Christmas in Connecticut

Briton Peter Godfrey enjoyed a lengthy stage career in London and the provinces as an actor, director, producer, vaudeville comedian (in partnership with his first wife Renee Haal) and sleight-of-hand artist before packing up for Hollywood. Godfrey’s first film directorial assignment was The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939), arguably the best-ever entry in Columbia’s “Lone Wolf” series. After a brief stay at RKO, Godfrey entered into a long association with Warner Bros. Most of his Warners films were fluffy vehicles for such contractees as Jack Carson, Jane Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck and Errol Flynn. His two crowning achievements at the studio were the Yuletide TV perennial Christmas in Connecticut (1945) and the marrow-chilling Gothic melodrama The Woman in White (1947). In the 1950s, Peter Godfrey turned to filmed television, directing many a half-hour anthology episode and virtually all 39 installments of Ella Raines’ TV series Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. —Hal Erickson, Rovi read more