Academy Award presented to Irving Berlin for "White Christmas": Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Academy Award statuette for Best Original Song, presented to Irving Berlin for his composition “White Christmas,” written for the 1942 musical comedy film Holiday Inn. The trophy is composed of a gold-colored metal human figure, with hands in front of torso, standing on a black cylindrical plastic base with a gold-colored metal plaque on the front. Plaque is engraved: "PRESENTED TO IRVING BERLIN / IN RECOGNITION OF THE MUSIC AND LYRICS / OF THE BEST SONG / "WHITE CHRISTMAS" / 1942". Bottom of statue covered in brown felt.

Often called the dean of American popular song, composer-lyricist Irving Berlin wrote more than 3,000 songs, including the standards “God Bless America” and “White Christmas.” Born Israel Beilin in Tyumen in what was then the Russian Empire in 1888, he was one of eight children brought by his parents to New York to escape discrimination, poverty, and violent programs against Jewish people in Russia. After his father died in 1901, Irving worked to survive, selling newspapers, waiting tables, and plugging songs. Berlin’s first hit song, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” became a sensation in 1911; three years later, his first work of musical theater, Watch Your Step, cemented his reputation. He wrote twenty-one Broadway scores, including Annie Get Your Gun (1946), which featured Ethel Merman singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Berlin also wrote seventeen film scores, including Top Hat (1935), Holiday Inn (1947), and Easter Parade (1948).

Berlin won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “White Christmas,” which he composed and wrote for the 1942 musical comedy film Holiday Inn. By a strange coincidence, Berlin presented the award to himself, as he was slated to present the award at the ceremony, held March 4, 1943, at the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. When he opened the envelope and saw his name, Berlin told the audience “I’m particularly proud to present this award. It’s someone I’ve known for a good many years. He’s a nice kid and I think deserves it.” To date, Berlin is the only person to ever present themselves with an Academy Award.

“White Christmas” is a holiday standard, one of the most popular and successful Christmas songs of all time. Bing Crosby’s original recording of the song topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks in 1942, returned to the number one position again in December 1943 and 1944, and has returned to the top 40 over a dozen times in subsequent years, becoming the world’s best-selling single. It’s estimated to have sold more than 50 million physical copies worldwide since its first release. The song has also been covered by hundreds of other recording artists and continues to be popular every holiday season on radio and streaming services. Though accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song, he recalled finishing it and telling his secretary “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote.” Bing Crosby first performed the song on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941, a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the years that followed, through the trials of World War II, the song’s nostalgic longing for the pleasures of hearth, home, and holiday tradition struck a chord with Americans who desired normalcy and family reunion. Berlin’s song, especially with its use in the popular holiday films Holiday Inn and White Christmas (1954), helped cement Americans’ post-war conception of a normative, archetypal Christmas celebration, including snowy landscapes, children’s eager anticipation of gifts on Christmas morning, and family gathered together in warm kinship. Berlin was one of several Jewish songwriters who composed and wrote lyrics for popular Christmas songs from the 1930s-1960s, a remarkable testament to the holiday’s transformation to a more secular celebration, tied to commerce and civic life, and observed widely in a multicultural, multiethnic, and religiously diverse United States.

The film Holiday Inn was produced and directed by Mark Sandrich for Paramount Pictures, with a story and music by Irving Berlin, and starred Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Crosby, Astaire, and co-star Marjorie Reynolds played Jim Hardy, Ted Hanover, and Lila Dixon, three friends who have a popular song and dance act in New York City. Though Jim and Lila planned to marry and retire to a Connecticut farm on Christmas Eve, Lila has fallen in love with Ted and calls off the engagement, leading Jim to end up in a sanatorium. He decides to convert the farm into a “Holiday Inn,” an entertainment venue only open on holidays. In a series of set pieces themed to different American holidays, Crosby and others perform the twelve songs Berlin wrote for the film as well as his hit “Easter Parade,” culminating in a romantic happy ending and performance of “White Christmas.” The film premiered in 1942 and was a hit with audiences, ranking 6 on a list of top grossing movies that year, and earned warm acclaim from critics, who especially praised the music. Holiday Inn was the inspiration for the 1954 film White Christmas, a loose remake that again starred Bing Crosby alongside Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen, and also inspired the name of the hotel chain Holiday Inn.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1942
• user: Berlin, Irving
• Object Name: award
• Physical Description: metal (overall material)
• Physical Description: plastic (overall material)
• Physical Description: felt (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 13 1/4 in x 5 1/8 in; 33.655 cm x 13.0175 cm
• associated subject: Awards and Prizes
• associated subject: Motion Pictures
• associated subject: Music
• associated subject: Christmas
• associated subject: Holidays and Celebrations, general
• user's community: Jews
• ID Number: 2024.0090.01
• accession number: 2024.0090
• catalog number: 2024.0090.01
• Credit Line: Gift of Elizabeth Matson, Mary Ellin Barrett Lerner, Katherine Swett, and Irving Barrett
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.