Festival brings Bing home for the holidays

The Bing Crosby Holiday Film Festival is an annual daylong event celebrating the crooner’s music and films at his namesake Spokane theater. Below is the lineup of three classic Crosby-starring films that will screen on Saturday.

10:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., “White Christmas” (1954) – Perhaps Crosby’s most famous film, this holiday favorite opens and closes the mini festival. A quasi-remake of 1942’s “Holiday Inn,” Crosby and funnyman Danny Kaye play a song and dance duo who team up with two vaudeville sisters to save a failing Vermont ski resort. Directed by Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy”) and featuring such classic songs as “Sisters,” “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)” and the bestselling title tune.

1 p.m., “The Bells of St. Mary’s” (1945) – A sequel to “Going My Way,” Crosby reprises his Academy Award-winning role as Father Chuck O’Malley, who is sent to assess the viability of a crumbling parish run by Sister Ingrid Bergman. Crosby became the first actor to receive two Oscar nominations for playing the same character in multiple films.

4 p.m., “Birth of the Blues” (1941) – A clarinetist (Crosby) and a trumpet player (Brian Donlevy) in the same New Orleans jazz outfit both fall in love with the group’s new vocalist, played by Broadway legend Mary Martin. One of the final features directed by concert violinist-turned- journeyman filmmaker Victor Schertzinger.

Following the screening of “Birth of the Blues,” local jazz ensemble Hot Club of Spokane will perform some of the best standards of the Crosby era, including “White Christmas,” and other well-known songs most famously performed by Mildred Bailey and Al Rinker.