Having seen Black Christmas, it was time to watch the prequel. So this is one of those old-timey holiday movies that I’ve known about forever, but never really had any interest in actually seeing. So all I really knew about it is that it’s Bing Crosby (aka the poor man’s Andy Williams) crooning his titular song, and I guess I assumed it was just a variety show. Which… actually turns out not to be far wrong.

So the premise of the movie is that we start in WW2, where it’s Christmas Eve and the boys are putting together a little talent show. Bing gets up and sings White Christmas, and everyone’s like wow, amazing, because turns out that he’s not literally playing himself, but he is playing a big Broadway star who I guess got drafted into the army.

A bit later, there’s an attack, and a wall is going to fall on him, but he’s pulled away by one of his fellow soldiers, who’s injured while saving Bing’s life. Bing is all “omg thank you so much, how can I ever repay you?” and the dude — Danny Kaye — is all like “hey, turns out I’m an aspiring Broadway star, what say we become a duo?” And Bing is like ugh, this fucking sucks, stupid showbiz hustle… but fine.

Crash cut to their highly successful career already in progress, and yadda yadda Danny Kaye is trying to get Bing to start a family so he’ll be less of a workaholic, and then they meet two sisters (one of whom is Rosemary Clooney) and schemes ensue and they end up in Vermont and for various contrived reasons, their only path forward is to put on a show for charity, requiring lots of singing and dancing. Will they save the day? Will Bing fall in love with Rosemary and vice versa? Will it actually snow on Christmas?

You know the answers. I think this is a movie that probably wasn’t very good at the time, but is more interesting with age, seeing the culture of seventy years ago. It’s still only interesting, though, and not something that really impresses.

Some random notes:

  1. There’s a part where they’re putting on a “Minstrel Show” and it’s like, welp, here comes the blackface… but it never did. (You will not be shocked to learn that the minstrel show is still viewed as problematic, but also, hey, not literal blackface so it’s something.)

  2. A question I had is, did Irving Berlin (whose name is all over this movie) invent the song for this film? And the answer is: He did invent it, but for the 1942 Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie Holiday Inn, where it won an Oscar for best song. This movie was, in 1954, explicitly a nostalgia piece for a 12-year-old movie, to the point that Astaire was meant to be in the Danny Kaye role, but dropped out of the picture after reading the script. I was going to make fun of the idea of making a reunion movie for something that’s 12 years old, but… well, the only reason we can’t do that with our 12 year old movies is that they never stopped making them between then and now.