"White Christmas"- the Holiday Movie Classic

Make an effort this hectic holiday season to view the classic "White Christmas" at some point. A typical Fifties' Hollywood musical, "White Christmas" is a delightful tale of love, loyalty, and friendship, set mostly in a Vermont inn that is in dire need of some snowfall to be able to stay open. "White Christmas" starred Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera Ellen, and it was the top grossing motion picture of 1954. Although younger audiences may not have a feel for "White Christmas", anyone who remembers Crosby, Kaye, or Clooney will enjoy the picture.

My wife loves "White Christmas" more than any other film, so much so that I often have to pull it off the shelf in July just so she doesn't have to wait all year to see it. "White Christmas" is centered on a couple of army buddies, Crosby and Kaye, who team up after the war is over to become a top Broadway act, Wallace and Davis. When they go to Florida to see a potential addition to their show, they meet the Haynes sisters, played by Clooney and Ellen. Kaye's Phil Davis and Vera Ellen's Judy Haynes conspire to get the other two together, and this plays out for the remainder of the film. They take a train to Vermont, where the Haynes Sisters are scheduled to perform at an old inn that just happens to be owned by the boys' beloved former general from the war, played by Dean Jagger. Down on his luck because of a lack of snow and little business, the General is secretly helped by the boys, who decide to move their whole Broadway production up to bolster business. The budding romance between Clooney's Betty Haynes and Bing's Bob Wallace is short circuited by the General's busy-body housekeeper, and Betty takes off for New York, as Wallace tries to reunite the General's former battalion for a Christmas Eve show to honor the man.

The scenes at the end of "White Christmas", where the General is surprised by his men, dressed in their uniforms, and the reconciliation of Wallace and Haynes, always brings my wife to tears, (perhaps I have been known to shed one or two as well). The movie is full of songs, with Crosby singing "White Christmas" at the beginning and the end, and Clooney doing several numbers with Bing and a solo in a New York nightclub surrounded by dancers that never fail to make my wife break out laughing.

Bing Crosby was 51 years old when he made "White Christmas", his third collaboration with songwriter Irving Berlin, who wrote the song "White Christmas" in 1940. Crosby took that song and made it the top selling record of all time in any genre, until Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana, "Candle in the Wind", eclipsed it in 1997. "White Christmas" had spent eleven weeks on top of the charts in 1942, and returned there for the holiday seasons in 1945 and 1946, the only song to be number one on three separate occasions. Bing first sang the song in the film "Holiday Inn" in 1942 with Marjorie Reynolds, and the tune won an Academy Award for Best Song. In the movie "White Christmas", Crosby also performs a song called "What Can You Do With a General", a tune my wife sings and hums year round. Bing has been gone now almost thirty years, a victim of a heart attack while in Spain in 1977. He was 74.

The role of Phil Davis, Wallace's partner, was originally written for Fred Astaire, but he didn't like the script and the studio then wanted Donald O'Connor for the part. But O'Connor hurt his back, and Danny Kaye was the next choice. The 41 year old Kaye was not in the same league as these two as a dancer, but he handles his chores in this area quite well. He adds his touch of zaniness to his character, and I couldn't imagine "White Christmas" without his talents. Danny Kaye died in 1987, also from a heart attack at the age of 74.

Rosemary Clooney was 26 at the time she starred in "White Christmas", which makes her romance in the film with Crosby, 25 years her senior, kind of icky, but that's Hollywood casting for you. "White Christmas" was Clooney's third film, and in it she sang songs such as "Sisters", "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me", and "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep". Clooney, the aunt of actor George Clooney, received an Honorary Grammy months before her death in 2002.

Vera Ellen, who portrays Judy Haynes in "White Christmas", may have been the greatest female dancer in Hollywood. She was able to perform all types of dances, from tap to ballet, and she was billed as "the thinnest waist in Hollywood". Unfortunately, this was due to anorexia, which caused her to age prematurely. In "White Christmas", Ellen's neck is covered in every scene, even when she is in her pajamas, as it was alarmingly thin. Vera Ellen was 33 when "White Christmas" came out, seven years older than Clooney, even though she was cast as her younger sister. Her singing had to be dubbed, but she wasn't in "White Christmas" to croon. Her dancing scenes are nothing less than phenomenal, especially "Mandy" and "Choreography". Ellen passed away from cancer in 1981.

General Waverly, the boys' favorite army bigwig, was played by Dean Jagger, an actor with over 130 screen and television credits to his name. Although he was playing a part where you would assume he was much older than Crosby and Kaye, Jagger was in fact the same age as Bing, 51. His housekeeper should look familiar to anyone who has seen "Sister Act", as Mary Wickes played the nun that was the head of the chorus in that comedy, one of her over 120 credited roles. George Chakiris, a fabulous dancer, is in a pair of scenes plying his trade, but went uncredited in "White Christmas", seven years before he would win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in "West Side Story". The train conductor that is looking for tickets about a third of the way through is one of those actors who you have seen a hundred times but can never remember his name. In this case, you will also find his voice familiar, since Percy Helton provided the voice for Winnie the Pooh.

There is very little to dislike about "White Christmas". One thing that upsets me is that the mix-up that almost leads to the end of the Bob Wallace and Betty Haynes romance is never explained to Wallace in the movie, but you have to assume that they would have ironed that out later on. "White Christmas" never leaves my wife and me with anything less than a warm feeling, especially when I watch it with her in the middle of the summer.