'White Christmas': The Ultimate Christmas Movie Classic

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What do you do with a general when he stops being a general? Give him a Christmas that’s merry and bright — and most definitely white! The 1954 film “White Christmas” remains an iconic Christmas classic to this day.

Bing Crosby, the Oscar-winning megastar “Voice of America.” A score by Irving Berlin, composer of the most popular song of all time (“White Christmas”). Vera-Ellen, one of the most talented female dancers of the age. Michael Curtiz, director of one of the top movies in Hollywood history (“Casablanca”).

Beautiful starlet Rosemary Clooney and hit comedian Danny Kaye. Academy Award-winning actor Dean Jagger. Legendary costume designer Edith Head. All this talent and more was lined up for the 1954 movie “White Christmas.” Bing’s comforting words to Berlin during production of the film featuring the title song “White Christmas” that “there’s nothing we can do to hurt this song” could apply equally well to the movie. They had a hit on their hands before they ever started filming; there was little they could do to louse it up.

The song “White Christmas,” which remains the top-selling single of all time, actually debuted years earlier, at Christmastime 1941. Bing Crosby introduced it mere days after the attack on Pearl Harbor launched America into WWII. Crosby would go on to sing Berlin’s hit in the movie “Holiday Inn” — and to thousands of soldiers on his tours to entertain troops during the war.

Bing later said the most difficult moment of his career was singing for troops before the bloody Battle of the Bulge. And the one song soldiers always wanted to hear was “White Christmas,” with its wistful nostalgia. Bing fought back tears as he sang the beloved Christmas song before the Battle of the Bulge. Appropriately enough, when the movie “White Christmas” was made in the 1950s, the film started off with Bing’s character singing “White Christmas” to troops on a bombed-out battlefield. For Bing, it was more than acting.

One of the most valuable inside sources for the film, which was released 70 years ago in (then) brand-new VistaVision style, is Rosemary Clooney, who was one of the stars, and who years later did an interview fondly recalling the movie that made her a star and triggered a close, life-long friendship with Bing Crosby. Clooney met Bing before work started on the movie, and remembered being so nervous at meeting the most famous and popular star of the time that she misspoke embarrassingly!

Bing evidently didn’t mind, because he and Clooney became fast friends during the movie. “[My] fondest memory is just being able to further the friendship, deepen the friendship I had with Bing,” Clooney stated. They remained close right up to his death. Clooney also made a friend in Mary Wickes, who played the nosy housekeeper. And Clooney found her own character in the film particularly charming because she played one in a sister act, as she had done in real life as a young girl with her sister Betty.

Bing was not only charming to Clooney; he could be genuinely kind, and Clooney wasn’t the only co-star of “White Christmas” to try and strike up a friendship with him. Clooney recalled that Danny Kaye didn’t mind that the movie was really “Bing’s show” but would go out of his way to make Bing laugh. Kaye was not the first pick for the role — first, it was supposed to be dancer Fred Astaire and then dancer Donald O’Connor (who got sick) — but he brought his own unique comedic style to the film.

If you want to see what Kaye’s clowning for Bing’s benefit looked like, just watch the scene where Kaye and Bing perform a silly version of the “Sisters” song. Kaye and Bing were joking around on set one day, imitating the classic “Sisters” routine that Clooney and Vera-Ellen performed, and director Michael Curtiz realized he had a great scene in the making and decided to film the two. Ultimately it turned into the movie scene.

But Kaye apparently thought Bing was being a little stiff because he started whacking Bing with the large feathered fan. Bing cracked up for real. By the end of the scene, you can see Bing laughing so hard that he’s not even lip-syncing properly anymore! Likewise, while filming the finale, Kaye kept singing his line so loudly that Clooney would start laughing and ruin the take. Of course, Bing could improvise too. Clooney said that Bing’s witty conversation in the scene where he connects different types of midnight snacks with different dreams was largely ad-libbed.

Another funny story from the filming of “White Christmas” is that, after the actors had finally finished filming the elaborate ending sequence, they were told they had to do it all over again and pretend it was the actual “take” because the king and queen of Greece wanted to come in and see a real movie being made. Bing immediately exclaimed in exasperation, Clooney recalled and announced to her that he wasn’t sticking around for anyone. In the true American spirit, Bing went off to play golf, king and queen or no king and queen. So the cast performed the scene again — without the lead star!

The film was a smash hit, the biggest movie of the year, and it continues to be loved to this day. As noted above, 2024 is its 70th anniversary, and so it is peculiarly appropriate that this year Bing should have topped the charts for the first time in decades, including with the new “White Christmas” duet featuring his voice with that of BTS’s V. It is good to see the ultimate Christmas crooner re-popularized years after blatant lies wrongly dimmed his reputation.

Rosemary Clooney was not the only person to find new fame after the film; George Chakiris, memorable as the handsomest of the four male dancers surrounding Clooney in her solo song, would go on to star in “West Side Story” and nab an Oscar.

“Clooney didn’t need anybody around her, she was so beautiful in that number,” Chakiris declared years afterward. But he was delighted to have been her backup anyway; “luckily for us,” the director et al. wanted the dancers there. “It was great,” Chakiris declared.

Yes, it was great; not just Clooney’s solo but the whole movie, stars, extras, sets, script, songs, costumes, improvisations, and all. The comedy of Kaye and Bing, the singing of Bing and Clooney, the dancing of Vera-Ellen and company, the acting of Bing, Jagger, Wickes, and the rest. The storyline of soldiers returning to the home front and trying to adjust to and be happy in civilian life. The two romances causing thrills and heartaches between the four stars. The finale where two veterans show their down-on-his-luck commander he’s loved by bringing back a whole company of troops to cheer and salute him. There are laughs and tears, songs and dances, drama and comedy, guns and uniforms, tap shoes and evening gowns.

“White Christmas,” like its title song, is truly a classic for the ages, an unforgettable and heartwarming Christmas tale showcasing so much of the best of American entertainment and the Golden Age of Hollywood.