"A Christmas Memory" is one of the three stories in this telefilm.
This achingly sweet, tender, and sad story is based on Truman Capote's lonely childhood and his friendship with an elderly female cousin (who is unnamed in this story). This story unfolds during the Great Depression years of the 1930s when the two friends plot and plan for Christmas and the making of fruitcakes. They live in a rural house with two other female relatives but stay pretty much to themselves.
Counting pennies and nickels and dimes, they scrape together the money to buy the many exotic ingredients and then send the cakes off to friends, casual acquaintances, and even President Roosevelt.
Two eccentric figures, they push a dead baby carriage (they call it a buggy) around the countryside gathering pecans for their cakes and harvesting a Christmas tree. They are accompanied by Queenie the dog. But this is their last Christmas together.
The boy is sent off to military school and the friend and Queenie are left behind. The dog dies and the friend slowly drifts into dementia, her letters to the boy becoming rarer and harder to read.
Simple and sweet.
Geraldine Page turns in a magnificent performance as the old soul who's never been to a movie or eaten a meal in a restaurant. Her whole life is the boy. She is unforgettable in this film.
This achingly sweet, tender, and sad story is based on Truman Capote's lonely childhood and his friendship with an elderly female cousin (who is unnamed in this story). This story unfolds during the Great Depression years of the 1930s when the two friends plot and plan for Christmas and the making of fruitcakes. They live in a rural house with two other female relatives but stay pretty much to themselves.
Counting pennies and nickels and dimes, they scrape together the money to buy the many exotic ingredients and then send the cakes off to friends, casual acquaintances, and even President Roosevelt.
Two eccentric figures, they push a dead baby carriage (they call it a buggy) around the countryside gathering pecans for their cakes and harvesting a Christmas tree. They are accompanied by Queenie the dog. But this is their last Christmas together.
The boy is sent off to military school and the friend and Queenie are left behind. The dog dies and the friend slowly drifts into dementia, her letters to the boy becoming rarer and harder to read.
Simple and sweet.
Geraldine Page turns in a magnificent performance as the old soul who's never been to a movie or eaten a meal in a restaurant. Her whole life is the boy. She is unforgettable in this film.