Warning: this post is about Bing Crosby, not global warming.
Sunday night, I made a typical TV-watching trade with my wife. I agreed to watch the holiday schmaltz-fest White Christmas on Lifetime after she agreed to watch an old Doctor Who I had saved on the DVR.
I was pretty pleased with how I thought this was going to turn out. After a decade of being forced to watch White Christmas each year, I now secretly enjoy every absurd minute of it. The musical numbers on the front lines in World War II Germany? The extravagant production values of a show in a barn in Vermont? Bring it on.
Call it Stockholm Syndrome if you like, but you have to admit that Danny Kaye is one hell of an entertainer.
Much to my dismay, however, things did not turn out the way I had planned.
Lifetime has totally butchered the film to make it fit into a two-hour time slot with commercials, eliminating several of the best (read corniest) musical numbers (“Snow”, “Choreography”).
The resulting product points out the cluelessness of the cable network. If a fifty year-old movie is a perennial holiday favorite, did they think that people wouldn’t notice that large chunks of it were missing?
Or maybe some network hack thought he could improve on the work of director Michael Curtiz, director of over a hundred other films including a little known work called Casablanca.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
As soon as I realized they’d skipped “Snow” I turned it off!
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Watch the DVD. The commentary by Rosemary Clooney is priceless. Regarding Danny Kaye – this is the only movie he made in which he can be tolerated.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Anyone who would cut the spectacular beret-and-eyeliner combo of “Choreography” – nay, anyone who would cut a single minute of this brilliantly classic film – is an idiot. Get your wife the DVD!
December 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Hey, don’t knock Danny Kaye – he was in the Twilght Zone…
December 13th, 2008 at 9:03 am
We had recorded this and tried to watch it last night. Any sponsors that bought time after they cut Snow from the airing should get their money back.