This segment is a retelling of the story of John Chapman, who spent most of his life roaming the Midwestern United States (mainly Ohio and Indiana) in the pioneer days, and planting apple trees, thus earning his famous nickname. White Christmas was enormously popular with audiences, earning $12 million in theatrical rentals – equal to $114,245,353 today – making it the top moneymaker of 1954 by a wide margin[14] and the highest-grossing musical at the time. [14], Favourite Disney juvenile actors Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten, who also starred in Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart, appear in the last sequence as the two children who hear the story of Pecos Bill (. According to a source, upon reviewing the music that Ken Darby had composed for Johnny Appleseed, Walt Disney "scorned the music", describing it as "like New Deal music". [16], On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a "Certified Fresh" 77% critical approval rating based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10, and an 88% audience approval rating based on 50,101 reviews, with an average rating of 4.34/5. [28], The Andrews Sisters: A Biography and Career Record author H. Arlo Nimmo said "in general, [the Andrew Sisters-sung] Melody Time holds up well, and the story of 'Little Toot' is as appealing to today as when it originally appeared fifty-some years ago". [7] Clips from the beginning and end of this short showing a horse-drawn sleigh (along with the Carfaces and their blue horses) are featured in Disney's Very Merry Christmas Songs, which is part of Disney's Sing Along Songs, as a background movie for the song "Jingle Bells" (also belonged to the Carfaces and their blue horses). [8] Crosby and Kaye also recorded another Berlin song ("Santa Claus") for the opening WWII Christmas Eve show scene, but it was not used in the final film. The lovers are named Jenny and Joe (unlike most Disney cartoons, Jenny and Joe do not have spoken dialogue in this cartoon). Directed by James Head. A woman visits her parents for Christmas. The film was originally released in USA, Brazil, and Argentina in 1948, in 1949 in Australia and in 1950 in Mexico and Uruguay. After the war, the two make it big, first as performers, then as producers, launching a hit musical, Playing Around. He adds Variety's quote: "'Little Toot,'...is colorful and engrossing. These songs are performed individually by Crosby, Clooney, and Kaye. [21], Melody Time was unusual in that, until 1998 (50 years after its initial release), it remained "one of the handful of Disney's animated features yet to be released on videocassette". [4] A 1948 review by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described it as a "mixture of fantasy, abstraction, parable, music, color, and movement".[5]. The various taglines of the film were: "For Your All-Time Good Time! It was also featured in Sing Me a Story with Belle. It was very exciting to work with Disney-he was such a gentleman". They did the job at $5,000 a week.[13]. While the shorts "contrast in length, form, and style", a common thread throughout is that each "is accompanied by song[s] from musicians and vocalists of the '40s"[9] – both popular and folk music. It says the simple story of Johnny Appleseed is done with "touching perception". NEXT: The 10 Best Hallmark Christmas Movies, Ranked These package features were "little-known short-film compilations that Disney produced and released as feature films during World War II". Upon arriving in Vermont, they find all the tourists have left due to no snow and unseasonably warm weather. He also spread Christianity. He described the singing as "unremarkable but narrat[ing] the...story cleverly". When Melody's neighbor, Nina, learns that her lymphoma has returned, Melody vows to keep Nina's kids, Holly & Ivy, together. The second edition of the biography corrected that error by adding this: "Appropriately, they sing "Sisters" with Rosemary Clooney actually dueting with Trudy Stabile (wife of popular bandleader Dick Stabile), who sang under the stage name Trudy Stevens and who had been personally recommended for the dubbing part by Clooney. [19] As opposed to Fun and Fancy Free, whose story was bound to the tales of Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk, in this film "Walt Disney has let his animators and his color magicians have free rein". Andrew Sisters give it popular vocal interpretation", and said that although The New York Times preferred the film to Make Mine Music the magazine added "The Andrew Sisters sing the story...not very excitingly". He also included Metronome's indifferent comment: "The Andrew Sisters sing a silly song about a tugboat". On Disney+, the smoking scenes were left intact for the first time in 80 years. Christmas Tree Lane. ", A 1998 Chicago Tribute review of the film, in honor of its VHS release, described the film as a "sweet, old-fashioned delight and one of the few Disney animated films that pre-schoolers can watch alone without danger of being traumatized", but also added that the younger generation might be bored by it due to their being "attuned to the faster, hipper rhythms of the post-'Mermaid' era". A corporate agent is sent to a small town to buy a cookie company and shut down its factory. [22], Melody Time was first released on January 25, 1987, in Japan, on Laserdisc, and then on VHS on June 2, 1998, under the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection title.[23]. Bob and Phil improvise a performance to buy the girls time, then flee to the train, where they now have to sit up in the Club Car, much to Bob's chagrin. [17] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was not impressed: "...the use of VistaVision, which is another process of projecting on a wide, flat screen, has made it possible to endow White Christmas with a fine pictorial quality. [3] Rose Pelswick, in a 1948 review for The News-Sentinel, described the film as an 'adventure into the intriguing make-believe world peopled by Walt Disney's Cartoon characters". Betty sees Bob go on Harrison's show and invite the entire 151st division to secretly join him at Pine Tree to surprise General Waverly, at Bob and Phil's expense. In a review at DVDizzy, it is noted that if one has an interest in the shorts, one will "probably be upset to know that Disney has decided to digitally edit out contents of the 50-plus-year-old frames of animation". Director Michael Curtiz has made his picture look good. On the former, the song "Sisters" (as well as all of Clooney's vocal parts) was recorded by Peggy Lee, while on the latter, the song was sung by Clooney and her own sister, Betty. It said that Bumble Boogie "reverted back to fantasia-like interpretive technique". Stars … With Andrea Roth, Nicholas Brendon, Elisa Donovan, Bruce Davison. After Waverly departs, enemy bombers attack the area and everyone takes cover. HOLIDAY FILMS A GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PASTWilson, John M. Los Angeles Times 25 Dec 1984: h1. Its latest release was on June 6, 2000, on VHS and DVD as part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection. The first US DVD release was in 2000. He highlighted the "slapstick...impressive montage of Bill's impressive feats" as a "true treat". White Christmas is a 1954 American musical film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen.Filmed in Technicolor, it features the songs of Irving Berlin, including a new version of the title song, "White Christmas", introduced by Crosby in the 1942 film Holiday Inn.. [11] Just before shooting was to begin, O'Connor had to drop out due to illness and was replaced by Danny Kaye, who asked for and received a salary of $200,000 and 10% of the gross. This segment is based on the story of Little Toot by Hardie Gramatky, in which the title protagonist, a small tugboat, wanted to be just like his father Big Toot, but could not seem to stay out of trouble. The photo Vera-Ellen shows of her brother Benny (the one Phil refers to as "Freckle-faced Haynes, the dog-faced boy") is actually a photo of Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in the Our Gang film series, in an army field jacket and helmet liner. The Dinning Sisters provide the vocals while organist Ethel Smith appears in a live-action role. Before being photographed each cel was laminated in clear lacquer to protect the pastel. It also notes that the abstraction ends after Trees, and the final three shorts are "story-sequences". They were "financially (and artistically) lightweight productions meant to bring in profits [to allow the studio to] return to fairy tale single-narrative feature form", an endeavour which they successfully completed two years later with Cinderella. The music is courtesy of Freddy Martin And His Orchestra (with Jack Fina playing the piano) and is a swing-jazz variation of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee, which was one of the many pieces considered for inclusion in Fantasia. Davis shields Wallace from a collapsing wall and is wounded by debris. From December 1948 (UK) to 15 September 1954 (Denmark) the film was released across Europe. Once again on Christmas Eve, the soldiers surprise General Waverly with another rousing chorus when he arrives at the show, bringing him to tears. Photos from A Christmas Melody. He described the "manic interpretation" of Flight of the Bumblebee known as Bumble Boogie, in which a bee terrorized by musical instruments and notes "change[s] colors and outlines from one moment to the next as the backgrounds seamlessly dissolve, change or morph around him", as "Disney's best piece of surealism since the 'Pink Elephant on Parade' sequence in Dumbo". [12], The film's final segment is about Texas' famous hero Pecos Bill. [citation needed]. She and the buyer are single, divorced and have a child each. With a total running time of "22 minutes, [it] is the lengthiest piece". Since 2012, Chabert has been producing one Hallmark movie after another, including eight Christmas classics: Matchmaker Santa, A Royal Christmas, Family for Christmas, A Christmas Melody, A Wish for Christmas, The Sweetest Christmas, Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe, and Christmas in Rome. [21][22][23][24][25][26] The musical played a limited engagement on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre, from November 14, 2008, until January 4, 2009. ", and "Walt Disney's GREAT NEW MUSICAL COMEDY". Within the film, a number of soon-to-be famous performers appear. "[15] The scenes are removed on the Gold Collection DVD release[12] although the Japanese laserdisc and the version of the DVD released in the United Kingdom are uncut. The most recent US issue was a 4-disc "Diamond Anniversary Edition" in 2014. On the wall at the studio they had the whole story in picture form. [11], This segment has Donald Duck and José Carioca meeting the Aracuan Bird, who introduces them to the pleasures of the samba. Phil and Bob decide to invite some of the cast of Playing Around to Pine Tree to stage a show to draw in the guests, and include Betty and Judy in the show. [20], Melody Time was the last film The Andrews Sisters took part in. Wallace asks how he can pay back Davis for saving his life, and Davis suggests they become a duo act. At 9 she had a BFF in the woods nearby named Han Solo. This segment was later edited on the film's NTSC video release (except the PAL release) to remove all parts with Bill smoking a cigarette and almost the entire tornado scene with Bill rolling his cigarette and lighting it with a lightning bolt. After the performance, the four meet, and Phil and Judy immediately hit it off. However, this backfires when Betty accepts a gig in New York and leaves. "[6]) It was not possible to issue an "original soundtrack album" of the film, because Decca Records controlled the soundtrack rights, but Clooney was under exclusive contract with Columbia Records. Crosby and Astaire had previously co-starred in Holiday Inn (1942) – where the song "White Christmas" first appeared – and Blue Skies (1946). He was raised by coyotes (similar to how Mowgli was raised by wolves in The Jungle Book) and later became the biggest and best cowboy that ever lived. Bob decides to call up Ed Harrison, another old Army buddy who now has his own variety show, for help. Bob later finds out that Waverly received a humiliating rejection letter to his request to rejoin the army, and determines to prove to the General he is not forgotten. Find out more about the cast of the Hallmark Channel Original Movie "A Christmas Melody," starring Mariah Carey, Lacey Chabert, Brennan Elliott, and Fina Strazza. A Christmas Melody Cast. The accompanying music is the 1914 polka Apanhei-te, Cavaquinho by Ernesto Nazareth, fitted with English lyrics. "[31] Film historian J.B. Kaufman has noted that the segment is a cult favorite among Disney fans. 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