Holiday Inn: A Review

HOLIDAY INN

Happy Holidays Inn-Deed...

What do you get when you mix a crooner, a hoofer, a couple of girls and some of Irving Berlin's best songs? You get Holiday Inn, a delightful romp that shows why the movie musical is a uniquely American creation.

Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby) and Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire) are part of a musical trio with Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale). Jim specializes in the singing and Ted in the dancing, with Lila being able to do both. While she's accepted Jim's marriage proposal she's not willing to give up show business and move to a farm, which is exactly what Jim is planning. She decides to dump him for Ted and the bright lights on what would have been their last performance one Christmas Eve. 

Jim decides to follow on his retirement plans anyways but finds life on the farm to be a nightmare. On the next Christmas Eve, Jim visits Ted and his old agent Danny Reed (Walter Abel) and tells them of a new plan. He will turn his farm into an inn that is open only on holidays, hence Holiday Inn. Aspiring singer Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds) hears about the plan and gets Danny to give her Jim's card so that she can audition for Jim. She and Jim soon fall in love, while Ted discovers to his horror that Lila has dumped him to go after a Texas millionaire. 

Now, Ted enters the picture at Holiday Inn. He and Linda find that they make for a fantastic musical pair, which alarms Jim that history will repeat itself. The two frenemies battle it out for Linda's heart and dancing legs over the course of several holidays, but who will win out in the end? How will Lila's return affect the goings-on? Will Linda literally go Hollywood? 

The plot to Holiday Inn is not exactly the cleverest or most insightful. In fact, I think Claude Binyon's screenplay has a lot of fluff to it, but we don't care. Holiday Inn has one purpose: to give light entertainment and delightful songs, and it succeeds on a grand scale. 

The audience should know from the get-go that Jim and Linda are meant to be together, and it is fun seeing how rather silly situations keep them from being together until the last reel. Holiday Inn allows the viewer to see two of the greatest performers in their respective field doing some of their best work. Bing Crosby's singing and Fred Astaire's dancing both have great showcases thanks to Irving Berlin's songs. The music that Berlin made is beautiful and add the right touch of romance and/or comedy to each scene. Each song and dance work because they fit whatever mood Holiday Inn requires of them.

The risk in a concept like Holiday Inn is that the musical numbers could end up repetitive, but director Mark Sandrich ensures that each song set on a different holiday works on its own. For example, the number for George Washington's Birthday, I Can't Tell a Lie, has a great balance while changing the tempo from period music to up-tempo jazz and Astaire's dancing matches each perfectly. 

There is also the simple elegance of Easter Parade and the amazing number for the Independence Day section. Astaire's inventive genius with the firecrackers makes the Let's Say It with Firecrackers dance number a simply amazing dance sequence. Fred Astaire does wonders when paired with Reynolds, but in his solo number on Independence Day, Astaire is on a whole other level of brilliance.

The highlight of Holiday Inn is the song White Christmas. It is simple, beautiful, elegant, and nostalgic, capturing an American sense of what the holiday evokes in the American mind. It will be one of the great and wonderful curiosities that it took a Jewish Russian immigrant to write one of the best and most quintessential American Christmas songs ever written. The song is already brilliant, but adding Crosby's beautiful voice to it makes it even more special. His singing adds greatly to the songs from White Christmas to Easter Parade to the Valentine's Day song that was earmarked as the big number in Holiday Inn: Be Careful, It's My Heart.

As a side note, that both White Christmas and Easter Parade, which are based on Christian holidays, were written by someone who was not Christian says much about both Irving Berlin's genius and the melting pot that is the United States. These two songs are so well-crafted and now so synonymous to America. They also were so successful that both White Christmas and Easter Parade were the inspiration for their own films, which also showcased Irving Berlin's masterful songs and went on to become classics themselves. 

Almost as if to counter Bing Crosby's singing, Astaire can match him with his dancing. Astaire's Ted, when he crashes the New Year's Eve party at the Holiday Inn, is supposed to be drunk. However, even when playing tipsy, Astaire still has an extraordinary grace in his movements. We see this also when he does the Easy to Dance With number at a club or while performing with Reynolds in Be Careful, It's My Heart. It is doubtful that anyone will ever be able to dance like Astaire, with the possible exception of only Gene Kelly. Few films have catered to the specific and extraordinary talents of the performers.

In terms of actual acting, the three principals did well. We see Crosby able to handle the more comedic elements in his frustrations and Astaire with the desire to upstage his rival in matters artistic and romantic. Dale's Lisa and Reynold's Lila are delightful in their deviousness and charm. In retrospect, it might have been an error to give them similar sounding names. 

There are a few flaws with the film that date it. For example, the extravagant Independence Day number is very patriotic, but its inclusion of footage of both General Douglas MacArthur and President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes it a bit of a period piece. It also strikes me as a touch propagandistic, though given it was made in 1942 I'm willing to forgive it. 

However, the one great flaw, which would be more shocking to modern audiences is the Abraham number for the Lincoln's Birthday sequence. It's already bad enough that Crosby is in blackface. It's more shocking to appalling that Mamie (Louise Beavers), the only African American in the cast, has to sing a song with a line about Lincoln "setting the darky free" (which in itself is cringe-inducing). To be fair, Mamie is treated with respect, but whatever positive aspect of Mamie as a character or Beavers as an actress and singer are undercut by the Abraham number, well intentioned as it might have been.

What really horrifies is seeing Reynolds in blackface, looking like a frightful and grotesque parody of a pickaninny, down to the white circle around the lips and the hair. For a first-time viewer, it can cause a shock of horror, so be forewarned.

I digress to wonder whether the whole number should be cut. It goes against all my instincts because I'm a firm believer a film should be seen as it was intended to be seen, but I found the whole number so distasteful that I wonder if it might now be better to remove it and include it as a special feature. 

I've come to the conclusion that it is best to make a brief announcement about it before the film starts, so as to warn the audience and let them decide. Now I should point out that the plot takes great pains to give a reason for all the make-up, and Holiday Inn makes clear that this is nowhere intended to be offensive. That, however, does not make it any easier to accept. Also, there is nothing in the history of anyone involved in the production that would make us think they were racists. Unfortunately, this sort of thing was just a product of its time, mercifully no longer acceptable. It should not have been acceptable then, but one has to understand that Holiday Inn, good and bad, was not out of step with how things were seen at the time. The Abraham sequence is troubling, but it does not take away from the overall charm of Holiday Inn. 

That one flaw aside, Holiday Inn is still a delight. Brilliant musical numbers and the extraordinary talents of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire lift the film to a masterful level. Holiday Inn shows that in a certain way, every day's a holiday.

Update: As part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon I participate from time to time, I wrote about the Abraham number and on the issue of whether it should be removed or not for future releases.

DECISION: A-