Reel Classics: Holiday Inn

We are still in the midst of the hol­i­day sea­son, and with that in mind, our next Reel Classic is Holiday Inn (1942).  The film cel­e­brates mul­ti­ple hol­i­days with song and dance, includ­ing Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, and the 4^th of July. 

The famous com­pos­er Irving Berlin came up with the idea of a musi­cal focus­ing on the var­i­ous hol­i­days and pitched it to Mark Sandrich at Paramount Studios.  Berlin saw it as a per­fect vehi­cle for singer Bing Crosby.  The stu­dio went with the idea and brought in Fred Astaire as Crosby’s part­ner.  Sandrich was the direc­tor of the film.  Sandrich want­ed two oth­er stars for the female leads — Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth.  However, the stu­dio vetoed that idea as they already had two of the high­est-paid actors on board with Crosby and Astaire.  Consequently, the parts went to two less­er-known (and less expen­sive) actress­es — Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale. 

Irving Berlin set to work on com­pos­ing the music for the film, high­light­ing the var­i­ous hol­i­days in the script. One of his most famous songs came out of this film, the now tra­di­tion­al Christmas song “White Christmas.” The film also includ­ed the pop­u­lar “Easter Parade,” like­ly remem­bered by most in the 1948 film of the same name star­ring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland.  Interestingly, the song “White Christmas” also made anoth­er appear­ance in the 1954 film White Christmas star­ring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. 

In Holiday Inn, we find a song and dance team com­posed of Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby), Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire), and Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale).  They are very pop­u­lar and suc­cess­ful in the New York enter­tain­ment scene.  However, Jim plans to mar­ry Lila and retire to a farm in Connecticut.  On Christmas Eve, Jim is prepar­ing for his final per­for­mance in the act when Lila informs him that she is in love with Ted.  Jim is heart­bro­ken and leaves the act to go to the farm. Unfortunately for Jim, he strug­gles with the loss and is very depressed. 

A year goes by when Jim makes his way back to New York City with a new plan for the farm—an enter­tain­ment venue only open on hol­i­days.  It is while watch­ing Ted and Lila per­form in a club that he meets the charm­ing and tal­ent­ed Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds).  Linda arrives the next day (Christmas) at the farm, and she and Jim hit it off.  He charms her with the song “White Christmas.”  The plan is to open the “Holiday Inn” on New Year’s Eve. 

New Year’s Eve arrives, and the inn is packed.  In the mean­time, back in New York City, Ted learns that Lila is now leav­ing him for a rich Texas mil­lion­aire.  He decides to go to the inn in Connecticut to see the show — and arrives drunk.  He falls into Linda, and then they dance to the delight of the audi­ence.  Though he is drunk and mis­steps, the audi­ence enjoys the per­for­mance, think­ing it is all rehearsed.  Ted’s agent is there and believes Ted now has a new part­ner.  Jim becomes con­cerned.  The next morn­ing, Ted is hun­gover and does­n’t remem­ber Linda.  Jim hides her as he remem­bers what hap­pened with Lila and Ted.

As the sto­ry pro­gress­es, we find Ted and his agent Danny seek­ing Linda with a plan to bring her into the act.  We also see the pro­duc­tions at the inn through var­i­ous hol­i­days, includ­ing Valentine’s Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Easter, and more.  We see Jim and Linda’s rela­tion­ship grow, and we see Ted’s ongo­ing efforts to woo her into becom­ing his dance part­ner.  A quote from the film:

Ted:  “I like it here...with you and Linda.”

Jim: “And we love hav­ing you.  When are you leaving?”

Ted con­tin­ues to worm his way into Linda’s life and even­tu­al­ly con­vinces her to join him in California to make a movie based on Jim’s Holiday Inn. 

Again, Jim is heart­bro­ken but is encour­aged by his house­keep­er not to give up. He flies to California and arrives on Christmas Eve. By New Year’s Eve, they are all back at the Holiday Inn.

As one can tell from the sto­ry­line, Ted is not the most lik­able char­ac­ter, but he more than makes up for it in his dance rou­tines.  In the scene described above, when he arrives at the inn on New Year’s Eve, he is drunk and stum­bling.  To pre­pare him­self for this scene, he report­ed­ly took two shots of bour­bon before the first take and one shot before each of the fol­low­ing takes. It took sev­en takes to com­plete the scene, so I think it is safe to say that his stum­bling may not have all been acting!

The dance scene for the 4^th of July includ­ed a num­ber of fire­crack­ers explod­ing. This scene was added as a patri­ot­ic trib­ute, as the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred dur­ing the movie’s film­ing. That par­tic­u­lar dance rou­tine took two days to film, includ­ing 38 takes, before Astaire was hap­py with the outcome. 

One of the hol­i­day per­for­mances was often delet­ed from the film when shown on tele­vi­sion.  The per­for­mance for Lincoln’s birth­day, “Abraham,” has the per­form­ers in black­face.  Obviously, such a per­for­mance would not be con­sid­ered today, but it was not uncom­mon when this film was made. 

An inter­est­ing fact is that Dale Evans was brought in to audi­tion for the role of Linda Mason. When she admit­ted that she could not dance, the audi­tion was over. However, it led to screen tests for oth­er roles; many of you will know her from her work with and mar­riage to cow­boy star Roy Rogers. 

Though the even­tu­al Linda Mason, Marjorie Reynolds, did not achieve great noto­ri­ety in films, she had appeared in mul­ti­ple B movie west­erns.  She did go on to find suc­cess on TV in the role of the wife of William Bendix in the pop­u­lar 1950’s com­e­dy Life of Riley.

Holiday Inn received three Oscar nom­i­na­tions, includ­ing Best Original Story and Best Music Score.  It won an Oscar for Best Song with “White Christmas.”  The pop­u­lar­i­ty of that song increased dur­ing the war as home­sick folks in the ser­vice request­ed it to be played on the Armed Forces Radio.  It remained the best-sell­ing sin­gle for over fifty years and is still very pop­u­lar today.

The set used for the Connecticut inn was reused by the Paramount Studio as the Vermont inn for the film White Christmas, released in 1954. In 1952, Kemmons Wilson found­ed the Holiday Inn motel chain, tak­ing the name from the film. 

Holiday Inn was the 6^th high­est-gross­ing film in 1942.  It was also praised by the crit­ics.  The crit­ic for The New York Times wrote that the film was “all very easy and grace­ful:  it nev­er tries too hard to daz­zle....” Variety stat­ed it was a “win­ner all the way” with “ster­ling” per­for­mances by Crosby and Astaire.  The crit­ic for Film Daily wrote that the film was “a com­plete­ly sat­is­fy­ing musi­cal filled with crisp com­e­dy, fetch­ing music, snap­py dance rou­tines, first-rate act­ing, smart sto­ry touch­es, and lav­ish and beau­ti­ful settings.”

A more recent appraisal from Rotten Tomatoes states, “With the com­bined might of Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and Irving Berlin work­ing in its favor, Holiday Inn is a sea­son­al classic—not least because it intro­duced ‘White Christmas’ to the world.” This state­ment echoes a com­ment made by Director Mark Sandrich after sign­ing the stars: “I call this pic­ture the ABC of American musi­cal com­e­dy.  Astaire, Berlin, Crosby.  Get it?”

The first pub­lic per­for­mance of the song “White Christmas” pre­ced­ed the release of the film.  Bing Crosby per­formed it on his radio pro­gram “The Kraft Music Hall” on Christmas in 1941.  In January 1943 there was a 30-minute radio adap­ta­tion of the film on “The Screen Guild Theater” star­ring Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore.

The American Film Institute includ­ed Holiday Inn in its 2006 list of films nom­i­nat­ed for AFI’s Greatest Movie Musicals. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rat­ed the film at 7.3 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics score of 100% and an audi­ence score of 86%.

In search­ing my Roku device I found it avail­able for free stream­ing on the Freebie TV site, and there is a copy of the DVD avail­able at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia. I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6:00 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as the WinCity Voices Facebook page.