White Christmas is an American musical film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Filmed in Technicolor, it features the songs of Irving Berlin, including a new version of the title song, White Christmas introduced by Crosby in the 1942 film, Holiday Inn.
White Christmas was released on October 14, 1954. The budget was $2 million and it made $30 million at the box office. Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film notable for being the first to be released in VistaVision.
On March 4, 1943 Irving Berlin presented himself the Oscar for White Christmas at the 15th Annual Academy Awards ceremony in the Ambassador Hotel's Cocoanut Grove. When he opened the envelope and saw his name, Berlin told the audience "I'm glad to present the award. I've known him for a long time."
Legend says that Berlin prefaced the award with "he's a good kid and I think he deserves it". There were 10 song nominees that year including It Seems I Heard That Song Before from Youth on Parade and I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo from Bambi. But the winner that night was Berlin's classic standard White Christmas.
The name of the inn was the Columbia Inn located in Pine Tree, Vermont. Sadly, the inn isn't real. The exteriors and interiors were all created on the soundstage at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California. So if you try and fine Pine Tree on a map or go there for a stroll you're of luck. The town lives only inside the Vistavision musical that sings and dances nonstop on laptops and TV sets this time of year. No part of the Bing Crosby-Rosemary Clooney romantic comedy was ever filmed in the Green Mountain State. The movie does, however, broadcast an image of Vermont as a simple, rural, authentic place, an image that endures today. None of the tap dancing, waltzing or crooning was filmed in Vermont and the quaint Vermont backdrop is the work of set artists. White Christmas was filmed from September to December 1953 entirely in southern California according to film library archivists at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Pictury Study in Beverly Hills, California. The train station in the movie was filmed on the 20th Century Fox lot. And even some of the other movies that do make lists of made-in-Vermont films were made mostly .. somewhere else.
These days, technology makes it easier for small crews to shoot low-budget movies in Vermont. The Vermont Film Bureau was created in 1981 with Gregory Gerdel, director after state authorities began wringing their hands at the success of the movie On Golden Pond which was filmed next door in New Hampshire and brought the Granite State good publicity.
Anne Whitfield played General Waverly's granddaughter, Susan. Young Susan wasn't more than 16 when the movie was released and is now 82 years old having been born August 27, 1938 in Oxford Mississippi.
When Berlin wrote White Christmas, he said, "I've not only written the best song I've ever written .. I just wrote the best song that's ever been written." During World War II, it was the most famous and biggest selling Christmas song of the 20th century, translated into dozens of languages. Crosby's recording, alone, sold over thirty million copies.
The concept for the movie came from the song, White Christmas which was hugely popular at the time and still is! Berlin built the rest of the songs around what was a loose script adding Count Your Blessings, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me and The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing. The scene with Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen dancing could have paired Vera-Ellen with Fred Astaire had he not turned down the script.
"Snow snow, snow, snow. It won't be long before we'll all be there with snow"
Through the magic of modern technology Michael Buble is singing White Christmas with Bing Crosby.
Merry Christmas
Be Safe.
Pat Locke
