NRR Project: 'White Christmas' (1942)

 

NRR Project: “White Christmas”

Words and music by Irving Berlin

Performed by Bing Crosby, with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers

Recorded May 29, 1942

2:57

“White Christmas” is the result of America’s dean of songwriters Irving Berlin wanting to tie together a bumper crop of his holiday songs in one film. Berlin was already established as a stellar hitmaker, even before he killed it with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911. His avalanche of great songs, performed on stage and captured on film, dominated early 20^th century popular culture. Everybody knew “God Blass America,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Blue Skies,” “Always.”

Then he wrote the most popular song ever recorded. You can hear the 1942 recording here.

He wrote this song, and eleven others, for the 1942 musical film “Holiday Inn.” It stars Bing Crosby, a New Yorker who sings and who decides to open, on an old farm in Connecticut, an entertainment venue that’s only open on the holidays. He is a rival in love, jostling for the hand of Linda (Marjorie Reynolds, singing dubbed by Martha Mears) against his old pal Ted (Fred Astaire), who gets to display his terpsichorean talents, of course.

It’s pleasant, fun-loving comic romp. And it was Berlin’s idea – he was nominated for Best Original Story at the Oscars that year, and won Best Original Song for this entry – which he wound up presenting to himself.

In various combinations, the three go around the calendar in their club with featured musical numbers for the patrons, allowing Berlin to supply us with songs for Valentine’s Day (“Be Careful, It’s My Heart”) and “Easter Parade” and even Washington’s Birthday (“I Can’t Tell a Lie”).

The film is marred by the fact that there is a blackface sequence. As late as 1942, casual racism still plagued Hollywood, abysmally behind the times – or rather, perhaps, in sinister sync with them. This was not just a number (“Abraham,” a Lincoln’s Birthday bit) but a plot point.

It’s why you don’t see it much any more. Too bad – otherwise, it’s a very entertaining film. It’s marred by a racism that would, eventually, be thought and taught out of existence . . . hopefully.

And the sleeper hit in it is “White Christmas.” Its evocation of home, its perfect expression of feeling, its unspoken desire for something lost, its sheer tenderness and emotional honesty – combined with memorable lyric. And it’s easy to sing. Infectious! How could you not remember “White Christmas”?

So it’s released in May, and by October it’s Number One. It stays that way through the next year. It is said that soldiers away from home made this a hit. Again and again, it crops up, by Crosby in a 1947 update, and then by others, oh so many others. It’s competed with by other “secular” Christmas hits such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman,” but it sits atop the memory tree. It’s still heard everywhere at Christmas time.  

This is the epitome of the American song, heard by hundreds of millions by now, a kind of love song to a time and a place where everything was all right.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Wings Over Jordan (May 10, 1942).