White Christmas

December 3, 2014 12:25 PM

Would anyone else be interested in a discussion of White Christmas (1954)? It doesn't include Gene Kelly's butt, but is available for streaming on Netflix.
posted by drezdn (14 comments total)

Can we combine it with a watch of Holiday Inn (1942)? I think the combination of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire (with a rare casting of Fred as the Bad Guy) is more fun than Crosby and Danny Kaye. It's fun to see how they reuse and rework some of the same material.
posted by rikschell at 7:20 PM on December 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'd be fine with combining them.
posted by drezdn at 4:25 AM on December 4, 2014

I can't ever remember which is which (this OUTRAGES my sister) so watching both and doing a comparison seems like I good idea.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:47 AM on December 4, 2014

Holiday Inn is the one with blackface.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:25 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

To be fair, White Christmas does have the number about how awesome minstrel shows were, they just didn't do it in blackface.
posted by drezdn at 9:21 AM on December 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, I am in for this.
posted by julen at 12:27 AM on December 5, 2014

Would you, drezdn, be interested in combining this with the holiday movie club?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:39 PM on December 5, 2014

Count me in.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 9:35 PM on December 5, 2014

Would you, drezdn, be interested in combining this with the holiday movie club?

Works for me.
posted by drezdn at 9:58 AM on December 7, 2014

The way to do that is use the tag 'holidaymoveclub' on the post. Thank you.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:58 PM on December 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Holidaymovieclub
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:30 PM on December 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you're going to do a rewatch, Tom and Lorenzo's recap of White Christmas is a must-read.
posted by orange swan at 5:22 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

A bit of Googling indicates they edit out the blackface scene for tv broadcast with Holiday Inn, so a person can be forgiven if they didn't know about that or blocked it out.

I mostly remember it for how great the firecracker dance is.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:12 PM on December 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Holiday Inn is one of those painfully complex pieces of Americana, painfully racist (not only for the blackface "Abraham" number but the "Mamie" caricature), but also much tighter, better scripted, more full of adventurous talent than WC. Still, I get a lot of enjoyment out of both without being unaware of the harshness of the reality that stuff represents.
posted by Miko at 8:29 PM on December 11, 2014 [1 favorite]