{"id":25299,"date":"2024-12-20T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=25299"},"modified":"2024-12-24T18:33:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T02:33:31","slug":"classic-corner-white-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/classic-corner-white-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic Corner: White Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My friend Heather used to watch White Christmas<\/em> every December. This was notable because she didn\u2019t watch many movies. I knew her for five years and we only ever saw three films together, which seems odd when you consider that I watch them for a living. But Heather always wanted to be out and about — seeing people, doing stuff and getting into silly adventures. She didn\u2019t like sitting still for two hours. I don\u2019t think she had the attention span for most movies. Yet there was something about this creaky 1951 musical that she came back to every year, renting it from the rip-off Comcast cable package she paid too much for and didn\u2019t need. There was some childhood connection there that I never quite got a handle on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White Christmas<\/em> really isn\u2019t much of a Christmas movie. The holiday is tacked on almost as an afterthought, like they had to include it because they owned the song. It\u2019s more of a backstage musical with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as Broadway superstars putting together a benefit show for their old, retired Army general, who\u2019s sunk his pension into a Vermont ski lodge that\u2019s languishing during a snowless winter. The fun stuff in the movie is our boys romancing a singing sister act played by Rosemary Clooney and the dazzling Vera-Ellen, with initial, bantering dislike blossoming into love after a few benign plot complications and half-overheard conversations. They\u2019re all awfully cute and it\u2019s written in such a way that nobody has to try very hard. A charming picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder how Heather responded to the movie as a kid growing up in the projects, especially after her mom abandoned them all to spend more time with her drug habit. What was it about these genial, old-timey performers singing Irving Berlin standards that still resonated enough to keep a twenty-something girl home in front of the television on a Friday night? I\u2019m sure Christmas had a lot to do with it. Heather loved Christmas. She used to belt out Christmas carols in July, driving everyone at work slightly bonkers with sudden shouts of \u201cFa-la-la-la-la!\u201d and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m still not sure exactly when we became friends. I had recently moved to an unfamiliar town and taken a restaurant job because my writing career was in the toilet. I didn\u2019t know anybody in the area and had no idea what I was doing at work. Most people there seemed pretty aggravated by my incompetence. But not Heather. She just decided one day that we were friends and that we\u2019d be getting drinks after our shift. I didn\u2019t really have any say in the matter. And we were off to the races.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in a dark, depressive period of my life and she made a point of dragging me out of my shell, making me sing karaoke, even Christmas carols. She was such a gregarious girl \u2013 such a gigantic personality — it was impossible to be in a bad mood around her, no matter how hard I sometimes tried. Heather had a Boston accent so thick I don\u2019t think I ever heard her pronounce the letter \u201cR.\u201d Even her name tag at work said \u201cHeatha.\u201d She drove a Ford Explorer that she called Dora. \u201cYou know, like Dora the Explora.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people assumed we were romantically involved, but I don\u2019t think that ever occurred to either of us. We were pals. Good drinking buddies. She got me out of my head when it was a scary place to be. I\u2019m not sure what she got out of being friends with me. Some people told me I was a stabilizing influence on her, which is crazy considering where I was at the time. Like I said, I still don\u2019t know why she picked me. But we had fun together for a good long while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Heather\u2019s last Christmas ended with a brawl. Her sister had married into money and it was always tense between them. The two were hitting the Jameson pretty hard and their holiday dinner became a full-on, hair-pulling throwdown that sent both tumbling down the apartment stairs and into the street. Heather called me on FaceTime the next morning with a big black eye and a split lip. I told her she had to go talk to Jesus right away and apologize for ruining his birthday. She thought that was hilarious. I didn\u2019t know what else to say. I think I told her to go watch White Christmas<\/em> again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the following summer she\u2019d gone pretty far off the rails. The last time I saw her we had a huge fight, again about the fucking drugs, and I told her I wasn\u2019t going to write her obituary. We made up later that evening and wound up joking about it. I said she couldn\u2019t afford my rate. The next day I went on vacation to New York City and talked to a dear friend who leads a recovery group about what else I could be doing here. He gave me some good advice, but by the time I got back to town she was already dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t watch White Christmas<\/em> that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first Christmas without her was brutal. She\u2019d been gone six months by then, so all the shock and condolences had worn off and I was deep to the blank emptiness of grief that nobody quite knows how to warn you about. It\u2019s like a nagging, damnable absence following you around all the time. One Sunday afternoon that December, I\u2019d run into an ex-girlfriend at a movie and decided that was my excuse to just drink for the rest of the day. Then I stayed up all night arguing with internet trolls and lashing out at anyone who had ever said an untoward word to me on social media, pouring all my rage into shitty put-downs and self-righteous indignation, desperate to make someone out there at the other end of the keyboard hurt as badly as I did. It didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I make it a point to watch White Christmas<\/em> every year now. I still get pretty bored during the second hour when the screenplay makes everyone mad at each other for dumb reasons just to keep them apart until the ending, and I\u2019m never not on the edge of my seat when the characters start singing about how much they love minstrel shows, a production number that misses infamy by mere millimeters. But I try to forget all the useless trivia I know, like this being the first movie shot in VistaVision, and instead think about why my friend Heather loved it so.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are movies you watch at a certain age that can\u2019t help but bring you back to where you were when you first saw them. Especially when they\u2019re about a holiday that already puts people in a reflective mood. There\u2019s an innocence to White Christmas<\/em> that\u2019s still awfully appealing, spending time with these kind singers and gentle soldiers who don\u2019t have a mean bone in their bodies. It returns you to a time before you realized that the people you love could leave you, or die of drug overdoses while you\u2019re on vacation in New York. The movie ends with a gorgeously idealized, greeting card dream of a perfect Christmas. Just like the ones she never knew. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“White Christmas” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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