In this tinselled Technicolor spectacular, old WWII army buddies Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) are a song-and-dance team who travel to a Vermont ski resort (the Columbia Inn) to stage a mammoth Christmas benefit and save “the old man”, their former army boss, fatherly General Waverly (Dean Jagger), from bankruptcy.
Waverly runs the hotel with the help of his granddaughter, Susan (Anne Whitfield) and his housekeeper, Emma Allen (Mary Wickes).
With romance in the air courtesy of the glamorous singing Haynes sisters, Betty and Judy (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen), the scene is set for marital bliss, but then in a tiresome plot that would have been solved all too easily with a simple discussion dismissing any misunderstanding, Betty walks out on the show and Bob when she thinks the occasion will be horribly commercialised by television.
The show is a hit, snow falls on Christmas Eve, Crosby revives White Christmas, and the boys end up in the arms of Betty and Judy.
It’s hard to ignore Vera-Ellen’s obvious anorexia, no matter how accomplished her dancing was (and she was excellent, outshining her co-stars when she starts hoofing). Vera-Ellen’s weakness was her singing, and she was voice-doubled in the film by Rosemary Clooney’s friend Trudy Stevens.
Inspired by the phenomenal box office success of Holiday Inn (1942) – the Bing Crosby movie that gave the world the Irving Berlin song White Christmas – Crosby and Berlin teamed up again to make this holiday sugarplum the top-grossing film of 1954.
White Christmas was the first film shot in Vistavision, the wide-screen process adopted by Paramount.
Despite the title (and the song), it only snows right at the end of the movie, so the snowfall provides the ultimate happy ending. Unfortunately, the beautiful (artificial) snow that finally falls from the sky was – as in countless other films of the era – made of asbestos – well-suited for the purpose, but extremely harmful to health, as it was later discovered.
Bob Wallace
Bing Crosby Phil Davis
Danny Kaye Betty Haynes
Rosemary Clooney Judy Haynes
Vera-Ellen Major General Thomas F. Waverly
Dean Jagger Emma
Mary Wickes Joe
John Brascia Susan
Anne Whitfield Landlord
Sig Ruman
