PRESERVED FILMS

It Was Just Like Christmas (1948)
Director: Herbert F. Sturdy. Cast: Sally Sturdy. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 16mm preservation print by Northeast Historic Film. Running Time: 36 minutes.

If you want to find Santa Claus, look in Canada. It Was Just Like Christmas, an amateur narrative following a 5-year-old girl’s search for St. Nick, is proof. The man behind the camera, Herbert F. Sturdy (1903-69)—member of the high-profile law firm Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, and one of the executors of Walt Disney’s will—was a passionate amateur moviemaker, and left behind 47,368 feet of 16mm film. He belonged to the Amateur Cinema League, which gave It Was Just Like Christmas honorable mention as one of the best films of the year, and served as President of Los Angeles Cinema Club in 1949.

Christmas amply demonstrates the level of care Sturdy lavished on his home movies. Shot in Kodachrome, like much of his work, it opens with animated Christmas bulbs coming together to spell out the title—a typical Sturdy touch. Another is the title card, “A Sturdywood Production,” with its backdrop of the family’s Southern Colonial home in Bel Air, California. Shortly afterward the Sturdy family is shown exiting the house, which also featured in Hollywood features such as My Foolish Heart (1949, starring Susan Hayward and Dana Andrews) and Not as a Stranger (1955, starring Olivia de Haviland, Robert Mitchum, and Frank Sinatra).

It Was Just Like Christmas additionally demonstrates Sturdy’s skill in converting a home movie of a family vacation into a quest narrative, making leisure activities double for the adventures of his daughter Sally as she searches for Santa Claus during a road trip from Los Angeles to Canada. Finely crafted intertitles, of maps and Sally’s diary entries, mark her travels north through Carmel, San Francisco, the Redwood forest, Mount Rainier, Victoria, the Columbia Ice Fields and Lake Louise in Alberta. The travel footage is further distinguished by Sturdy’s sense of composition. Though the narrative is rendered from Sally’s vantage point and usually keeps her parents off-frame, Herbert F. Sturdy can be glimpsed having a laugh during a staged customs check in Victoria.

Audiences in 1948 (and today) would have recognized that the Sturdy family traveled in luxury. In Garberville, near the redwoods, they stay in the Benbow Historic Inn, known for its Hollywood clientele; further north their brand-new Studebaker is hand-loaded onto a train for transfer to Lake Louise, where the family stays in the Fairmont Chateau.

Nature itself—via lions, birds, and even waterfalls—gives Sally clues on Santa’s location, prompting further north, until she reaches Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Sally Sturdy recalled that her father hadn’t determined Santa’s location in advance, but after he met a tourist in Jasper who was willing to wear the suit, the meeting could finally happen. And it was just like Christmas.

About the Music
Herbert Sturdy screened It Was Just Like Christmas with a needledrop soundtrack, paired with a 1/4" audiotape of Sally Sturdy’s voice that accompanied a few scenes. Unfortunately, the latter has not survived. For this presentation the film is accompanied by a new score by Michael D. Mortilla.

An award-winning composer and sound designer, Michael Mortilla’s extensive work in New York theater and years working directly with Martha Graham informs his attention to narrative, movement, and expression. Largely self-taught, he received his teaching license from the City of New York Public Schools and was faculty/resident composer at UC Santa Barbara for 14 years. Mr. Mortilla regularly composes and performs for the Academy of Motion Pictures. Other commissions are from Sony/Columbia Pictures, The Chicago Symphony, the Olympics, and, of course, many scores for the National Film Preservation Foundation.

About the Preservation
The Herbert F. Sturdy Collection, including Sturdy’s editing notes, was donated to Northeast Historic Film by his daughters. In 2006 Northeast Historic Film received an NFPF grant to preserve It Was Just Like Christmas, and in 2021 received another NFPF to create an HD digital master. The NFPF thanks David Weiss of Northeast Historic Film, who supervised the film’s preservation and provided the information used in this note.

Further Viewing
Another short by Herbert F. Sturdy, also featuring his daughter Sally, Sweeter By the Dozen (ca.1950) is available for viewing in the NFPF screening room.