Movie #5 – White Christmas. Why is this still a favorite? Despite oozing the 1950s gender perspective, where Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen, two very obvious adult women are called “girls” and “kids,” I watch this DVD every year. Relationship portrayals are pretty much serving as horrible examples (except for the General), built on tricking the object of one’s affections, communication through the “What’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong” conversations, listening in on phone calls, and the cold shoulder along with fleeing the scene as clues to the guess-what-I’m-feeling game.
And yet, again, I watch it every year.
The quartet singing the “Snow” song; Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen dancing; the fall-in-love layout of Columbia Inn, and the because-it’s-a-movie believability of an entire NYC musical cast going to Pine Tree, Vermont to put on their show for the General gives viewers a Christmas story to love.
And then there was Vera Ellen’s teeny tiny waist, which you had to look at in every scene she was in. It was reported to be seventeen inches. White Christmas wasn’t made to be an example of a politically correct film. This was post-Korea 1954. It was, and still is, a feel good movie. “May your days be merry and bright…”
Ethel Lee-Miller is a Tucson writer and author who blogs pretty regularly, and every day at Christmastime.
