Director: Mark Sandrich
Cast: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale
Have I Seen It Before: Never. Somehow, I managed to skip it in my nearly 40 years of life, made all the more incredible considering how improbably large a part of my life White Christmas (1954) has become.
Did I Like It: Maybe this will be viewed as borderline sacrilegious by some, but since I’d hardly be considered a true believer, I’m going to say it anyway. There’s something so distressingly flat about a musical in black and white. This film is retroactively saddled with competing with the later, more famous film*. None of this may be my genre, but if you’re going to be singing to me at Christmas, I need bright colors. Technicolor preferred, Vistavision accepted, but something along those lines is absolutely needed.
Then again, it may not be unfair to stack these two films up against one another and find one of them wanting. I remember watching White Christmas for the first time in a number of years recently, and when they get to the dress rehearsal for the Minstrel Number, clenching reflexively at what was about to come. There, it turned out to be not so bad. Here? Well, let’s just say that if you are of a mind to roll through this film, just brace yourself for the number during Lincoln’s Birthday. It’s a symphony of 21st century horrors.
*Oddly enough—and one assumes you’ll forgive me for getting a head start on the yearly trove of Bing and Company trivia, but the Columbia Inn in White Christmas and the titular Holiday Inn here are the same set. I can’t help but marvel at the fact that Paramount was able to preserve such a thing for those particular years. Makes one wonder what reassures might be holed up in warehouse space in any of the major studios.