A GOLDEN AGE CHRISTMAS

In this medley from the “Golden Age” of Hollywood musicals, the Choir’s associate music director Ryan Murphy brings together four favorite seasonal songs that ring with nostalgia and joyful memories. Irving Berlin’s song “Snow,” from the 1954 hit movie White Christmas, started out (with different lyrics) as a song about freedom intended for the 1950 musical Call Me Madam. It was dropped before that show opened, though, and was then later tweaked, with new lyrics, into a holiday tribute to snow, sung as the movie’s main quartet of stars travel to the fictitious town of Pine Tree, Vermont, for the Christmas season.

Songwriters Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin worked together on the music for the 1944 screen musical Meet Me in St. Louis. In this movie, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was originally sung to cheer up the young children as a Missouri family plans to move to New York right before the opening of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Judy Garland’s recording became a hit with American servicemen during World War II, and the song has remained exceptionally popular ever since.

Irving Berlin wrote “Happy Holiday” for the movie Holiday Inn in 1942, the same movie that included the first performance of Berlin’s iconic “White Christmas.” But “Happy Holiday” was first sung as a Christmas song in 1955—in the movie, it is sung on New Year’s Eve. The talented author, dancer, singer, and actor Kay Thompson had written her own Christmas song, “It’s the Holiday Season,” in 1945. She then paired it with “Happy Holiday” for her friend and protégé Andy Williams (later dubbed “Mr. Christmas”), who recorded the two songs together on his acclaimed 1963 Christmas album.