In your recent cover story on Christmas Classics, you say White Christmas was a remake of Holiday Inn. White Christmas is a totally different movie featuring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney.
—M. Morton, Orono, Maine
Indeed, Holiday Inn (1942) and White Christmas (1954) were different movies. Yet, White Christmas was so heavily inspired by Holiday Inn that it often is considered a "semi-remake" by movie critics—but perhaps the term "recycle" might be more appropriate. Both films took the same central idea of a team of song-and-dance men (Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in Holiday Inn, Crosby and Danny Kaye in White Christmas) hoofing it up in New England (the "inn" of the title in the first movie, a Connecticut resort in the other), and both featured Crosby crooning the holiday classic "White Christmas."