Remember the Night is a 1940 American Christmas romantic comedy trial film directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.

When he hears Lee complaining to her lawyer about spending Christmas in jail, Jack feels guilty and asks bondsman Fat Mike to post bail.

Discovering that Lee is a fellow Hoosier (native of Indiana), and that she has nowhere to spend Christmas, Jack offers to drop her off at her mother's house on his way to visit his own family.

On the way back to New York via Canada and Niagara Falls (to bypass Pennsylvania), Jack tells Lee that he loves her, and tries to persuade her to jump bail, but she refuses.

The script, which blends a number of genres, proved difficult to write, and Sturges joked that it caused him "... to commit hara-kiri several times."

As with all of Sturges' scripts, Remember the Night included a number of elements from his own life, including the falling-in-love-on-a-journey motif, inspired by his experience with Eleanor Post Hutton on the road to Palm Beach many years before, and the character of Jack's tough but loving Midwestern mother, based on the mother of his third wife Louise Sargent, from whom the lead character's name derived.

The film, he said, "... had quite a lot of schmaltz [sentiment], a good dose of schmerz [pain, grief] and just enough schmutz [dirt] to make it box office.

Stanwyck later recalled that she did not initially believe Sturges' promise, as she was primarily a dramatic actress known for playing fallen women and femme fatales.

[1][5] Stanwyck was to make a romantic film with Joel McCrea following the completion of Remember the Night, but she came down with a serious eye infection and had to withdraw from the project.

The New York Times reviewer Frank S. Nugent wrote: It is a memorable film, in title and in quality, blessed with an honest script, good direction and sound performances ... a drama stated in the simplest human terms of comedy and sentiment, tenderness and generosity ... warm, pleasant and unusually entertaining.

Lifetime aired a television film in 1997 titled On the 2nd Day of Christmas, starring Mary Stuart Masterson and Mark Ruffalo, directed by James Frawley.