150 Word Review: 'It Happened on 5th Avenue' (1947)
Squatter's rights
It’s A Wonderful Life isn’t the only Christmas movie about folks trying to eke out a living. Director Roy Del Ruth’s It Happened on 5th Avenue is a comedy about the housing crisis in New York City circa 1947. It’s one of my favorite Christmas movies because it asks us to have compassion, rich or poor.
The star is vaudevillian Victor Moore, who plays gentleman hobo Aloysius T. McKeever, who sneaks into the same boarded-up mansion on Fifth Avenue every winter once its industrialist owner flies south. This time, McKeever adopts a motley crew of hard-luck cases, including Jim Bullock’s quick-witted veteran evicted to make way for a new skyscraper; two of his pals and their families, who are living out of their cars; and another guest, played by Gale Storm, the daughter of the mansion’s owner, a finishing-school runaway who pretends she’s a street urchin looking for a break.
Never heard of it, and I'll check it out!