Sidney “The Lemon Drop Kid” (for his habit of always having a box of lemon drop candies on him) Milburn (Bob Hope) is a “racetrack tout” in Florida. Unfortunately for him, after convincing a woman to place her bet on the wrong horse, he finds out that she is a “girlfriend” of notorious mob boss Moose Moran (Fred Clark) – who is none too happy at having lost his sure bet. The Kid convinces Moran to give him until Christmas to raise the $10,000 that he would have won. It won’t be easy, but it’s better than what Moran had in mind.

Now it’s off to New York City, where he’s got just about three weeks to come up with the dough – or else. In the “season of giving”, can he find enough suckers, er, kindhearted people, to give him that much spare change? As it happens, he comes up with a cunning plan, one that will need the unsuspecting assistance of all of his lowlife friends to pull off….

This is one of that multitude of movies that can be called “Christmas Adjacent”. Like Die Hard and The Thin Man, it actually has very little to do with the holiday; it just happens to be set at that time of year.

Loosely based on a story by Damon Runyon, it’s filled with those sorts of characters who hang around the fringes of “respectable” society. Gamblers, wrestlers, swindlers, cheaters of every stripe. Hope’s screen persona of a cowardly but goodhearted faker fits right in. In what is essentially a “caper” movie, you don’t spend too much time thinking about the utter improbability of The Kid being able to pull of his plan – it requires far too much manpower and material, and there really isn’t enough time to raise the money in that manner.

It’s genial enough, with a few slapstick set pieces. Ignore the poster art that shows Hope dressed as an old woman – that happens in one short scene and isn’t really relevant. Instead, watch Jane Darnell as Nellie Thursday. She’d been playing “matronly” characters since the early 30s, and picked up an Academy Award for playing Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. There’s also a part for William Frawley (who would go on to play Fred Mertz in “I Love Lucy” – and who appeared in the 1934 version of Runyon’s story), and a smaller role for wrestler Tor Johnson, who would go on to appear in The Beast of Yucca Flats and Plan Nine from Outer Space….

The highlight of the movie, though, is that it’s the first appearance of the holiday song “Silver Bells”. OK, OK, I know. The record came out in October 1950, and the movie in March 1951. Filming on the movie took place in July and August 1950, though. Given the Christmas setting. it seems like it should have been released in November or December of that year. I’m guessing that a number of production delays causing some reshoots delayed its release (in one scene, the number of switches on a wall panel changes from shot to shot…), and when the song turned out to be a hit, Hope and Marilyn Maxwell (who played his girlfriend “Brainey” Baxter) were called back to the studio to film a more elaborate production of their duet. And the studio probably didn’t think it was worth it to “keep it in the can” until the 1951 holiday season.

It’s hardly a holiday “classic”, but it’s a nice change from the usual overly sentimental tripe that one gets around that time of year. And it’s fun enough to watch any time.