Miracle on 34th Street

Kris Kringle is an elderly man living at the Maplewood Home for the Aged. He looks exactly like Santa Claus and firmly believes he is Santa Claus. Dr. Pierce, the home's resident physician, reluctantly informs Kris that the Board has ordered his removal: The Board considers his belief evidence of mental unfitness, and state law permits only residents in good physical and mental health. Kris refuses transfer to a psychiatric facility and heads to New York City with $34.86 to his name, planning to stay with his friend Jim, the Central Park zoo keeper. At the zoo, Kris feeds carrots to reindeer who eat from his hand, though even Jim, their keeper of 12 years, cannot approach them.

Walking through the park, Kris follows the sound of a band to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, where the man hired to play Santa turns out to be drunk. Doris Walker, a young businesswoman directing the parade, fires the man on the spot. She and Mr. Shellhammer, the head of Macy's Toy Department, beg Kris to fill in, and he agrees when he sees the excited children lining the streets.

Doris is a pragmatic, divorced single mother raising her six-year-old daughter, Susan, without myths or fairy tales. Their neighbor Fred Gayley, a young lawyer, has grown fond of them, but Doris's bitter first marriage has left her determined to avoid romance. After Kris's success at the parade, Doris, who serves as Macy's personnel director, hires him as the store's permanent Santa Claus. Kris tears up the list of toys Shellhammer wants him to push and begins directing parents to competitor stores whenever Macy's lacks the right item or charges too much. Grateful mothers flood the department with praise, and Mr. Macy declares the approach revolutionary, adopting it store-wide.

Fred takes Susan to see Kris, but she tells him he is just the man her mother hired. When Kris speaks fluent Dutch to a little orphan girl from Holland, however, Susan watches in fascination. Doris discovers Susan on Kris's lap, summons Kris, and fires him when he insists he truly is Santa Claus. Moments later, Mr. Macy congratulates Doris for the new policy, so she frantically chases Kris through the store. He returns only when she confesses that losing him would cost her the job. Privately, Kris views Doris and Susan as a test case: If he can make them believe, there is still hope for Santa Claus.

Doris investigates Kris's background. Albert Sawyer, Macy's vocational guidance expert, examines Kris but is rattled when the old man turns the tables. Dr. Pierce visits Doris in person, assuring her Kris's delusion is harmless. Fred offers Kris the spare bed in his apartment. That evening, Kris teaches Susan to use her imagination for the first time, coaching her to pretend she is a monkey and then a fairy queen. Susan delights in the game.

Kris's customer-first philosophy spreads from Macy's to Gimbel's, its chief rival, and across the country. On a Sunday walk, Susan confides her Christmas wish to Kris: a house with a yard, trees, and a swing, matching a magazine clipping she carries. She tells him that if he cannot get it, he is only a nice old man with a white beard. Kris pockets the drawing. After a failed attempt to arrange a date for Fred and Doris, Kris deliberately disappears one evening, forcing the two to search frantically together and grow closer through shared worry. When Fred finds Kris peacefully asleep at home, he realizes the old man engineered the episode. That night Fred and Doris share a genuine, unguarded moment, and he kisses her good night.

Kris crashes a lecture Sawyer is giving on "Exploding the Myth of Santa Claus," bursting onstage through the set's fireplace. The audience roars as he mocks Sawyer's arguments, but in the scuffle that follows, Kris's cane grazes Sawyer's cheek. The next morning, Sawyer convinces Shellhammer that Kris is dangerous. Doris agrees to a psychiatric examination, confident Kris will pass. Sawyer secretly takes Kris to Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ward instead, lying that Doris arranged the whole thing. Believing Doris betrayed him, Kris stops caring and deliberately fails every test. The chief psychiatrist plans to file commitment papers.

Fred finds Kris in a barred room, all brightness gone from his eyes. Fred argues that people who believe in Kris, and people like Susan who are just beginning to, depend on him. Kris's spirit revives, and he declares they will "go down swinging." Fred visits Judge Harper and requests a formal hearing, threatening a habeas corpus petition, a legal demand for release, if commitment papers are signed without one. The Judge's political advisor, Charlie Halloran, warns that ruling against Santa Claus will cost Harper his re-election.

At the hearing, Kris admits he believes he is Santa Claus. Mr. Mara, the state prosecutor, rests his case. Fred announces he intends to prove Kris is Santa Claus. That evening, Doris confronts Fred about jeopardizing his career; he reveals his law firm fired him for refusing to drop the case. Fred tells Doris that faith means believing when common sense tells you not to. They part bitterly.

Mr. Macy testifies he believes Kris is Santa and fires Sawyer on the spot. Dr. Pierce testifies that an X-ray machine arrived at Maplewood with a card reading "Merry Christmas from Kris Kringle," fulfilling a wish he told no one. Jim testifies to Kris's uncanny bond with reindeer. Fred subpoenas Mara's seven-year-old son, Thomas Mara Jr., who tells the court Santa exists because "my Daddy told me so." Cornered, Mara concedes Santa's existence but demands authoritative proof that Kris is the one and only Santa.

That evening, Susan writes Kris a letter saying she believes he is Santa. Doris, moved, adds a footnote: "I believe in you, too." She mails it to Kris Kringle at the New York County Court House. At the post office, a mail sorter realizes Kris is a legitimate recipient for the thousands of undeliverable Santa Claus letters and orders trucks to deliver them all to the courthouse.

On Christmas Eve, Fred presents letters addressed to Santa Claus that the Post Office delivered to Kris, arguing that a competent federal authority recognizes Kris as the one and only Santa Claus. When the prosecutor objects that three letters prove nothing, the Judge orders Fred to produce his remaining exhibits. Attendants wheel in hand trucks loaded with mail bags until the bench is nearly buried. Judge Harper rules that the United States of America believes this man is Santa Claus and dismisses the case. Kris thanks the Judge and vanishes into the snowy evening.

On Christmas morning, Susan finds presents but no house. She cries, declaring Kris is not really Santa. Doris echoes Fred's words: Faith means believing when common sense tells you not to. Susan chants, "I believe, I believe, I believe." Kris calls Fred and asks him to bring Doris and Susan. Fred collects them and, following Kris's directions through snowy suburbs, they pass a house that makes Susan scream: It is the exact house from her magazine clipping. She runs inside, confirming every room. A "For Sale" sign stands on the lawn. Fred and Doris embrace. Then Fred notices a cane by the fireplace, identical to the one Kris always carries. Doris insists it was left by the previous tenants. Fred scratches his head, wondering aloud whether perhaps he did not do anything so wonderful after all.