20 December, 2013

White Christmas!

I get nostalgic, here.  It's snowing today.

We love Christmas movies at my house, and the wartime and post war movie White Christmas is no exception.  As a matter of fact, it's one of my favorites.  Those who know me best, know I have a soft spot in my heart for WW II G.I.s and everyone from that generation.  My father's army division, the TenthMountain Division, returned home and founded the American ski industry almost from scratch.  Rope tow and T-Bar hills became ski lift-served resorts.  Those were the salad days for the ski industry, but it came on the heels of K ration days at the battlefront.

You see the parallel to my father's experiences in the movie White Christmas.  It is a vehicle, really, for Bing Crosby's wartime hit song by the same name.  I read this year about how Bing was visiting a UK airbase during the war, but was too emotional to go on stage after witnessing the bombing deaths of children.  You think he was an elite Hollywood star, but he saw some things.  The movie is sappy to some, but there was a reason for spreading some peace and harmony for my parent's cohort.  

Plus, my dad was overseas at Christmas in 1944.  Reason enough to remember the season and to cherish the good times we live in now.  If you dig the Olive Drab version, like me, these first 2 short videos have that.  I added the glorious version from the end of the movie, because that's the way the old timers wanted to experience it.  The clip dialogue is dubbed auf Deutsch, and the song remains as recorded - it is wonderful to watch at high resolution.








2 comments:

Leslie said...

White Christmas is one of our favorites, too. Merry Christmas, Casey.

Casey Klahn said...

Merry Christmas, Leslie!

I just got a DVD of it, paired with IAWL.

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