White Christmas

“White Christmas” is a 1942 Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. The version sung by Bing Crosby is the world’s best-selling single with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Crosby’s, sales of the song exceed 100 million.

Origin

Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat. He often stayed up all night writing. One day he told his secretary, “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”
Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, comedian and actor. The first multimedia star, Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1931 to 1954. His early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Yank magazine said that he was “the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen” during World War II.  In 1948, American polls declared him the “most admired man alive”, ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, Music Digest estimated that his recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.
Crosby won an Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Father Chuck O’Malley in the 1944 motion picture Going My Way and was nominated for his reprise of the role in The Bells of St. Mary’s opposite Ingrid Bergman the next year, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character. In 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording. He was also known for his collaborations with long-time friend Bob Hope, starring in the Road to… films from 1940 to 1962.
Crosby influenced the development of the post-war recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to America by John T. Mullin, he invested $50,000 in a California electronics company called Ampex to build copies. He then convinced ABC to allow him to tape his shows. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape.

Films

In the wake of a solid decade of headlining mainly smash hit musical comedy films in the 1930s, Crosby starred with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in seven Road to musical comedies between 1940 and 1962, cementing Crosby and Hope as an on-and-off duo, despite never officially declaring themselves a “team” in the sense that Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis (Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) were teams. When they appeared solo, Crosby and Hope frequently made note of the other in a comically insulting fashion. They performed together countless times on stage, radio, film, and television, and made numerous brief and not so brief appearances together in movies aside from the “Road” pictures.
In the 1949 Disney animated film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Crosby provided the narration and song vocals for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment. In 1960, he starred in High Time, a collegiate comedy with Fabian Forte and Tuesday Weld that predicted the emerging gap between him and the new young generation of musicians and actors who had begun their careers after WWII. The following year, Crosby and Hope reunited for one more Roadmovie, The Road to Hong Kong, which teamed them up with the much younger Joan Collins and Peter Sellers. Collins was used in place of their long-time partner Dorothy Lamour, whom Crosby felt was getting too old for the role, though Hope refused to do the movie without her, and she instead made a lengthy and elaborate cameo appearance.
He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Going My Way in 1944 and was nominated for the 1945 sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s. He received critical acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic entertainer in The Country Girl (1954) and received his third Academy Award nomination.
High Society In 1956 he starred in another very successful American romantic musical comedy High Society. The film directed by Charles Walters and also starring Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.
The film is a musical remake of the 1940 film The Philadelphia Story starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart.
High Society was the last film appearance of Grace Kelly, before she became Princess consort of Monaco.
Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin;  May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. His music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook. Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy”, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights, and had his first major international hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911. It is commonly believed that Berlin could not read sheet music, and was such a limited piano player that he could only play in the key of F-sharp.

“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin’s native Russia. Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his stated aim being to “reach the heart of the average American,” whom he saw as the “real soul of the country.” In doing so, said Walter Cronkite, at Berlin’s 100th birthday tribute, he “helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives.”
He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him famous before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including “Easter Parade“, “Puttin’ on the Ritz“, “Cheek to Cheek“, “White Christmas“, “Happy Holiday“, “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)“, and “There’s No Business Like Show Business“. His Broadway musical and 1943 film This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, featured Berlin’s “God Bless America“.
Composer George Gershwin called him “the greatest songwriter that has ever lived”, and composer Jerome Kern concluded that “Irving Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music.”
Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101.

Holiday Inn

Holiday Inn is a 1942 American musical film directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Crosby and Fred Astaire, with Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale, and Walter Abel. With music by Irving Berlin. The composer wrote twelve songs specifically for the film, the best known being “White Christmas“. The film features a complete reuse of the song “Easter Parade“, written by Berlin for the 1933 Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer.
The film received a 1943 Academy Award for Best Original Song (Irving Berlin for “White Christmas”), as well as Academy Award nominations for Best Score (Robert Emmett Dolan) and Best Original Story (Irving Berlin).
The song that would become “White Christmas” was conceived by Berlin on the set of the film Top Hat in 1935. He hummed the melody to Astaire and the film’s director Mark Sandrich as a song possibility for a future Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle. Astaire loved the tune, but Sandrich passed on it. Berlin’s assignment for Paramount was to write a song about each of the major holidays of the year. He found that writing a song about Christmas was the most challenging, due to his Jewish upbringing. When Crosby first heard Berlin play “White Christmas” in 1941 at the first rehearsals, he did not immediately recognize its full potential. Crosby simply said: “I don’t think we have any problems with that one, Irving.”

Although “White Christmas” has become iconic, this was not the original intention. The song “Be Careful, It’s My Heart”, played during the Valentine’s Day section of the film, was originally intended to be a bigger hit when production of Holiday Inn commenced.

The song is used during the Christmas holiday sections of the movie, most notably when it is introduced to Linda Mason (Reynolds) by Jim Hardy (Crosby) while she is trying to obtain a position in the shows at the inn. Hardy begins playing the song to her allowing her to join him and eventually perform solo. The song is also reprised near the end of the movie.

Legacy

The success of the song “White Christmas” eventually led to another film based on the song, White Christmas (1954), which starred Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. It was an extremely loose remake of Holiday Inn, with a plot again involving an inn, but otherwise different from the earlier film. Fred Astaire was offered the second lead in the new film, but after reading the script, he declined. The role was then offered to Donald O’Connor, but he was injured before filming began. Kaye ultimately took the role.

A colourized version of Holiday Inn was released by Universal on October 14, 2008. The colourization was done by Legend Films, who used Edith Head’s sketch artist, Jan Muckelstone, as a colour design consultant for costume authenticity.

The name of the Holiday Inn hotel chain was inspired by the film.
White Christmas (Film)

White Christmas is a 1954 American musical directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. Filmed in VistaVision and Technicolor, it features the songs of Irving Berlin, including a new version of the title song, “White Christmas“, first introduced by Crosby in the 1942 film Holiday Inn.

Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film is notable for being the first to be released in VistaVision, a widescreen process developed by Paramount.

Casting

White Christmas was intended to reunite Crosby and Astaire for their third Berlin showcase musical. Crosby and Astaire had previously co-starred in Holiday Inn (1942) and Blue Skies (1946). Astaire declined the project after reading the script and asked to be released from his contract with Paramount. Crosby also left the project shortly thereafter, to spend more time with his sons after the death of his wife, Dixie Lee. Near the end of January 1953, Crosby returned to the project, and Donald O’Connor was signed to replace Astaire. Just before shooting was to begin, O’Connor had to drop out due to illness and was replaced by Danny Kaye.
Within the film, a number of soon-to-be famous performers appear. Dancer Chase appears unbilled, as the character Doris Lenz (“Mutual, I’m sure!”). Future Oscar winner George Chakiris also appears as one of the stone-faced black-clad dancers surrounding Rosemary Clooney in “Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me”. John Brascia leads the dance troupe and appears opposite Vera-Ellen throughout much of the movie, particularly in the “Mandy” and “Choreography” numbers.
White Christmas was enormously popular with audiences, earning $12 million in theatrical rentals – equal to $111,955,390 today – making it the top by a wide margin and the highest-grossing musical film of all-time. Overall, the film grossed $30 million at the domestic box office.
There was a US theatrical re-release by Paramount in 1961.
It now is regularly released in cinemas for Christmas screening.

Influence – The Victors

The Victors is a 1963 British-American war film written, produced and directed by Carl Foreman, whose name on the film’s posters was accompanied by nearby text, “from the man who fired The Guns of Navarone”. Shot on location in Western Europe and Britain. The Victors features an all-star cast – Albert Finney, George Hamilton, Melina Mercouri, Jeanne Moreau, George Peppard, Romy Schneider, Elke Sommer, Eli Wallach and Peter Fonda.

One of the cinematic high points is the detour of one truckload of GIs out of a convoy, for the express purpose of supplying witnesses to the execution by firing squad of a GI deserter (a scene inspired by the real-life 1945 execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik). Depicted in a huge, otherwise empty, snow-covered field near a chateau at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines on Christmas Eve, while the film audience first hears Frank Sinatra singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and then a chorus of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing“, after the fatal shots are fired. This scene is remarkable for its stark, visually extreme imagery, and the non-combat stress and anguish foisted on GIs during a lull in combat.

Source: en.wikipedia.org