The 78-Year-Old Forgotten Christmas Classic With the Only Oscar-winning Santa
If you know anything about the original Miracle on 34th St., it’s probably that it features an eight-year-old Natalie Wood in a role that basically made her a star. The actress would spend the next decade making roughly three movies a year until earning her first Academy Award nomination for Rebel Without a Cause at 17. She went on to make The Searchers with John Wayne and star in West Side Story, before dying in highly mysterious circumstances at the age of just 43.
But of course, we’re not here to talk about Natalie Wood—we’re here to talk about Edmund Gwenn, her Miracle co-star and the only actor in history to win an Oscar for playing Santa Claus.
How Edmund Gwenn Won an Oscar for Miracle on 34th Street
As a fan of the lovely Richard Attenborough/Mara Wilson version from 1994, I never felt a huge urge to watch the original; for whatever reason, it always struck me a bit like A Christmas Story—one of those movies that Americans adore but just never translated overseas. I eventually decided to stick it on a few years back after learning that it won three Oscars, and I’m happy that I did—it’s just as warm and cosy as the ‘90s remake, but with less product placement and more of the great Maureen O’Hara (The Quiet Man). Together with Wood and Gwenn, they’re a pleasure to watch.
At the 1948 ceremony, two of the film’s Oscars went to the screenplay writers, with the third going to Gwenn, making him the first and only person to win an Oscar for playing Kris Kringle—or Santa Claus, if you’re inclined to believe. It’s remarkable as, by that time, Hollywood was starting to move away from post-war sentimentality and into the cold embrace of film noir. The year before, the classic post-war weepy The Best Years of Our Lives won seven Oscars, beating out Hitchcock’s Notorious, David Lean’s Brief Encounter, Robert Siodmak’s The Killers and Franz Kapra’s It’s a Wonderful Life—all stone-cold bangers that explored darker themes the Academy may have been ready for.
Compare that to the 1948 Best Picture winner, Gentleman’s Agreement, a sturdy drama about antisemitism that ushered in the career of Elia Kazan—a new breed of director whose dedication to realism would basically define Hollywood for the next decade—and you start to see which way the wind was blowing.
Miracle on 34th Street & It’s a Wonderful Life Were Released in the Same Year
Within six months of each other, in fact. Kind of crazy, right? Funnily enough, neither one looked anything like a Christmas classic upon release. Life famously failed to connect with audiences at first and only became a seasonal staple after the studio allowed the copyright to slide in 1974—meaning TV stations could basically play it on repeat, for free; and Miracle was bafflingly released in early June, with a trailer that made absolutely no reference to Santa or the festive season.
Given all that, it’s probably less surprising that Miracle converted three of its nominations while the more challenging It’s a Wonderful Life—a movie where the bad guy gets away with it and a character played by Jimmy Stewart (an actual combat hero) considers suicide—went home with nothing. Then again, if Miracle won the battle, I think it’s fair to say that Life won the war.
Who Was Edmund Gwenn?
Gwenn was born in Wandsworth in London in 1887—a long way away from New York and the Macy’s Day Parade. As an actor, he started on stage before transitioning to silent films in England, working for celebrated British directors like Carol Reed and Alfred Hitchcock, and later into sound pictures. He would continue to collaborate with Hitchcock after both had made the move to L.A.
Gwenn got his first Hollywood role playing Katherine Hepburn’s father in Sylvia Sage and would eventually appear in over 80 movies over the course of his career, including Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent and the sci-fi classic Them! His remains now rest in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and you can even find his star on the Walk of Fame, right next to John Gilbert’s—the moustachioed silent-era legend who is said to be the inspiration for both The Artist and Brad Pitt’s character in Babylon. Not bad!
Will Another Santa Ever Win an Oscar Again?
You’d have to say it’s unlikely, but we have had two wins for the Joker in the last 20 years alone—a stat that might baffle Oscar historians 50 years from now—so who knows?
Come January, it’s possible that the central duo of Wicked, Elphaba and Glinda, will be responsible for a total of four Oscar nominations between them in the space of a year—so, maybe if Stephen Schwartz decides to write a Santa-inspired musical, we might see St. Nick on the stage of the Dolby Theatre again. As Glenn’s Kringle would tell you, “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” Here, here.
