Tours including Miracle on 34th Street
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Tours featuring Miracle on 34th Street
New York TV & Movie Tour
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“I would highly recommend it to fans of hit movies & TV shows... I was interested in seeing sites from movies filmed in the 60's through the 80's. ”
- Male, Age 40-49, Domestic Tourist
“My solution to the strike was to hop aboard an On Location Tours bus to see some of NYC’s most famed movie and TV locations live and in 3-D.”
-Entertainment Weekly, Jan. 2008
Miracle on 34th Street (also called The Big Heart in the UK) became an instant holiday classic as soon as it was released in 1947. The film was written by Valentine Davies, was directed by George Seaton, and starred Maureen O’Hara, Natalie Wood, John Payne, and Edmund Gwenn.
Kris Kringle is astonished to find that the man playing Santa in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is drunk. He reports the man to the parade director and she in turn persuades Kris to take the man’s place, as he certainly looks the part. He does such a wonderful job that Macy’s offers him a job as the full-time department store Santa. As the store employees and customers alike get to know Kris Kringle, they begin to wonder if he could possibly be the real thing?
The film was highly recognized at the Academy Awards. Edmund Gwenn, who played Kris Kringle, won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and the film also won Oscars for Best Writing: Original Story and Best Writing: Screenplay. It was also a nominee for Best Picture. Miracle on 34th Street has since received several other honors. The American Film Institute ranked it ninth on its list of “100 Years… 100 Cheers.” AFI also ranked the film fifth on its list of the top ten films in the fantasy genre. And in 2005, Miracle on 34th Street was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
There have been several remakes of the classic film, including four movies and a Broadway musical. There were television movies made in 1955, 1959, and 1973. The Broadway musical based on Miracle on 34th Street was called Here’s Love and opened in 1963. It was written by Meredith Wilson (who is best known for writing The Music Man). The latest remake of the film was released in 1994. The script was adapted by John Hughes from the original 1947 script, and starred Dylan McDermott, Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, and Mara Wilson. Macy’s refused to allow this film to use its name, so the store was renamed Cole’s.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade scenes in the 1947 film were shot during the real-life 1946 parade. Since they were using the real parade in the film, re-shoots were of course impossible, so the film crew set up numerous cameras along the parade route to ensure they got everything they needed. Unbeknownst to most parade-watchers, the Santa in the 1946 parade was actually played by Edmund Gwenn, the actor who plays Kris Kingle in the movie. 
The scenes at Macy’s were shot on location at the real Macy’s Department Store on 34th Street. During filming, it turned out that the film crew required more electricity than the store could provide, so additional power sources had to be set up in the Macy’s basement.
Despite the fact that Miracle on 34th Street is a Christmas movie, the producers of the original 1947 film wanted to release the film in May, since more people went to see movies in the summer. While advertising the film, they kept the fact that it was a Christmas movie secret!
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