White Christmas (1954)

Official trailer

White Christmas is Michael Curtiz’s 1954 American musical depicting two World War II Army veterans turned singing act, Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, who follow a sister act to a Vermont inn and discover the inn belongs to their former general, who’s struggling financially. Bing Crosby plays Bob Wallace. Danny Kaye plays Phil Davis. Rosemary Clooney plays Betty Haynes. Vera-Ellen plays Judy Haynes. Dean Jagger plays General Thomas F. Waverly. Norman Krasna, Norman Panama, and Melvin Frank wrote the screenplay.

Paramount produced the film as the first VistaVision release and the first major-studio Christmas musical built around Irving Berlin’s already-classic song, which Crosby had introduced twelve years earlier in Holiday Inn. From its first number, White Christmas puts me in a good mood. Crosby, Berlin’s songs and that sea of red against the snow in the finale are about as warm as a studio musical gets. The romantic mix-up around the inn is the part I’d happily skip, and it’s the reason this gets an 8.

The film is both Christmas musical and reunion-with-the-general sentiment piece, and the two tones don’t always sit comfortably together. The musical numbers are first-rate.

The plot machinery around the inn and the misunderstanding between Wallace and Betty is conventional 1950s romantic-comedy material that the film occasionally treats as more important than the music. Curtiz’s direction holds it together. The White Christmas finale, where the cast appears in red against falling snow after his old division honors the General, justifies the structural compromises that precede it.

Bing Crosby and the Title Song

Crosby had recorded ‘White Christmas’ for Holiday Inn in 1942 and the song had become his career’s defining single. The 1954 film refranchises the song around a new vehicle. Crosby’s vocal approach by 1954 is even more relaxed than in the original recording, which works for the new context: he’s not introducing the song now but revisiting it as something already belonging to the audience.

The famous closing performance, with Crosby singing it to the assembled Army veterans, is the film’s most efficient emotional payoff. The song carries the war-reunion sentiment that the screenplay has been building toward, and Curtiz lets Crosby do most of the work alone before the ensemble joins.

That closing performance is the moment I’d keep if I could keep only one. Crosby barely seems to try, the veterans are right there in front of him, and the song does the rest. I think it’s the finest thing he does in the film.

Danny Kaye’s Comedy Energy

Kaye replaced Fred Astaire as Crosby’s partner after Astaire withdrew. His comic energy is broader than Astaire’s would have been and shifts the film’s tone toward vaudeville instead of dance-drama. The ‘Sisters’ lip-sync routine, where Kaye and Crosby perform a song originally written for Clooney and Vera-Ellen, is the film’s looseness in concentrated form.

Kaye’s instinct for physical comedy occasionally pushes the film toward broadness that Astaire wouldn’t have produced. The fan-dance routine in particular pulls the film into a tone that sits uneasily next to the war-veteran sincerity. The casting decision worked commercially but altered the film’s center of gravity.

I enjoy Kaye, and the ‘Sisters’ routine delights me, but the fan dance loses me a bit. It feels like it wandered in from a different movie and undercuts the sincerity the General’s story depends on.

VistaVision and Production Design

Paramount used White Christmas to launch VistaVision, the horizontal large-format process the studio developed to compete with CinemaScope. The format’s resolution and color depth show in the Vermont inn sets, the train sequences, and especially the White Christmas finale. Curtiz frames every musical sequence with the new format’s capabilities in mind.

The Vermont inn was constructed on Paramount soundstages with three exterior facades that allowed continuous coverage. The snow is gypsum and bleached cornflakes, the standard practical-effect of the era. The cumulative production value reads as luxurious in 1954 terms and remains visually pleasant in modern viewing.

I’m charmed that the snow is gypsum and cornflakes. The color on those sets is rich enough that the inn feels like a place I’d like to stay a while, and the White Christmas finale is as pretty as anything a studio put on screen in 1954.

Does White Christmas still hold up?

Crosby, Berlin’s score and the closing title number earn White Christmas its holiday status, and those three are the reasons I’d recommend it. The romantic misunderstanding and the inn plot are dated and slow, and Kaye’s fan dance knocks the tone sideways.

Those flaws hold it to an 8. The music hasn’t aged a day, and the veterans honoring their General at the end put a lump in my throat.

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