White Christmas, or, as the songwriter who held sway over the project would have it, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, was the big holiday movie of 1954. (It went on to become the top-grossing film of the year, too.) Normally, that would mean an accompanying "original soundtrack" album of
Berlin songs sung by stars
Bing Crosby,
Danny Kaye, and
Rosemary Clooney (plus
Trudy Stevens, who dubbed the voice of non-singing second female lead Vera-Ellen). Unfortunately, the principals had exclusive recording contracts with rival companies;
Crosby and
Kaye were with Decca Records, while
Clooney was on Columbia. As a result, there were two albums, neither of them a true soundtrack recording. Decca substituted
Peggy Lee for
Clooney and put out an album of songs from the movie sung by
Crosby,
Kaye, and
Lee. Columbia sent
Clooney into the studio to cut a batch of the movie's songs on her own, and that's the disc under consideration here. Happily, it turns out to be one of
Clooney's best efforts. She effectively re-creates her two big ballad moments in the film, her solo "Love -- You Didn't Do Right by Me" and "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep," done in the movie as a duet with
Crosby. She borrows "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing," which had been taken by
Kaye. And, best of all, she drags her sister
Betty Clooney, once her partner in
the Clooney Sisters, out of retirement temporarily to perform the clever "Sisters." Of course, with selections such as the title song and "Snow," the album also functions as a
Rosemary Clooney Christmas album. [Real Gone's 2014 reissue contains seven bonus tracks, all taken from radio shows recorded between 1952 and 1957. It's a nice way to round out an already classic Christmas collection.]