White Christmas: The Spring Musical

At the turn of the 19th century, the Berling’s, a jewish family, finds themselves fleeing Imperial Russia alongside thousands of other families like them, all of them seeking a new life in The United States. Their twelve year old son, Irving, would find himself sitting in a hotel room in La Quinta, California. On this sweltering Californian day Irving was writing music in his room, as he usually did. A few days later, he would come out of his room and tell his secretary “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote”.

One year later, on Christmas day, 1941, just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bing Crosby would sing Irving’s song White Christmas to the public for the first time. Millions of Americans would  tune in to hear what would become the top song of the Billboard Charts for eleven weeks and become the most sold song across the world, selling over 50 million copies. Today, it has sold more than 100 million.

In 1948, Irving Berlin would pitch a movie idea to Paramount Pictures, featuring his hit song. Paramount would then give Irving 2 million dollars to film his movie.

Titled “White Christmas” after his song, the movie follows hit Broadway actors Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, who make an act together after WWII. The story is a conflict between Davis, who is making an attempt to get his old friend hitched, and Wallace, who is trying his best to do something good for his old general in the army, who Wallace and Davis are reunited with in Vermont, accompanied by the Haynes sisters, who are another up-and-coming act in Broadway. 

The majority of the musical takes place at the general’s inn in Vermont, where Phil Davis and Judy Haynes try to hook up Bob Wallace with Bettey Haynes, whilst all the same the four of them are trying to save the inn from going under during a snowless Vermont Christmas. 

This show was selected as our Spring Musical for our Drama Club.

Directed by Shay Chalupa with music by Rob Hiebinsky, auditions for the show will occur on January 29th and dance auditions will happen on the 30th, and the show will open on April 27 and run through the 29th.