stripes (one an especially nice shadow stripe. In the background two dozen similarly clad older gents smoke, read or doze amidst the leather chairs and couches.
The notion of class as defined by what one wears is made crystal clear in a scene at 54 minutes, right in front of Independence Hall, where Winthorpe, riding in one direction with his savior and soon to be girlfriend Ophelia (Curtis) spot Coleman and Valentine next to them in traffic heading the opposite direction. As Winthorpe rails about how Valentine has taken over his life, forcing him into clothes he was able to scrounge after being strip-searched in jail, the topping complaint was about Valentine’s Harvard emblematic tie. “He was wearing my Harvard tie,” Winthorpe bleats in his Locust Valley Lockjaw accent. “Can you believe it? My Harvard tie. Like, ‘Oh sure, HE went to Harvard.’”
Ivy Style looks persist throughout the film, and once Winthorpe and Valentine get their revenge (financed by Coleman and Ophelia), we see our heroes sipping champagne in a tropical paradise, with Winthorpe on the deck of a large two-masted schooner wearing Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, boat shoes, khakis, and a white v neck sweater with a red and navy argyle pattern over a red polo shirt. In the film’s final lines, Winthorpe calls to Valentine, lounging on a recliner on the beach alongside a comely lass. “Looking good, Billy Ray!” says Winthorpe, as he raises his flute in salute. “Feeling good, Louis!” responds Valentine. Isn’t that the essence of Ivy Style?
So if “Trading Places” is greatest Ivy Style Christmas movie of all time, any system seeking to measure other possible contenders would be measured on the what we can call the Winthorpe-Valentine Prosody. And as such the film would earn the system’s highest rating, five J. Press shaggy dog sweaters. I invite you all to test all these analysis models and see if other examples could claim these coveted titles. I asked the F4 about their Top Three Christmas movies and, lo and behold, got a quick response, albeit with none of the above films, but that’s what the algorithms are for. After all, there’s no bigger list maker than Santa. ‘Tis the season for it.
That was a fun read. Thank you, Dan.
This piece has me reminiscing. Each year back in the 80s-90s, my buddies and I would try to describe the most typical of all 70s style, star-studded, network-television Christmas Special. Sometimes there was liquor involved. Cheers!
First time poster, long time reader here. Loved this post. Another great Christmas film with Ivy influences is Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan.”
Agreed! I was thinking the same thing.
Bellamy and Ameche are driven from their estate in an older Rolls Royce Phantom which is arguably ivy. Dan Aykroyd is driven from his townhouse in an older Mercedes 600 which is definitely not ivy.
Great post. I would add Metropolitan – Whit Stillman to the top three Christmas films list.
Amazingly, I have somehow managed to avoid ever seeing Elf (hard to believe, I realize) and have not yet viewed Trading Places. I will do my best to rectify the latter during the next couple of weeks.
Kind Advent Regards,
H-U
The top and bottom of the list of great Christmas movies is Bad Santa. Its Ivy connections are, um, tenuous. Regardless, no other holiday film matters, except, well, Jamie Lee Curtis.
(Written near the end of the dangerous third Negroni)
I think we need a post about the Negroni. My favorite cocktail.
You’ll probably need to round up Matt Hranek for that. He literally wrote the book on Negronis.
I’ll add my voice to those advocating for Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan as a strong candidate in this category. (I look forward to watching Trading Places for the first time soon.)
This is actually quite commonplace in American pop culture from the 1970s onward. This site’s founder, Christian Chensvold, referenced this phenomenon through several articles on the site throughout the years. Part of why this happened is explained in the seimal essay: The Rise and Fall of the Ivy League Look, which can be found here: https://www.ivy-style.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-ivy-league-look.html
Once the counter culture reversed America’s values, everything that was associated with the establishment became bad, and everything that was rebellious became cool, i.e. “good”. Hence, it’s easy for filmmakers and writers to quickly establish a character as bad – or, at least, as dubious – by portraying them as “preppy.”
Apologies! I meant for this to be a reply to EMJ’s comment, below.
Solid point – although I wonder if you may have been intending to respond to EMJ, further down, in reference to his observation that those who dress Ivy in Trading Places are of bad character.
I would add that I wonder if the advent of this in film was a matter of playing against type, whereas it eventually just become type, and then stereotype.
Interestingly enough all the people who dress “IVY” in this film are of bad character.
This is actually quite commonplace in American pop culture from the 1970s onward. This site’s founder, Christian Chensvold, referenced this phenomenon through several articles on the site throughout the years. Part of why this happened is explained in the seimal essay: The Rise and Fall of the Ivy League Look, which can be found here: https://www.ivy-style.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-ivy-league-look.html
Once the counter culture reversed America’s values, everything that was associated with the establishment became bad, and everything that was rebellious became cool, i.e. “good”. Hence, it’s easy for filmmakers and writers to quickly establish a character as bad – or, at least, as dubious – by portraying them as “preppy.”
RWK, excellent point. I think you are on to something here. There is a culture vs. counterculture theme that we see in movies like Metropolitan (culture) and Trading Places (counterculture). The former seeks to identify redeemable qualities in the establishment; the latter seeks to satirize the establishment.
The late E. Digby Baltzell, the sociologist who popularized the acronym WASP, was godfather to Metropolitan director Whit Stillman. Fittingly Baltzell describes the culture vs. counterculture issue perfectly in his essay titled “Epilogue: To Be a Phoenix-Reflections on Two Noisy Ages of Prose.” In the article he contrasts the traditional Ivy Leaguer (which he exemplified) with the radical countercultural style of C. Wright Mills and Alvin Ward Gouldner:
“But it must be said that in my day at Columbia, when ambitious graduate students still looked to Brooks Brothers rather than the the local Army and Navy Store for their sartorial standards, Professor Mills was a prophet in life-styles, as well as in sociology, as he roared up to Fayerweather Hall on a motorcycle, clothed more often than not in the style now cultivated, as a badge of baptism, by the followers of Professor Gouldner. Gouldner, like Mills, is very much in the anti-institutional and egalitarian
tradition of the 17th-century sectarians.”
Characters in many of these films may be dressed in Ivy garb but it never seems natural; some detail is always off. Stillman’s are the only films that get it right.
Dan Aykroyd did some of his best work in Trading Places.
It’s interesting that folks of a certain age who actually hunt still call “Bean Boots” Maine Hunting Shoes.
Respectfully disagree. The effect of the Duke & Duke costume is satiric in a particularly 80s way; it’s purposely, grotesquely, contemptuously exaggerated Anglo-Ivy. See the skin-tight double-breasted blazer, with its Harvard crest, that Billy Ray wears after he takes Louis’s job. Landis is sending a not so subtle message that the only difference between Billy Ray’s grifting and the Duke brothers’ grift is that theirs is all dressed up and well credentialed (and therefore wildly profitable) and Billy Ray’s, at least until he joins the firm, isn’t. If anything, ‘Trading Places’ is an anti-Ivy Christmas movie. Contrast to ‘Metropolitan.’ Stillman isn’t blind to the many flaws of the UHB, but he isn’t satirizing the members of the Sally Fowler Rat Pack by dressing them as he does.
Astute and insightful. Well done, G.E.C. Spot on.
You’re too kind, S.E. I enjoy reading your comments. Keep ’em coming. Merry Christmas!
I would like to suggest Igby Goes Down for inclusion It has been about 20 years since I saw it, but as I recall it was pretty on target about Ivy/Prep. I also agree with those who mentioned Metropolitan. It’s my nominee for the Ivy Flick Hall of Fame. Lots of good suggestions and comments.
Excellent recommendation, Charlottesville. Thank you!
But man, Igby Goes Down is depressing! A difficult watch in my opinion.
A connection with Metropolitan that you may be aware of is that Igby was directed by Burr Steers, who plays the snobbish bouncer in Metropolitan. (Steers had the distinction of getting kicked out not only of Hotchkiss but later out of a military academy as well.)
^ Sorry, I meant the bouncer in Last Days of Disco.
It’s not an accident or an outlier that Trading Places uses “preppy” signifiers as shorthand for villainy. Look up the Slob vs Snobs trope and you’ll see how common this has been for decades now. America likes an underdog and someone who has made their own way in life, not people who are coasting on the achievements of their parents.
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If you have to ask whether or not it’s a Christmas movie, it’s probably not.