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Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle, a bearded old gent who is the living image of Santa Claus. Serving as a last-minute replacement for the drunken Santa who was to have led Macys Thanksgiving Parade, Kringle is offered a job as a Macys toy-department Santa. Supervisor Maureen OHara soon begins having second thoughts about hiring Kris: its bad enough that he is laboring under the delusion that hes the Igenuine/I Saint Nick; but when he begins advising customers to shop elsewhere for toys that they cant find at Macys, hes gone too far! Amazingly, Mr. Macy (Harry Antrim) considers Kris shopping tips to be an excellent customer-service gimmick, and insists that the old fellow keep his job. A resident of a Manhattan retirement home, Kris agrees to take a room with lawyer John Payne during the Christmas season. It happens that Payne is sweet on OHara, and Kris subliminally hopes he can bring the two together. Kris is also desirous of winning over the divorced OHaras little daughter Natalie Wood, who in her few years on earth has lost a lot of the Christmas spirit. Complications ensue when Porter Hall, Macys nasty in-house psychologist, arranges to have Kris locked up in Bellevue as a lunatic. Payne represents Kris at his sanity hearing, rocking the New York judicial system to its foundations by endeavoring to prove in court that Kris is, indeed, the real Santa Claus! We wont tell you how he does it: suffice to say that theres a joyous ending for Payne and OHara, as well as a wonderful faith-affirming denouement for little Natalie Wood. 72-year-old Edmund Gwenn won an Oscar for his portrayal of the jolly old elf Kringle; the rest of the cast is populated by such never-fail pros as Gene Lockhart (as the beleaguered sanity-hearing judge), William Frawley (as a crafty political boss), and an unbilled Thelma Ritter and Jack Albertson. Based on the novel by Valentine Davies, Miracle on 34th Street was remade twice: once for TV in 1973, and a second time for a 1994 theatrical release, with Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide