It was the week before Christmas and all through the large manor house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The thirteen guests were all snug in their nightclothes in their separate bedrooms watching their favorite old Christmas movie.

In two of the rooms, Ebenezer Scrooge was being shown the errors of his ways by the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and to come in A Christmas Carol. In one room he was played by Reginald Owen substituting for Lionel Barrymore in the 1938 Hollywood version. In the other he was played by Alastair Sim in the acclaimed 1951 British version known by the original release title of Scrooge in the U.K.

James Stewart took center stage in two other rooms. He was the senior sales clerk in Frank Morgan’s gift shop falling in love with his secret pen pal not knowing by day she was the new junior clerk who annoyed him in the person of Margaret Sullavan in 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner. In the other room he was a reluctant banker about to give it all up when Henry Travers in the form of his guardian angel showed him what life would have been like had he not been born in 1946’s ever popular It’s a Wonderful Life.

Not to be outdone, Barbara Stanwyck was holding court in two rooms as well. In one she was a petty thief in the custody of her NYC prosecutor (Fred MacMurray) who takes her with him when he goes home to Pennsylvania to spend the holidays with his mother (Beulah Bondi) and aunt (Elizabeth Patterson) in 1940’s Remember the Night. In the other, she was a magazine food writer who wrote mouthwatering recipes provided by restaurant chef S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall who accompanies her on a holiday retreat to entertain her unsuspecting publisher (Sydney Greenstreet) and his naval war hero guest (Dennis Morgan) in 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut.

Bing Crosby showed up in three rooms, but he was the same character in two of them. He was the young priest sent to ease an older one (Barry Fitzgerald) into retirement in 1944’s Going My Way in one room and the same priest a year later knocking heads with a strong-willed young sister superior played by Ingrid Bergman at her most radiant in 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s. In the third room, he was a highly successful song-and-dance man who along with partner Danny Kaye helps his former World War II general (Dean Jagger) save his failing Vermont inn in 1954’s White Christmas.

Department stores provided the setting for the films in two of the rooms. Edmund Gwenn was the real Santa Claus taking the place of Macy’s fake one in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street in which he helped restore faith in Santa in little Natalie Wood and faith in love in her mother (Maureen O’Hara). In 1949’s Holiday Affair, department store clerk Robert Mitchum helps young widow Janet Leigh and her son Gordon Gebert find happiness in the season.

In yet another room, Cary Grant was an angel come from heaven to help Episcopal bishop David Niven and wife Loretta Young make it through a difficult Christmas season with a little help from retired professor Monty Woolley and a lot of interference from church elder Gladys Cooper in the delightful 1947 film The Bishop’s Wife.

In the last guest bedroom, it was the nostalgic Meet Me in St. Louis, which builds to an unforgettable Christmas scene as Judy Garland sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to little sister Margaret O’Brien.

When the films in their bedroom ended, the thirteen guests joined their hosts for a double bill of the 1929 and 1937 versions of The 13th Chair neither of which is a Christmas movie at all, but filmed versions of a theatrical warhorse in which a medium and a police inspector join forces to solve a murder that happened at a séance in which the victim was about to reveal the name of the murderer in an unsolved case.

Margaret Wycherly, later immortalized as Gary Cooper’s Mother York in 1941’s Sergeant York and James Cagney’s Ma Jarrett in 1949’s White Heat, was making her first film in fourteen years, her first talkie as the medium in Todd Browning’s 1927 version of the The 13th Chair. She’s basically the whole show despite attempts of the pre-Dracula Bela Lugosi as the inspector to upstage her.

Dame May Whitty, on the heels of her Hollywood debut in 1937’s Night Must Fall, played the medium in the 1937 version opposite Lewis Stone as the inspector. This version is better written with subtle changes to the original including the revelation of the murderer – a different character in this one. In the original it was the medium who solved the murder by scaring the murderer into a confession. In the remake, the scare doesn’t work, and the inspector solves the case but it’s the medium who has the last word.

This version also benefits from a stronger supporting cast that includes Madge Evans, Elissa Landi, Thomas Beck, Henry Daniell, Janet Beecher, Ralph Forbes, Holmes Herbert, Heather Thatcher, and Robert Coote.

The hosts then gave the guests the choice of another film to watch together. They suggested either 1955’s Female on the Beach in which Joan Crawford falls in love with gigolo Jeff Chandler or Chandler’s other 1955 romance Foxfire in which he plays a half-breed Indian swept off his feet by wealthy Jane Russell. The votes came to six for the Crawford film and six for the Russell film, with one undecided.

The hosts then asked the guests to suggest another film. They all wanted to see another holiday movie but thinking that each might want to suggest the film they had seen earlier, resulting in another undecisive vote, the hosts asked that they pick a film about a different holiday. The vote was unanimous for a film about New Year’s, but no one could think of a film about New Year’s until someone mentioned George Cukor’s 1938 classic called Holiday, which begins on Christmas Day but climaxes with an extended party on New Year’s Eve. They all agreed it was the perfect film to end a long night of film watching.

The second film version of Philip Barry’s sophisticated comedy Holiday featured Cary Grant as the young man who wants to retire young and work old rather than the other way around as most people live, an idea rejected by his fiancée (Doris Nolan) and her father (Henry Kolker) but embraced by the fiancée’s sister and their alcoholic brother brilliantly played by Katharine Hepburn, who understudied the role on Broadway, and Lew Ayres who received a National Board of Review award for his performance. Jean Dixon, Edward Everett Horton, Binnie Barnes and Henry Daniell lend fine comic support as the principal party guests. It’s the perfect film to end any night of movie watching.

This week’s new releases include The House with a Clock in Its Walls and A Simple Favor.