I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...

A remake of Holiday Inn, the 1954 film White Christmas borrows a lot of the same plot, the same lead actor, the same writer/composer, some of the same set, and a few of the same songs as the previous film. Fred Astaire was retired at this point and Bing Crosby's foil was set to be Donald O'Connor, but at the last second, O'Connor was replaced with dancing man Danny Kaye.

The begins with a scene from the final days of WWII where Captain Bob Wallace (Crosby), who is a famous decision, has his life saved by private Phil Davis (Kaye). Post-War, the two them rise to the top as a song and dance duo with their own show and national fine. They recieve a letter from an old army buddy asking them to check out his sister's act. Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy Haynes (Vera Ellen) have a good night club act. Judy and Phil scheme to get Bob and Betty together so Judy can get away from her henpecking sister and Phil can get a few moments of R&R from his uptight partner. The group winds up in Vermont at an inn run by General Waverly (Dean Jagger), their old army general. The general is in trouble and so Phil and Bob stage an act at his inn to draw in customers. Betty begins to doubt the meaning behind why Phil and Bob are helping out the old general and leaves on the eve of the big act, casuing everyone to wonder if the show will go on.

The film went to number one the year it was released. Vera Ellen's voice was dubbed over for most of the songs by Trudy Stevens, except for during the song "Sisters", where both parts of the song were sung by Rosemary Clooney. Most of the dialog for the movie was ad-libbed or improvised. Director Michael Curtiz also directed more than 100 films, including Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Marsaw.com gives a great synopsis, analysis, and review of the film, which can be read here. A brief history of the film can be read here and a timeline for the making of the movie can be read here. I have found two reviews for this movie, this one at Blogcritics.com and this one from FilmForager.com. If you want to test your movie knowledge about White Christmas, you can take this quiz.

A Musical Romantic Switcheroo for the Holidays

Often times considered the first movie made as part of the Christmas genre, designed to target holiday audiences, the 1942 film Holiday Inn has become a holiday film classic. Written by Irving Berlin, the film has an amazing cast of Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds.

When the act of crooner Jim Hardy (Crobsy) and dancer Ted Hanover (Astaire) breaks up, Ted steals Jim’s fiancée Lila Dixon (Dale) and the two run off to pursue an act together. Jim retires to Connecticut. He comes up with an idea to open a nightclub that is only open on the holidays, called the Holiday Inn. Jim goes to visit Lila and meets shopgirl Linda Mason (Reynolds). Lila abandons Ted for a Texas millionaire and Ted turns to drinking. Jim persuades Linda to marry him, only for his new girl to be stolen by Ted with hopes of a Hollywood career. Joe closes the Holiday Inn and mopes around. Not to be defeated, Jim follows the advice of his housekeeper and goes to Hollywood to get back his girl.

The Thanksgiving sequence in the film is a reference to President FDR trying to change the date of Thanksgiving, which happened around the same time the film was made. The Holiday Inn chain, which was founded in 1952, took it’s name from this film. Irving Berlin was inspired to write this film while writing the song “Easter Parade”. The film White Christmas, based off of the “White Christmas” song originally written for Holiday Inn, is based off of this film. Holiday Inn and White Christmas both were written by Irving Berlin, staring Bing Crosby in the lead role, and involved performers entertaining crowds in inns open around the holiday. The same inn was used as a set in both moves. In Holiday Inn, the film is set in Connecticut whereas White Christmas is set in Vermont. During the 1980s, the “Abraham” musical sequence was cut during showings of the film because of the controversy surrounding the use of blackface. You can still see this sequence DVD and when the film is screened on Turner Classic Movies.

For some fun facts on this movie, you can read these, thanks to Mahalo.com. More more information on the film, you can read this article, thanks to classicmoviemusicals.com. Several good reviews of this film can be found online. Eyeforfilm, a UK website does a review that can be read here. Another review can be found here, done by Bright Lights Film. The Foster on Film blog does another review as does Classicfilmsuite.com, which can be read here.

Where are all the musicals?

Are musicals a dying film genre or are they just now making a come back? Sometimes it seems that in early film you couldn’t have a movie unless that movie had a song in it and movie musicals were one of the sure-fire moneymakers for the big studios. Every one of the Marx Brothers' movies have a song in as to the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope Road Movies. There are so many famous movie musicals, most of them adapted from Broadway musicals.

A very short list of my personal favorites are Singin’ in the Rain, Porgy and Bess, Carmen Jones, Guys & Dolls, The King and I, The Jazz Singer, Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, My Fair Lady, No Business Like Show Business, Anything Goes, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Gypsy, and Show Boat. The list could go on and on, but I won’t fill up an entire post with a list of great musicals. The point is that old movies are chock full of musicals or at least song. Sometimes its hokey, sometimes its too sugary sweet and upbeat, but it always adds humor to a comedy or sadness to a drama. I still tear up every time I hear the strains of “Ol’ Man River” from Show Boat.

Of course, the popularity of musicals seemed to taper off in the late Eighties, and Nineties. Sure, there were such classics as Evita and John Waters’ Cry Baby and the Original Hairspray (which I find far superior to the current version. Just saying), but musicals were nowhere near as dominate on the film screen as they have been in the past. Of course, nowadays, musicals seem to be making a comeback. We have Chicago, Moulin Rouge, The Producers, and Sweeny Todd, all movie versions of Broadway plays (or in the case of The Producers, a version of a Broadway play that is a version of a movie). Still, musicals are not as prominent in our culture sphere as they once where.

I have a lot of remaining questions about what happened to the good old-fashioned movie musical. Why is it that studios don’t seen musicals as the seat-filling blockbusters they used to? What about our culture doesn’t seem to enjoy musicals as much as we used to? Did the musicals change or did we?