It has been many years since I saw either of the most familiar versions of this movie in their entirety. I did see a few minutes of the Edmund Gwenn version while rewinding a tape on Thanksgiving, and a clip from that movie in a TV special, but that's as close as I've come to remembering how good that movie was.
There's not much point in comparing this movie to the others for that reason. I'm sure Edmund Gwenn's was better. But I saw this version because so many actors whose names I know appeared in it. Tom Bosley, David Doyle, Jim Backus, James Gregory, and Conrad Janis, to name a few. I enjoyed seeing these people and thought they all did a good job.
Sebastian Cabot is familiar to me from the original "Family Affair", but I would never have known him. Giles French was such a curmudgeon, though over the years he probably came to love children. I just don't have a clear memory of that. And yet he just seemed so natural as the Macy's Santa Claus. Could Edmund Gwenn have done any better? Probably. And yet without comparing the two, I can say Sebastian Cabot WAS Kris Kringle. Such a loving, caring man, everything Christmas is supposed to be about. A man who truly cares about children. Yes, he could get angry. But for all the right reasons.
The scenes involving the judge and the efforts to have Kris Kringle put away were really well-written. One would never know it was a kids' movie.
Suzanne Davidson was so cute. I won't say she did a consistently good job, but she had some really good scenes.
I can't remember his name now, but the other Santa Claus in the movie, the young store employee who was taught his craft by Kris, was really likable. Perhaps he could have been worthy of the job of Macy's Santa after some experience.
I am aware David Hartman was an actor before "Good Morning America". And yet he came across like the "Good Morning America" co-host deciding to try acting. Still, he had some really good scenes, mostly in the courtroom.
I genuinely despised Roddy McDowall's character. I can't even really say whether he did a good job, but the psychiatrist who wants Kris Kringle declared insane just didn't do anything for me, and I wonder if the character could have been written better.
It was a real feel-good movie. I'm glad I saw this version.
