Irving Berlin's White Christmas (1954)

[Edgy MD]

My wife remarked about how much Rosemary Clooney looked like her nephew George, and now I can't stop seeing George Clooney in drag.

[MFS62]

The movie was written when America liked the title song, that had been performed in the movie 'Holiday Inn".
It would have been like producing a movie titled "Maria" after the song in West Side Story.
It was like dozens of Judy Garland/ Mickey Rooney/ Donald O'Connor musicals of its era, but with snow.
Not bad for a "spin-off".

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

I liked Holiday Inn better, even though the story in White Christmas made more sense.

I'm not sure, but I think the real-life hotel chain Holiday Inn took its name from the Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie.

[Guest Mets Willets Point]

I always thought White Christmas was a remake of Holiday Inn that excised the racist blackface number, but apparently the story was different.

[Edgy MD]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I liked Holiday Inn better, even though the story in White Christmas made more sense.

That's not a bad summation, even though White Christmas doesn't have a blackface sequence. ("Who was it set dem darkies free?!")

On the other hand, it does have the hilariously awful "Snow!" song.

The "old man" general whose late-life dignity Bing Crosby was trying to secure was, of course, the same age as Crosby.

[seawolf17]

This is possibly my wife's favorite movie of all time.

[RealityChuck]

My wife loves it.

I think it's mediocre at best. Cloyingly sentimental and a plot that was just plain nonsense (a retired general is not going to go bankrupt; he could get a job just about anywhere in an eyeblink*). The score is most filler, too.

Holiday Inn, despite the blackface, is a better film. The story is cliched, but the songs are better and it's funnier. Plus you have Fred Astaire, who, when he read the script for White Christmas not only turned it down, but asked to be released from his contract with Paramount.

But it better than the stage musical version, which surgically removes everything in the movie that wasn't awful.

*Maybe even Commissioner of Baseball.

[Edgy MD]

I don't know I would guess we had a surplus of retired generals and colonels by 1954, and didn't always know what to do with them.

They're not all as brilliant as John Kelly.

[MFS62]

Sundance Channel is showing it all day today.
Later