White Christmas (song) created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases. In "Holiday Inn", the composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1942. In the film, Crosby sings "White Christmas" as a duet with actress Marjorie Reynolds, though her voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. This now-familiar scene was not the moviemakers' initial plan. In the script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, would sing the song. The song would feature in another Crosby film, the 1954 musical "White Christmas", which became the highest-grossing film of 1954. (Crosby made yet another studio recording of the song, accompanied by Joseph J.
Academy Award for Best Original Song The award category was introduced at the 7th Academy Awards, the ceremony honoring the best in film for 1934. Nominations are made by Academy members who are songwriters and composers, and the winners are chosen by the Academy membership as a whole. "There must be a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition (not necessarily visually presented) of both lyrics and melody, used in the body of the motion picture or as the first music cue in the end credits." The original requirement was only that the nominated song appear in a motion picture during the previous year. This rule was changed