Nostalgia & History > Movie, "White Christmas" and its passenger trains

Passenger trains figure peripherally in the movie, "White Christmas." The characters in the movie travel by train between the various locales in the story, and several stationary shots of rail passenger cars at the station in "Pine Tree, Vermont" show them detraining and boarding.

There are a couple of brief scenes where actual passenger trains appear in the movie. They are supposed to represent the trains on which stars Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen are riding from Florida to Vermont.

The first glimpse of a real train follows a dining car scene. It's a daytime scene darkened to appear like it's at night, and it shows a long Santa Fe streamlined train behind four Santa Fe warbonnet F-units, running alongside the ocean in front of palm trees apparently meant to suggest "Florida" but undoubtedly actually on Santa Fe's "Surf Line." The next scene, depicting a daytime segment of the trip, shows a Southern Pacific passenger train, with an A-B-B set of F-units in Black Widow paint, followed by several heavyweight head end cars and a string of heavyweight passenger cars. The movie producers were probably being "realistic" in depicting the different equipment, suggesting an enroute change of train.

"White Christmas" was shown several times this past weekend on American Movie Classics; in those showings, the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific scenes bracketed a commercial break.

-GP

Watching it right now

I always enjoyed that movie as a kid. "We'll follow the old man, wherever he wants to go..." Good looking girls, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen.

GenePoon Wrote:
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"on American Movie Classics........
............ a commercial break."

[sad]

There is a (very) short shot in the classic Cary Grant/Myrna Loy film "Mr Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse" of a New Haven boxcab electric on a passenger train at a single track station. Had to be on the Danbury (Conn.) branch, appropriate as the "dreamhouse" was set in Connecticut.

I've always wondered where the shot was taken--likely Cannondale, but there isn't enough footage shown to truly establish the location.

Art House
Gettysburg, Pa.

john1082 Wrote:
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> Watching it right now

Me too, my wife laughed as I was exasperated by the clearly western railroad power "back east"

Frequently I always notice a streamlined Santa Fe train whiz by whenver there is a scene involving a moving train no matter where the location.
I'm certain that the directors feel that most people won't even notice or care since this is "background" for the movie.

Hal

Was the interior of the club car used in the scene in which the group sang "Snow" based on a real club car? If so, what railroad used it?

watching this movie two years later!!! I thought the first SF was on the Cali coast? I was trying to make out the mountains and tree orchard on the SP cut? Those were the good days!

GenePoon Wrote:
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> It's a daytime scene darkened to
> appear like it's at night,

FWIW, that is known as "day for night" photography. It was much more common in the B&W days than in color filming, though it was still used a lot thru at least the 1970s; perhaps it still is, I no longer have a TV set to know. Used to be the American Cinematographers Guide had a section describing the basic techniques to use to make it look reasonably realistic.

New Haven train in “Blandings.”

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