Details

Release year: 1972

Storyline

In 1946 Nebraska, a young girl named Addie desperately craves a Christmas tree, but her bitter widower father refuses because of events from the family's past.

Top credits

Directors

Paul Bogart

Writers

Cast

Jason Robards — Jamie Mills
Mildred Natwick — Grandma Mills
Lisa Lucas — Addie Mills
Kathryn Walker — Miss Thompson

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Awards

1 win & 0 nominations

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Did you know

• Each act of the story featured collages that opened and closed it between commercial breaks. The collage artist who assembled these for the story, Norman Sunshine, won an Emmy Award for them. He later assembled other collages for The Thanksgiving Treasure.

• Originally shown on CBS on December 3, 1972, this movie was actually a very low-budget production recorded on videotape. It was repeated several times in the 1970s on CBS during the holiday season; it was rerun for the very last time on CBS on December 25, 1987 after a long absence. In 1992, it was finally released on VHS by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, and then on DVD in 2007 by Paramount Home Entertainment, via CBS Home Entertainment.

• Molly Shannon as Mary Catherine Gallagher recites a monologue from the TV movie in a sketch on SNL that included Whitney Houston, Rosie O'Donnell, and Penny Marshall. Molly wanted to ask Whitney Houston to do the sketch even when production said she'd never do it. Whitney loved doing the sketch.