the top grossing movie for 1954 and an instant holiday classic. A sort of a remake of Holiday Inn, it was supposed to reunite Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, but Astaire turned down the part saying he had retired. The screenplay was then rewritten for Donald O'Conner, but when he dropped out, Danny Kaye was tapped for the film. The rest, as they say all too often, was movie history. The film follows the adventures of Bob Wallace (Crosby) and Phil Davis (Kaye), two song and dance men who hook up during the dark days of WWII and go on to become famous as directors and producers of their own variety show. After closing down their show for the Christmas holiday, Bob and Phil go to see a potential act for their show, the Haynes sisters, Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and her younger sister Judy (Vera-Ellen). 
Phil and Judy hit it off right from the start, but Bob and Betty need a little encouragement, so Phil wrangles Bob into joining the girls in Vermont, where they're performing at the Columbia Inn. When they arrive at the inn, Bob and Phil discover that it's owned by their old commanding officer, General Tom Waverly (Dean Jagger). The boys are delighted to see him, until they find out from the receptionist, Emma (Mary Wickes), that the inn is losing money. See, it's not snowing. In Vermont. During ski season.Well, Bob and Phil can't let an old pal from the army down, so they bring all of the cast and crew from their show to Vermont to rehearse over Christmas. But there are bigger problems brewing. General Waverly is feeling forgotten. After all, he's a general, one of the men who won the greatest war of all, an important leader, and he's stuck running a failing hotel and nightclub. So
Bob and Phil come up with another great idea - they'll get as many men as they can find from the general's old division to come up to Vermont to show the general that he's not been forgotten. In the process of arranging all of this, though, Betty thinks Bob is going to use the general's hard-luck story to make a fortune for himself. Which he'd never do. But she won't listen to reason. After much misunderstanding and several testy moments, everybody gathers onstage to praise General Waverly. And as Bob and Betty and Phil and Judy sing "White Christmas," it starts to snow outside. The general is happy, the inn is saved, our two happy couples are headed for marital bliss, and everyone lives happily ever after, which is how a Christmas movie should end. Well, shouldn't it?
White Christmas holds a special place in my heart. I first saw the movie in December 1970, just a few months after my grandmother had died, and the film reminded me of her in some strange way. Maybe it was the set design, maybe it was the music by Irving Berlin, maybe it was the presence of actors who hailed from my grandmother's day. Whatever it was, this film became part of my mental backdrop against which my life has played out. That's what great films do. They seep inside of you and form a part of your subconscious metaphor of the world, the archetype against which you measure everything else in your life. I could have picked a lot worse movies to do this with. I mean, imagine if it had been Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space! But White Christmas is a fun, happy, carefree movie, another of those films that would be better termed a "holiday movie" than a "Christmas movie." It really has nothing to do with Christmas other tha
n the time of year during which it is set. But who really cares about that. There's singing and dancing and beautiful sets and gorgeous costumes and wonderful music by Irving Berlin and its all wrapped up in a luscious widescreen technicolor package (called VistaVision) that will knock your socks off.White Christmas is filmed in VistaVision and it has a runtime of 120 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment