One Christmas

Though based on Truman Capote's masterfully nuanced short story of the same title, this made-for-TV exercise in soggy nostalgia, featuring a miscast Henry Winkler and visibly ill Katharine Hepburn, is dragged down by Tony Bill 's stodgy direction. In 1930, eight year-old Buddy (T. J. Lowther) has an chance to spend Christmas with his estranged father (Henry Winkler) in New Orleans. Given his druthers, Buddy would have remained Aunt Sook’s (Julie Harris) kitchen helper back in Alabama, but without disclosing the reason for her trip to Buddy, Aunt Sook has gone north to care for Buddy's mother, an emotionally unstable actress. Buddy’s blustering dad, who expected a sp...