Anne Whitfield -- Susan Waverly's White Christmas

 

Susan Waverly, the granddaughter of General Tom Waverly, has a larger role in White Christmas (1954) than might be noticed at first viewing.  She has few lines and is a minor character.  Upon successive viewings (at least once every Yuletide season would rack up a lot of times watching this movie -- some of us watch it more often than that) we see that Susan is a major player.  She's in almost every pivotal scene.

Anne Whitfield was about fifteen years old when she played the part of Susan.  Her passing last March at the age of 85 brought to mind how much I've enjoyed her work over the years -- in television guest roles, and on radio, especially as one of the daughters of Alice Faye and Phil Harris on their radio comedy program -- and certainly as Susan Waverly in White Christmas.  According to her obit online (which you can read here), Anne celebrated the 70th anniversary of the movie by watching it with her family last Christmas. 

Happily for us, a few years ago she did a charming podcast interview with Tammy Tuckey and discussed her impressions of working on the movie. Listen to it here.

We meet Susan for the first time as she enters with an armload of firewood behind her grandfather, played by Dean Jagger (whom, Anne says in the podcast interview was "a sweetie").  Musical performers Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney have just arrived, booked here over the Christmas holidays, to work in Dean Jagger's Vermont Inn.  With them are Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, big-time Broadway producers and performers who have latched onto the ladies.  When Bing and Danny see Dean Jagger coming through the door they are shocked: he is their old army general, and their bumbling salutes and obvious respect are noticed by Susan.  It's quite endearing how she beams with pride over her grandfather (and will again in a famous scene at the end of the movie).

More than pride, Susan has that look of delight to be a fly on the wall in the world of grownups, where from the safety of her own innocence and perhaps insignificance, she can discover all that is profitable about people-watching.  And to Anne's credit, she does look deeply into the faces of the other actors when they are speaking.  This is not only generous to her castmates, it actually strengthens the character of Susan.

We don't really know much about Susan's backstory.  She lives in the inn with her grandfather and their housekeeper, played by the wonderful Mary Wickes.  We assume she is in the care of her grandfather, now retired from the military, because she has lost her parents, but this is never mentioned.  We don't know how long Mary Wickes has been in the general's employ.  Her crusty, no-nonsense repartee with him, particularly when he blows up at her for sending both of his two suits to the cleaners and she reminds him that when he was in the army, "it took 15,000 men to take my place," that perhaps she has been with the family for a long time, maybe even helped raise Susan.  Miss Wickes and Mr. Jagger do seem something like an old married couple at times.

Susan is quiet, kindly, and respectful.  She has no scenes of teenage angst or drama.  We do not see her friends.  However, she is not mousy or a shy child; she actually seems to enjoy being included in the grownups' world.  She moves about the room during the cast party with a tray of cups of coffee, but we also see her mingling in the background, laughing and talking.  When Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen announce their pretend engagement, Susan is in the background, but standing right between them in the shot.

Though she lugs firewood and acts as a waitress in the inn's restaurant, she does not seem to be an overworked drudge, but gives the impression of enjoying tagging along with her grandfather and noticing everyone about her.  She understands the importance of making the inn profitable.  When Bing and Danny come up with the idea of bringing their roadshow to the inn, she remarks, "This will bring in business, Grandpa!"

We find her importance to the setting of the inn, if not important to the plot of the movie, and yet she is present at turns in the plot.  When Mary Wickes eavesdrops on Bing's phone call to New York and misinterprets what she hears, causing problems and misunderstandings, Susan interrupts her with an armload of parcels, "Here's the laundry, Emma."

When Rosemary Clooney trots off to New York, putting distance between her and Bing, Susan brings the note to Vera-Ellen to give her the news.

When Danny Kaye has to keep the general busy so he can't watch the TV show Bing Crosby is appearing on to plan a big surprise for him, Susan offers, "Grandpa, the battery's dead on the jeep."  When Danny fakes an injury to keep the general's attention on him, Susan smiles, catching Danny's wink.  She is not just an observer of grownups' antics; this time she is part of the adventure.

There is famously that lovely look of pride on her face when her grandfather comes down the stairs in his Army uniform (she rates a closeup), and she takes his arm.  "Grandpa, you look wonderful!"  They head into the large restaurant where Bing, Danny, and the general's old unit pay him tribute.   Susan and Mary Wickes step back and give the general his moment in the spotlight. But they are there in the background and we see them.

When the long-awaited snowfall happens, the general steps out onto the porch and basks in its loveliness--and the knowledge that the local ski areas will be booming and so will his business.  Susan and Mary Wickes are standing together in the background, his "womenfolk," moved by the moment and happy for him.

At the end of the film, when we take that long pan down the tables of ex-GIs and their families, everyone toasting to the sentiment of the holiday, Susan sits next to her grandfather at the head table and passes a champagne glass.  Perhaps she gets to take her first sip of the bubbly.  She beams a beautiful smile, enjoying being grown up and yet not so grown up that she will ever forget the excitement of the evening.

Just before "The End," if you look hard, you can see Susan leaning over to kiss Grandpa's cheek a second time.

Anne Whitfield, no older than Susan Waverly, seems to have been just as decent, humble, and mature a young lady as the part she played.  Perhaps that is why, as she stated in the podcast interview, that the role was enlarged by director Michael Curtiz, giving her an extra line, a bit of business, including her in the background of yet another scene--because he liked her.  Me too.

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TODAY, December 19th, I'll be a guest on the podcast Forgotten Hollywood, hosted by Doug Hess.  We'll discuss Christmas movies and my book, Christmas in Classic Films, and renew auld acquaintance with some of our favorites.  I hope you can listen in here at this link.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Requiescat in Pace - Jane Withers

Jane Withers, who passed away at 95 years old on August 7th, was one of Hollywood's greats, who deserves more recognition.  She began as a child of prodigious talent, and grew to be a lovely and generous lady.  She performed on radio, film, stage, and her commercials as "Josephine the Plumber" for Comet cleanser turned out to be one of the longest-running characters on television.  

Her gift for mimicry was splendid, such that during the post-production of Disney's animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) when Mary Wickes passed away, Jane stepped in and finished the role of Laverne the gargoyle, mimicking Mary Wickes' voice and reprising the role in the sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002).

We covered Jane Withers' work here in Paddy O'Day (1935) and Bright Eyes (1934).  She and actress Ann Blyth were devoted friends.  Jane appeared on an episode of This is Your Life in 1959 that paid tribute to Ann, and Ann appeared on an A&E episode of Biography that paid tribute to Jane Withers in 2003. 

From my essay on Paddy O'Day, we leave this image of Jane Withers' gift for friendship, her kindliness, and her loyalty to a newcomer on that movie, Rita Hayworth:

"Rita, 16 years old, was nervous on the set, more terrified than the immigrant she was playing. Jane, nine years old, but already a veteran and the star of the movie, felt protective of her.  Before the cameras rolled, Jane held Rita’s hand and said a prayer to comfort her. 

Decades later, in 1987, when Rita Hayworth died, Jane was asked to deliver the eulogy at her funeral.  She repeated on that occasion the prayer she said while holding Rita’s hand on the set of Paddy O’Day:

 

“Lord, this is Rita and she’s afraid… Please be with her because she’s special.”

Jane Withers is pretty special too."

May she be remembered for her many, many special gifts.

It Happened to Jane - 1959

“It Happened to Jane” (1959) leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling about small towns, lobsters, and trains. The leads Doris Day and Jack Lemmon are delightful in their chemistry, their comedy, and their ability to convey poignancy in their seemingly hopeless financial -- and romantic -- situation. Ernie Kovacs gives a tour-de-force performance as a greedy railroad owner with the aplomb of Snidely Whiplash.


The real star, many would agree, is the location shooting. Set in the fictional coastal Maine town of Cape Ann, it was really shot in the Connecticut River Valley town of Chester, Connecticut. Have a look at my Tuesday’s New England Travels blog for photos of what shooting locations in the movie look like today. Not a lot has changed in 50 years.

By the way, in this movie they sometimes refer to a nearby town called High River. In reality, Chester’s neighbor is Deep River.

In Dan Widener’s “Lemmon - A Biography” (NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1975), Jack Lemmon is quoted as recalling “It Happened to Jane” as “…a charming picture made when you could still do charming films.” (p.162).

This comment boils down, I think, the essence of the appeal this movie has for viewers today. It seems to document a time for us when childhood summers were lush and long, and Norman Rockwell-type towns were idealized.

It also documents for us, unwittingly, the beginning of the age when railroad companies began to cut down their service in an effort to force passengers away so that they could eventually drop passenger service as being less profitable than carrying freight. We discussed this on Monday’s post in “The Out of Towners” (1970) -- which graphically demonstrates the hell of train travel when it hit rock bottom in the last days when railroad companies were privately owned and bent on scuttling themselves. What happened next was the founding of Amtrak, and a new era in passenger train service.

This Saturday the 12th marks the 5th annual National Train Day in celebration of our national railroad. Have a look here for events and information.

The beginning of the end of private railroads -- that led to Jack Lemmon’s and Sandy Dennis’ hysterically horrible train ride -- all starts, it seems, over ten years earlier with Doris Day and her lobsters.

She has a mail order lobster business, and ships her stock -- via train -- to restaurants and country clubs in big cities far away. She receives the disastrous news that her latest shipment of lobsters never reached their destination because the railroad company suddenly cut back on staff to receive and process them. They are shipped back, dead by this time, to her small village.

Among the villagers you may recognize the voice, if not the face, of Parker Fennelly, who plays Homer the depot agent. He grew up in Maine, so his Down East accent is authentic. He was Titus Moody on Fred Allen’s “Allen’s Alley.”

Mary Wickes has a too-small role as the town switchboard operator and want-to-be “newspaperman”. I think my favorite line of hers is when she gets up in the middle of the night to answer a call on the switchboard with the greeting, “I’m warning you, Stupid!”

It’s Jack, frantic, and trying to reach Doris for the 100th time.

Doris Day is a widow with a small son and daughter. Her son is played by Teddy Rooney, Mickey’s boy in real life. Jack Lemmon is her childhood friend and would-be boyfriend. Their relationship is warm, sweet, and supportive, but there is a wall between them that is quite subtle and beautifully played.

As kids, they were a trio -- the third member being the lively, spirited boy, Hank, who grew up to marry Doris. Jack, we hear, was the first to propose -- when they were 12. But Hank, who could charm the birds out of the trees, beat his time. Her husband, now deceased, still casts a long shadow over Jack. One senses the shy boy never got over Doris, and never got over being second best to a more colorful, more dynamic, more charming pal.

Jack is the local small-town lawyer and routinely defeated candidate for selectman. He becomes Doris’ ally and advocate when she attempts to sue the railroad for damages.

The railroad is personified for us by the ramshackle steam train, “the Old 97”, and by the less cozy and not at all darling image of Ernie Kovacs, who plays the miserly mogul bent on squeezing every last dollar he can find. He’s terrific in the role, and one suspects it must have been a part he really enjoyed. He huffs and puffs and threatens to blow everyone’s house down. He bullies his enormous staff, who desert him one by one when his strong-arm tactics to revenge himself on a certain Maine widow with two children becomes too much to stomach. He brandishes cigars, calls women “broads” and is so much a railroad man that he sleeps in a bedroom nook that looks like a sleeper compartment.

One of his flunkies is Casey Adams, who’ll you’ll remember as the goofy husband in “Niagara” (1953) covered here. In later years, Adams went by his real name, Max Showalter. Like the rest of the cast, he was quite taken with the Chester, Connecticut filming locations. He eventually came back and settled in the Chester area in an old farmhouse.

(Goodspeed Opera House on the Connecticut River, photo by JT Lynch)

When he died, he left his collection of film and theatre memorabilia to the famed Goodspeed Opera House (pictured here just up the river in East Haddam) and the newly established Max Showalter Center for Education in Musical Theatre.

Doris Day thought that Chester was a “regular Garden of Eden” -- in an interview with Joe De Bona in the Bridgeport, Connecticut Sunday Herald of July 29, 1962 -- “…although there were too many lobsters in the picture to suit me.

“I don’t like lobsters much, and in that picture with Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs, I was in the lobster business. When they -- the lobsters -- looked at me with those beady eyes! Ugh! But I sure am crazy about Connecticut.”

Doris and Ernie wrangle legally about the railroad’s responsibilities until he cuts off service to the town, leaving them stranded. Though Mr. Kovacs’ character is obviously a silly cartoon, we note in Monday’s post on the train sequence in “The Out of Towners” (1970) and the establishment of Amtrak, that it was the goal of privately owned railroad companies to diminish passenger service in favor of more profitable freight lines.

“You can’t continue to run roughshod over the consumer,” he is advised. Oh, yes, he can.

“Every time one of your crummy commuters gets on my train it costs me four cents!”

Mr. Lemmon has a good line which he says with all the cynicism of his later character in “The Out of Towners” - “The distance between the right and the practical is a shame to the human race.”

The news about the lobsterwoman and the railroad magnate spreads in the media. Steve Forrest, a reporter from New York, is sent to get her story. She takes him on a tour of her town, and we get a history lesson on the composite past of small-town New England, in and around actual historic buildings in Chester, Connecticut, the stand-in for her fictional Maine village. A tour inside the quiet church, inside the town Meeting House, where we later return for town meeting. Actual Chester residents play the townspeople.

“Do you know where you are?!” Jack chastises the townspeople for abandoning the good fight in support of Doris, reminding them of their forefathers, who believed in Revolution.

When they need coal to run the train, they all scavenge some from their own coal bins. You may recall that in mid-20th century most homes and businesses in this country were heated by coal.

Steve is big city boy, a smooth operator and he falls for Doris. She is charmed by him, and flattered by the attention. The dazed, sickened expression on Jack Lemmon’s face when it hits him that he’s in a recurring nightmare of losing Doris to another man is really quite sad.

Another fun aspect to the film is the several real-life celebrities who get cameos when Steve brings Doris to New York. His scheme is to get her on the then popular TV game shows and panel shows to raise money for her legal defense against Mr. Kovacs.

Dave Garroway plays himself, as does Robert Paige of the “The Big Payoff, and Garry Moore, host of “I’ve Got a Secret”. His panel of Bill Cullen, Jayne Meadows, Henry Morgan and Betsy Palmer try to guess Doris’ secret, which flashed on the screen is “I’m Fighting the Meanest Man in the World.”  This segment of the movie cements the slower-paced 1950s world with a dose of real popular culture.

Meanwhile, Jack, left at home with the kids, is flipping out of his mind with jealousy. So frustratingly chaste is his relationship with Doris, that when he sleeps over her house to mind the kids while she’s gone, he fidgets for sleep on her couch. Apparently occupying her bed even when she’s not there is too forward for Jack. Or the censors.

We note the real-life locations in Tuesday’s New England Travels, but here we catch a clue to our Connecticut location with the presence of the television crew from WTIC- Channel 3, the CBS Hartford station.

Jack eventually comes into his own as the hero of the day in a last-minute suspenseful train run on “Old ‘97”, Doris is a genuine heroine to the nation of TV fans, and even Ernie turns out to be a hero in the end.

Despite Miss Day’s dislike of lobsters, I like their family pet, Sam the Lobster, who watches TV with the kids.  Mr. Lemmon makes a mad dash a couple of times to get him back to the water and his holding pen before he dies. He’s right up there with the seagull from “This Happy Feeling” and Samantha the Goose from “Friendly Persuasion” as my among my favorite animal actors. Lassie is all well and good, but I’ve always been more interested in character actors than stars.

Have yourself a happy National Train Day this Saturday. Make your next trip by train, and support the future of passenger rail service in this country.

(The blogger spends some quality time with an old friend.)


Or, just celebrate by cuddling up to a train.

One that isn’t moving.

The Man Who Came to Dinner - 1942

“The Man Who Came to Dinner” (1942) is the kind of sparkling Christmas comedy we don’t see anymore, with more glitz than guilt-ridden messages about finding the true meaning of Christmas. We’re not even looking for it, because it isn’t lost. Here, we are delightfully unburdened with pseudo-morality tales about commercialism. It’s all glamour, and slapstick. If there’s a message at all, it’s about clinging to life with an iron grip and a sense of fun.

Literate scripts are mostly out of fashion, too, and that is the driving force of this movie, taken from the hit stage play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. Monty Woolley plays the noted author, columnist, radio personality and full-time egomaniac who, making a brief Christmas visit to the home of a small-town industrialist, slips on the steps and is forced to spend his holiday with them as an invalid. Mr. Woolley is spectacular, never missing a beat in his sarcasm, his wit, and his impatience with lesser mortals. This is the role he created on Broadway, and deserved to play on film.

Bette Davis is his competent secretary, who is something of a revelation in this role. We’re used to seeing strong performances from her as larger-than-life characters, and waxing melodramatic in weepy flicks, but here she makes a smaller, quiet role pivotal to the story by being the sane and sassy anchor. She is one of the few people who cannot be bullied by Mr. Woolley by virtue of her sense of humor.

At the beginning of the film, we see the ever ditsy society matron Billie Burke fawning over Monty Woolley and inviting him to her home for dinner. She casts a brief sort of “also-ran” inclusion of the invitation to Bette Davis as his secretary. Davis accepts, quietly, with gracious humility and the self-deprecating smile worn by one who is used to being dismissed as unimportant in the great man’s shadow, but who really runs the show. It’s a subtle gesture and tells us more about her character in 30 seconds than another actress would take the entire film to convey.

Davis casts a warm glow of serenity, shaken up only by unexpectedly falling in love with the small-town newspaperman who comes to interview Woolley, and who squires her about at the community ice skating party. Davis’ character takes a header on the ice, and she cheerfully basks in the uncomplicated company of locals who are neither clever nor acerbic, just kind. (I know her character is not supposed to have been on skates before, but you’d think Davis, as a good New England girl, would skate better than that. Tenley Albright she’s not.)

Grant Mitchell (excellent here in “The Secret Bride”), plays the industrialist, proud of his ball bearing factory contributing to the war effort. In his own way he is as equally self-important as Woolley, but is only a big fish in a small pond. Ruth Vivian, playing his fey, fragile, and quite weird sister, along with the wonderful Mary Wickes who plays Nurse Preen, are the only ones in the cast, besides Mr. Woolley, to have appeared in the original Broadway play. (Ruth Vivian went back to Broadway next for “The Strings, My Lord, Are False”, the Elia Kazan flop mentioned in this week’s Tragedy and Comedy in New England.)

Mary Wickes is hysterical from beginning to end, as the severe nurse who gets the lion’s share of bullying from the great man, and who in the end, in her own diva scene, renounces her Florence Nightingale Pledge to serve a suffering mankind and instead get a job in a munitions factory. His obnoxious treatment of her has driven her to thoughts of destruction.

The lines are fast and funny, and almost too numerous to quote. All the lesser characters, just as with Miss Wickes’ final scene, all get great lines to say, too. The local doctor attending Wooley aspires to be an author, and seeks Woolley’s help.

“I’ve just got one patient who’s dying, then I’ll be perfectly free.”

Reginald Gardiner is as quick-witted and sophisticated as Woolley, and does a drop-dead impression of a stuttering Englishman to fool Ann Sheridan. What is perhaps most charming about Davis’ performance is her frequent lapse into delightfully natural giggles at the antics of Gardiner and Woolley playing off each other.

Ann Sheridan is a hoot. The opposite of Davis’ down-to-earth character, Sheridan is off the walls as a self-important, man-grabbing stage actress. Her first scenes playing kissyface on the phone with Woolley, and alternately hollering at her manicurist are hysterical.

Woolley turns the home of the industrialist and his ditsy society matron wife upside down, and even conducts his annual Christmas Eve radio broadcast, complete with a boys choir, in their living room. Jimmy Durante plays a raucous pal from Hollywood who leers seductively Nurse Preen,

“Come to my room in a half hour and bring some rye bread!”

The son and daughter of the house, teenagers who befriend the really-a-nice-guy-under-all-the-bluster Woolley are encouraged to pursue their own dreams and escape from their bourgeois parents. About the only weak link in the chain is Richard Travis, who plays the newspaperman in love with Davis. Probably he does not stand out simply because everyone else in the cast is so over-the-top.

Possibly the funniest aspect of this script is the constant name-dropping. We are told that Woolley’s character is so important, that he is friends with Winston Churchill, the Roosevelts and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that he has received Christmas gifts from Gypsy Rose Lee and Deanna Durbin. New York Governor, and presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey is his lawyer. The film ends memorably with the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt on the phone calling her dear friend to wish him a Merry Christmas.

To anyone with a cursory knowledge of popular history of the late 1930s and early ‘40s, this script is as fresh and funny as if it were written yesterday. However, I wonder if to someone not familiar with these names, does this make a good part of the film a mystery, and that much over-used word to describe old movies: dated?

The play was revived on Broadway in 2000 with Nathan Lane in the role. I didn’t see it (though I have seen another production), and I’m not going to review or compare it, except to imagine that these same topical references would not have had quite the same impact coming from Nathan Lane as from Monty Woolley, no matter how knowledgeable the audience might be on this time period.

And speaking of name-dropping, I’m not going to explain who Tenley Albright is. If you don’t know, shame on you and too bad.

A revival, or film remake, is always nostalgic. But this film produced in 1942 was not nostalgic. It was up to the minute and topical, and late-breaking news. Watching it, it still feels that way, decades later. That is the marvel of it.

May your Christmas have a little glitz, and glamour, too. But without the escaping penguins.

Tragedy and Comedy in New England

Henry Fonda and James Stewart found acting work early in their careers in summer stock on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Both worked with the University Players in Falmouth. Fonda also worked with the Cape Playhouse down the road in Dennis, where a young Bette Davis was an usher, soon to get her own chance to perform onstage under Laura Hope Crews. Robert Montgomery, Constance Collier, Frances Farmer, and Lloyd Nolan all appeared here in their apprentice years. Other movie stars who performed here were Humphrey Bogart, Lana Turner, and Ginger Rogers.

Later on, Fonda, still scrounging for work on the New England summer theater circuit, would do odd jobs at the summer theater in Surrey, Maine, where he chauffeured and picked up guest actor Joseph Cotten’s trunk at the railroad depot.

Humphrey Bogart appeared a little further south in Maine at the Lakewood Theater in Skowhegan.

Jane Wyatt got her start with the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, Mass., where Mary Wickes also played.

Summer stock and road shows were not only for the novice actors. Ethel Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Judith Anderson regularly trod the boards of rather humble New England playhouses, long after they had achieved their fame.

This post is actually to introduce a new blog of mine (Yeah, I know. The Internet really needs another blog) on theatre in New England, past and present. It’s called Tragedy and Comedy in New England, and I hope you can stop by for a visit.

Mary Wickes

Mary Wickes played a series of busybodies, nurses, and nuns, with a quintessential no-nonsense comic flare that was as endearing as it was caustic.

Her film career took off when she brought her Broadway role of Nurse Preen in “The Man Who Came to Dinner” to Hollywood for the screen version in 1942, but after “White Christmas” (1954) where her portrayal of the inn’s housekeeper kept the art of screwball comedy alive in the ‘50s, Miss Wickes headed for what must have been greener pastures in television, where her career lasted several more decades, with a few more forays into films like “The Trouble With Angels” (1966) and “The Music Man” (1962).

Late in her life, it’s especially fun to see an old pro play off a new kid when Mary Wickes plays opposite Whoopi Goldberg in “Sister Act” (1992), and how she adds a deft downbeat of silliness to the character of Aunt March in the classic “Little Women” (1994). There is particular poignancy of her last role, where she voiced the crusty but with a heart of gold Laverne the gargoyle in Disney’s animated feature “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1996). This last film was released after Miss Wickes’ death.

The layers of sardonic meaning she could add to a simple line were her trademark, but she never became shrewish or unpleasant. She had more class in one pratfall than many other actors could achieve as glamorous stars.

Ten Things I Like about White Christmas (1954)

Ten things I like about White Christmas (1954):

1. Mary Wickes, for her wry delivery and her power smooching of Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby.

2. Barrie Chase as Doris, whose “Mutual, I’m sure” and “I sure wish it would happen to me,” crack me up no matter how many times I hear them. If she had not gone to dance with the likes of Fred Astaire, she could have been a great comedienne.

3. Newspaper headlines. Gotta love a film that shows plot exposition with newspaper headlines.

4. The moment when Dean Jagger is saluted by his men at his surprise party.

5. The Edith Head costumes of 1950s street wear. Notice at the house party for the cast nobody is wearing jeans, sweatpants, or “Hard Rock Café” T-shirts.

6. The way motifs are repeated and actors re-used. Patrons of the night club in Florida are the cast that later performs in the Vermont in. In one scene in Florida, if you look between where Bing and Danny are sitting, you’ll see Dick Stabile, who later plays the orchestra leader at the Carousel Club in New York. The girl’s “chiseling rat” landlord, played by Sig Ruman, is later the ex-serviceman in Vermont with the German accent, struggling to get his uniform on over his big belly.

7. The inn, a set remodeled from and meant to invoke the old Holiday Inn set. These are perhaps the only two country inns in New England that have an astonishing amount of space for an impromptu floor show the size of a Broadway musical.

8. The train scenes, especially the musical number “Snow” mentioned previously on this blog. I’ve never been on a train where people carried on like that, but I always hope to be someday.

9. The way the camera pans back at the end of the movie as the crowd sings “White Christmas” and the veterans visit each other’s tables. Usually a film ends focused on the principle characters, but here we see what the movie was about and who the movie was for: the survivors of the war lucky enough to be able to go on with their lives. Love the shot of the little girl being lifted into the arms of her daddy.

10. The way the film evokes personal Christmases past, the way you bring out an old heirloom ornament to hang on the tree. It’s a bit old and scruffy, but it wouldn’t be Christmas without it.