Made in 1949, this holiday romance is building, year by year, into one of the films considered part of the annual Christmas movie canon. It stars Robert Mitchum as a sales clerk at a department store, and Janet Leigh as a corporate spy who shops at his place to check out the competition – and they end up checking out each other instead. For both leads, the roles were substantial changes of pace. Mitchum, known as a hard-boiled film noir tough guy, plays it sweeter and meeker here – while Leigh, a full 11 years before Psycho, plays her young war widow, a mother, by going for real emotions rather than glamorous facades.