Christmas Madness-Part III

Ask someone their favorite Christmas song, and there's a chance it will be White Christmas. Written by Irving Berlin (who wrote over 1,000 songs), Bing Crosby's recording has sold more than 50 million copies. In fact, one source ranks the song as the number one Christmas hit of all time. It was ranked number two on the Songs of the Century list (second to Over the Rainbow).

Although possibly an apocryphal story, Berlin supposedly wrote the song in 1940, poolside at the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. He often stayed up all night writing. One morning, after writing all night long, he told his secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!"

The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall, Christmas Day, 1941. He recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers for Decca Records in just 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm songs from the film Holiday Inn. At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just said "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving."

The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by the film's first hit song, Be Careful, It's My Heart. By the end of October 1942, however, White Christmas topped the Your Hit Parade chart. It remained in that position until well into the new year. Its popularity may be attributable to the mix of melancholy — "just like the ones I used to know" — with comforting images of home — "where the treetops glisten." These words must have resonated strongly with listeners during World War II. The Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song.

In 1942 alone, Crosby's recording spent eleven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. Re-released by Decca, the single returned to the #1 spot during the holiday seasons of 1945 and 1946, becoming the only single with three separate runs at the top of the U.S. charts. The recording became a chart perennial, reappearing annually on the pop chart twenty separate times before Billboard Magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases.

Following its prominence in the musical Holiday Inn, the composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. In the film, Bing Crosby sings White Christmas as a duet with actress Marjorie Reynolds, though her voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. This now-familiar scene was not the moviemakers' initial plan; in the script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, was to sing the song.

The familiar version of White Christmas most often heard today is not the one Crosby recorded in 1942. He was called to Decca studios on March 18, 1947, to re-record the track; the 1942 master had become damaged due to its frequent use. Efforts were made to exactly reproduce the original recording session, and Crosby was again backed by the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers. Even so, there are subtle differences in the orchestration, most notably the addition of a celesta and flutes to brighten up the introduction.

Crosby was dismissive of his role in the song's success, saying later that "a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully." But Crosby was associated with it for the rest of his career. Another Crosby vehicle — the 1954 musical White Christmas — was the highest-grossing film of 1954.

Crosby's White Christmas single has been credited with selling 50 million copies, the most by any release and therefore it is the biggest-selling single worldwide of all time. The Guinness Book of World Records 2009 Edition lists the song as a 100-million seller, encompassing all versions of the song, including albums. Crosby's holiday collection Merry Christmas was first released as an LP in 1949, and has never been out-of-print since.

Some say Elton John's recording of Candle in the Wind outsold White Christmas. However, after careful research, Guinness World Records in 2007 concluded that, worldwide, Crosby's recording of White Christmas has, in their estimation, sold at least 50 million copies, and that Elton John's recording of Candle in the Wind 1997 has sold 33 million, making Crosby's recording the best-selling single of all time.

Watch Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds in the classic scene from Holiday Inn.