Holiday Inn (1942)

Official trailer

Holiday Inn is Mark Sandrich’s 1942 American musical depicting Jim Hardy, a singer who retires from his nightclub act and converts his Connecticut farm into an inn that opens only on holidays, leading to a professional rivalry with his former dance partner Ted Hanover.

Bing Crosby plays Jim Hardy. Fred Astaire plays Ted Hanover. Marjorie Reynolds plays Linda Mason. Virginia Dale plays Lila Dixon. Walter Abel plays Danny Reed. Claude Binyon wrote the screenplay, with an adaptation by Elmer Rice, from an idea by Irving Berlin himself.

Paramount released the film in August 1942, eight months after Pearl Harbor, with the title song ‘White Christmas’ written by Berlin for the film and introduced by Crosby in the picture.

I adore about three quarters of Holiday Inn.

Crosby and Astaire are a pleasure together, Berlin’s songs keep arriving like presents, and Astaire’s firecracker dance is showing off in the best possible sense. Then the Lincoln’s Birthday number shows up and the picture curdles for several minutes. The 8 is for everything around that sequence.

The film is structured as a parade of holidays, each built around a Berlin song matched to the holiday.

New Year’s Eve gets a swing-band number. Valentine’s Day gets a duet. Independence Day gets the elaborate firecracker sequence with Astaire dancing solo on a stage of explosives. The structure was the film’s commercial argument: a musical built like a Greatest Hits compilation in advance, with each holiday available for repeat marketing. It worked. ‘White Christmas’ became the song that swallowed every other element.

Crosby’s recording, released as a Decca single in May 1942, became the best-selling single in history and has held that position since.

Berlin’s Score Strategy

Berlin wrote most of the score new for the film, a song for each holiday, and folded in a few older numbers, ‘Easter Parade’ among them. Building the picture around a Berlin score made it an Irving Berlin showcase instead of a star vehicle, and I think it’s the best decision anyone made on it, because the songs carry more feeling than the screenplay does.

Berlin took the unusual position of receiving story credit despite not writing the screenplay, because his original concept proposed the holiday-revue structure that the film built around. The credit reflected the music’s central position instead of any actual narrative authorship.

Crosby and Astaire as Rivals

The casting is the film’s smartest commercial decision. Crosby and Astaire were both at the top of their box-office ranges and represented different musical-comedy traditions: Crosby’s relaxed crooner mode against Astaire’s elegant dance virtuosity. The screenplay structures their characters as rival types, with Jim retreating to the country and Ted pursuing show business with energetic ambition.

The two stars work together comfortably, and this was their first onscreen pairing; they reunited in Blue Skies four years later. I enjoy them far more than the plot they’re stuck in. Their easy energy carries machinery that’s otherwise conventional 1940s romantic comedy, and I’d happily trade some of the romantic business for another ten minutes of the two of them trading songs.

The Lincoln’s Birthday Blackface Number

The film contains a Lincoln’s Birthday blackface routine that’s difficult to watch in modern viewing. Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds perform a number called ‘Abraham’ in blackface makeup. The sequence isn’t incidental: it occupies several minutes and the film treats it as one of the cycle’s holiday entries.

The sequence reflects 1942 minstrel-show conventions that mainstream Hollywood hadn’t yet abandoned, and modern broadcast cuts often remove it. It makes me wince, and I don’t think the film loses anything if you skip it. The historical context doesn’t defend the material. The material still exists, and viewers should know to expect it.

Does Holiday Inn still hold up?

Holiday Inn owes its place in Christmas-cinema discussions mostly to ‘White Christmas’, and Crosby’s performance of it is the heart of why I rate the film an 8. Astaire’s firecracker number and the parade of Berlin songs around it are a delight. The blackface sequence is the one ugly stretch, and it keeps me from recommending this without a warning attached.

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