BEYOND TOMORROW (1940)

As the song "Silver Bells" says (and a brief opening montage makes clear) it's Christmastime in the city and three wealthy older men, partners in an engineering firm who live together in a big house, are waiting for their invited guests for Christmas Eve dinner. The household consists of Harry Carey (cantankerous and cynical), C. Aubrey Smith (pleasant but still haunted by the death of his young son in the war) and Charles Winninger (always jolly and optimistic), and their maid (Maria Ouspenskaya), a former Russian countess. When their guests have to cancel, they become gloomy until Winninger suggests a way to share their dinner: they each toss a wallet with $10 and a business card out on the sidewalk and wait to see if any honest people turn up to return the money. Despite Carey's insistence that no one will show up, two people do: Richard Carlson, a Texas rodeo rider stranded in New York City and Jean Parker, a young woman who works as a children's health clinic. They all hit off that evening and soon the three men are spending time socializing with Carlson and Parker, as the two become romantically involved. Sadly, a plane crash takes the lives of the three older men who, in their will, leave the house and some money to Carlson. When Carlson is interviewed on the radio, he gets a shot at singing on the air and becomes a success, but his relationship with Parker is strained when radio star Helen Vinson puts the moves on him. However, the three dead men return to earth as ghosts (only Ouspenskaya can sense their presence) and take it upon themselves to try and bring Carlson and Parker back together before they get called back to the hereafter.

The first half-hour or so of this movie is set on Christmas Eve and has a strong holiday atmosphere, but by the time the fantasy element sets in, Christmas has been long forgotten. But television's appetite for movies that can be run every year, and even better, movies which have fallen into the public domain and can be run free of charge, has turned this into a minor Christmas "classic." (A colorized version has been released under the title Beyond Christmas.) The prints I have seen of this are dark and murky, and give it a film noir look. It's got a B-movie feel to it that is accentuated by the split in the acting. Winninger, Smith and Ouspenskaya are very good; Carlson are Vinson are OK; Carey and Parker are a little weak. The ghost "rules" are not well explained. The three seem to have been sent back to Earth in a kind of purgatory state, perhaps specifically to help Carlson and Parker, though that is never made plain. They are called back to the afterworld one by one: Carey by thunder and lightning, perhaps being sent to Hell; Smith by his dead soldier son; Winninger chooses to stay to finish up his matchmaking, though he is told by a booming supernatural voice that if he stays, he will "linger in the shadows of earth for all time." Despite this, Winninger and Carey are reunited and taken to Heaven in the end. A better screenplay would have helped. This is interesting and watchable, but whether it deserves the label "classic," I'm not sure. Pictured: Winninger, Smith and Carey as ghosts with Ouspenskaya in the middle. [DVD]