by Marc Pollak for Winter Film Festival
See the documentary film More than Santa Baby on February 21 @3:00PM at REGAL Union Square (850 Broadway) as part of New York City’s 14th Annual Winter Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!
The song “Santa Baby” is a Christmas classic, but Philip Springer, who wrote it with lyricist Joan Javits in 1953, has composed many other hits for some of America’s greatest artists. His daughter Tamar Springer has produced a documentary about his life and work.
Every year audiences hear various versions of “Santa Baby” from singers such as Eartha Kitt, Cher, Madonna, RuPaul, Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, and Trisha Yearwood. Yet Tamar was working on the production of another of her father’s works, the musical The Bells of Notre Dame (based on the Victor Hugo novel), when the arrival of COVID paused that effort. As she reviewed her father’s writings, recordings, and videos, she realized that his entire career suggested a documentary. “All of a sudden,” she says, “one day, I said, this is a story that should be told.”
While Tamar had produced various projects related to her father’s work–including “a few CDs of my dad’s music” and a book about the famed lyricist EY Yip Harburg, with whom he had collaborated–she had never tackled a movie. She “started calling friends who are in the film industry in one way or another” and “watched at least a hundred documentaries” for ideas.
She chose to open the movie by recounting Philip’s early days, documenting his roots in New York City and success in Broadway’s famous Brill Building–the mecca of American popular songwriting in the mid-twentieth century–teaming up with various lyricists to create songs for Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Aretha Franklin, and Pearl Bailey. However, as rock and roll arrived and Americans’ tastes changed, there was less demand for Philip’s compositions, and his career experienced a lull. Philip responded by moving to California and transforming himself, composing music for popular movies and television shows such as Gunsmoke and Mannix. He also earned a PhD in composition and pioneered electronic music with some of the earliest synthesizers.
The great scope of her father’s career posed a challenge for Tamar. While at first she considered the trove of writings, photographs, audio, and video he had amassed over the years to be mostly clutter, eventually “I was so thankful for every single corner of clutter because what I found was an incredible, vast amount of content for the film.” Her father also contributed directly to her research. “I’d say, Dad, can you talk about high school, can you tell me about this collaborator of yours?”
Philip’s career path had highs and lows “because there are sad parts to the story which the viewer sees when they go on this journey, which is really a true, genuine, up and down emotional journey. For me, that was what I lived with–the ups and downs of my father’s career and the times when he sought greater recognition or he was trying to make a show happen and things never happened–and that was a difficult part of my life and our family’s life. So going through that emotional journey again was probably the most challenging part of it.” Still, she persevered. “It was an emotional challenge but also very cathartic. I feel like part of the story is making lemonade out of lemons, out of the hard stuff that happened or didn’t happen in my father’s career which affected our whole family.” There were also joys for Tamar in producing the movie. “I dug around a lot for old family footage to fit in to bring more to life, . . . and that was a super fun challenge. I loved every moment in making this film.”
The arc of Philip’s life and career will surely entertain those who are unfamiliar with his music as much as those who are familiar with it. It will also appeal to people of all ages, as, while his music first gained recognition in the mid-twentieth century, it continues to find new audiences.
“The film was screened in Dallas, and I happen to have a young 20-something friend there, and she brought a bunch of her friends, and I was apologizing in advance: ‘Guys, I’m not sure if this is going to be your thing.’ But they absolutely loved the film. One of them was really into the music and actually knew some of the older songs and picked out a really obscure song in the film and asked me questions about it. . . . At one of the film festivals . . . it was in Culver City . . . and people came up to me and told me all the different ways that it struck them, and I felt like a million bucks. I felt so good to hear from strangers how the movie touched them.”
And what does Philip think of the end result? “For a while he didn’t want to see it,” Tamar says. “He said he didn’t want to relive his whole life that way; it was too emotional for him for the longest time.” However, he decided to view the movie last January and called it “astounding.” “When I told him it won the audience award at its world premiere festival and another one for best short documentary at a different festival, he was thrilled with the accolades it’s received, so I think he feels really good about it.”
However, Tamar is not done yet. She still wants to continue working on The Bells of Notre Dame, and she also has plans for “one or two more” documentaries on “a totally different topic. . . . So I guess I have a lot to do.”
And Philip, who will celebrate his 100th birthday in May 2026, continues to perform and compose, even rehearsing the musicians and singers for a production in December 2025. Tamar says, “He plays the piano every day. He told me that he’s always creating melodies. He dreams about them. He wakes up thinking about music. The man is really just–He is music.” She hopes that the movie’s audience gets a sense of this joy and optimism. “This is really a story of perseverance, resilience, and hope. The message is never give up, and that is a universal story.”
About Winter Film Festival
Winter Film Festival is an all-volunteer women and minority-run organization as part of Winter Film Awards Inc, a 501(c)3 organization founded in 2011 to celebrate emerging talent in local and international filmmaking.
The 14th Annual Winter Film Festival runs February 18-22 2026 includes a diverse mixture of animated films, documentaries, comedies, romances, dramas, horror films, music videos and web series of all lengths. Our five-day event is jam-packed with screenings and Q&A sessions at NYC’s REGAL Union Square, six Education sessions/workshops and a variety of filmmaker networking events all coming to a glittering close on February 22 with our red-carpet gala Awards Ceremony.
Winter Film Festival programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Promotional support provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.
For more information about Winter Film Festival, visit WinterFilmFest.org
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