HOLIDAY AFFAIR (1949) **1/2 This is America in the mid-20th century as we'd like to remember it-everyone is gallant, well spoken, and deferential to only the proper degree. Robert Mitchum is a vet who eats lunch with seals and wants to build boats and is willing to sell electric trains to get there, Janet Leigh the love interest war widow willing to settle for anything that lets her think of her dead husband, and Wendell Corey turns in an even better performance as a divorce lawyer with a great moral sense of reality. Myth making? Maybe, but whoever wrote Mitchum's lines knew more than a little bit about psychology and there can never be enough movies about Christmas time in New York City. Gordon Gebert does a very nice job as the good kid and Harry Morgan...I don't know if he was a great actor but he had a way of endearing himself immediately regardless of his role, here he's a great smart aleck cop with, surprise, a wry grin. I suppose that it's possible to make greater edifices to love than this film, but there's plenty of room in the world for nice gentle, intelligent, kind dedications like this one.