"Christmas in July" with Dick Powell and Ellen Drew (1940)

I always watch a Christmas movie sometime in August. Maybe it’s just being tired of the heat; or that old wishing it was winter in the summer and vice versa thing. We humans are rarely ever fully satisfied with our current lots in life; always looking for what we don’t have rather than fully enjoying what we do have at the time. It’s just who we are.

This is one of the quirkiest Christmas movies ever made; as it takes place in July. Preston Sturges; arguably one of the greatest film directors ever; is in rare form in this film. Dick Powell and Ellen Drew, two young lovers, play a couple with no money but with big dreams.

When Jimmy MacDonald enters a contest for an advertising slogan he has high hopes. And when he is notified that he has won, and can now marry his true love Betty Casey, all should end well. But, this is a Preston Sturges movie, and it’s never that simple; ever.

Jimmy enters the contest with the Maxford Coffee Company and his co-workers decide to have a bit of fun with him. They send him a telegram that says he has won the prize of $25,000. He now believes he has enough to marry his girlfriend; as well as buy extravagant gifts for his friends and neighbors.

In reality though the coffee company is deadlocked on their selection and as Jimmy goes deeper and deeper into debt; with no money forthcoming; what will become of all his hopes and dreams? Will he be branded as a fraud in the heat of the summer; or will he bask in the warmth of a Christmas like miracle in July? 

I simply will not reveal the ending of this film, which is one of Preston Sturges best cinematic creations. You’ll just have to see it for yourself. 

Fin, Family and Slang

Above is a "fin", a five dollar bill. It's a slang term which had been relegated to the dump heap until recently, where it has made a comeback in the street level drug trade.

For me the term "fin", as well as the slang term for the $10 bill, or a "sawbuck", belong to another era, back in the 1950's, when I was a small child. I was fascinated with these terms, words which I heard my dad use, frequently when talking to his brother Richie. And there were the times when my Dad would take me to a bar, to collect on some work he had done on the HVAC systems, and the owners were rough hewn "mob" types. In places like those, "fin", "sawbuck" and "double sawbuck" were normal expressions. But where did those words come from?

Let's start with the "fin", pictured above. "Fin" is slang for the old German word "funf", or five, which became Yiddish and was pronounced "finf", and sometimes as "finnif." This was low level slang.

Moving up the chain there was the "sawbuck", or $10 bill, which derived from the device used to hold wood for cutting into lengths that would fit into a fireplace, or stove. The term originated because the first ten dollar bills issued had the Roman numeral "X" for ten on one corner. "Buck" had long been established to mean a dollar, so putting the two together was kind of a natural.

For bigger jobs there was the elusive "double sawbuck", or $20 bill. And after that was the "half a yard" for $50 dollars, a "C" note, or a "yard", was for $100 dollars (the "C" stood for Century, which is rather self explanatory), and then there was the holiest of all, the dreaded "large", as in, "You owe me 5 large", or $5,000 dollars, as in "grand."

I kind of miss these terms. I know that language evolves, and that's a good thing. But as it does, I get older. I'm still not sure how I feel about that!