In a 1980 production of a low budget and not-so widely distributed film directed by Academy Award winning director Keith Merrill, Jimmy Stewart gives the holiday performance of a lifetime.
Unlike that other Christmas movie (It’s a Wonderful Life) starring Stewart nearly forty years before this one features neither the predictable sub-plots of good versus evil or the triumph over Christmas disasters.
Stewart plays Willie Krueger, a lonely old man enduring a Christmas alone in his basement apartment with his cat George. We never learn why he is alone and why there is no family about him, save only that he was once married but that his wife has passed on.
Willie Krueger wants nothing to do with being alone at Christmas. And while the world around him thinks it is better to just ignore him, Willie gets along just fine imagining people and warmth surrounding him whenever he gets to hearing favorite carols sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Music is Mr. Krueger’s escape. Each different...
