White Christmas **** (1954, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen) – Classic Movie Review 2,207

The entertaining musical film White Christmas was 1954’s most successful film and is now arguably the most famous Christmas movie of them all.

Director Michael Curtiz’s entertaining 1954 musical White Christmas is a remake of 1942’s arguably even better Holiday Inn that first introduced Bing Crosby’s Oscar-winning song ‘White Christmas’ by Irving Berlin to adoring film audiences.

In any case, White Christmas was 1954’s most successful film and it is now perhaps the most famous Christmas movie of them all. With the warm glow of an old Christmas card, it looks lovely in Loyal Griggs’s colour (Technicolor) and widescreen (VistaVision) cinematography.

And there is an excellent cast to enliven the spirits, with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as army buddy entertainers Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, a successful song-and-dance team who meet glamorous sisters Judy Haynes (Vera-Ellen) and Betty Haynes (Rosemary Clooney), and become romantically involved with them.

Crosby and Kaye arrive for their next engagement at the Columbia Inn winter resort in Vermont, which is owned by none other than their old commanding officer Major General Tom Waverly, played by Dean Jagger. There, because morale is low and business poor, they team up with the sisters, who also have a song-and-dance act, to put on a show to save the failing Vermont inn.

The four stars sparkle vivaciously, singing, dancing and clowning expertly and amusingly, while character actors like Sig Ruman, Mary Wickes and Grady Sutton twinkle away in support. And of course it’s hip, hip hooray for those tremendous, irresistible Berlin tunes, including ‘Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep’, ’Sisters’ and ‘Heatwave’. And even Scrooge’s hard heart will soften when they sing ‘White Christmas’.

Melvin Frank and Norman Panama were hired to add material for Danny Kaye but they said they thought the whole script needed rewriting, and Curtiz agreed. Panama recalled: ‘It was a torturous eight weeks of rewriting’ and Frank added: ‘It needed a brand new story, one that made sense.’ And that’s what they did – for $5,000 a week.

They must have done something right. It was a sensational success: costing $2 million, it took $30 million at the box office.

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace and Danny Kaye as Phil Davis.

White Christmas has one other famous name in the cast: George Chakiris appears as a speciality dancer, Betty Haynes (Rosemary Clooney)’s background dancer. Also in the cast are John Brascia, Anne Whitfield, Barrie Chase, Dick Keene, Herb Vigran, Robert Crosson, Richard Shannon, Johnny Grant, Gavin Gordon and Percy Helton.

This time, ‘Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep’ was Oscar nominated for Best Song. It is a shame for neatness that it did not win, but it is not in the ‘White Christmas’ class.

The song ‘White Christmas’ was conceived by Berlin on the set of the film Top Hat in 1935 when he hummed the melody to Astaire and director Mark Sandrich. Astaire loved it but Sandrich passed. Then six years passed.

For 1942’s Holiday Inn, Paramount Pictures asked Berlin to write a song about all the major holidays, though he found that writing a song about Christmas the most challenging because he was Jewish. When Crosby heard Berlin play ‘White Christmas’ at the first rehearsals in 1941, he said: ‘I don’t think we have any problems with that one, Irving.’

It is the first released in VistaVision, a widescreen process developed by Paramount using twice the surface area of standard 35mm film. The large-area negative was also used for finer-grained standard-sized 35mm prints.

The cast are Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace, Danny Kaye as Phil Davis, Rosemary Clooney as Betty Haynes, Vera-Ellen as Judy Haynes, Dean Jagger as Major General Tom Waverly, Mary Wickes as Emma Allen, Johnny Grant as Ed Harrison, John Brascia as Judy’s dance partner Johnny,  Anne Whitfield as Susan Waverly, Percy Helton as Train conductor, I Stanford Jolley as Railroad stationmaster, Barrie Chase as Doris Lenz, George Chakiris as Betty’s background dancer, Sig Ruman as Landlord, Grady Sutton as General’s guest, Herb Vigran as Novello, Leighton Noble as Novello’s bandleader, Dick Stabile as Carousel Club bandleader, Dick Keene, Robert Crosson, Richard Shannon, Gavin Gordon, and Percy Helton.

Anne Whitfield with Clint Walker in Cheyenne.

Anne Whitfield, who plays Susan Waverly, the grand-daughter of Captain Bob Wallace, died on 15 February 2024, aged 85, after an ‘unexpected incident’ during a walk in her neighbourhood in Washington. She passed away surrounded by her family at a hospital in Yakima, Washington.

She appeared in Juvenile Jungle (1958) and Tick, Tick, Tick (1970).

She had a successful TV career, starring in episodes of Perry Mason, Cheyenne, Rawhide, The New Phil Silvers Show, 77 Sunset Strip, Laramie, Hawaiian Eye, Ben Casey, Peter Gunn, Wells Fargo, Manhunt, The Untouchables and The Six Million Dollar Man, but left Hollywood in the 1970s and moved to Olympia in Washington where she became devoted to ’causes that promote peace and preserve nature’.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,207

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