Holiday Inn (1942)
Holiday Inn (1942), produced and directed by Mark Sandrich.
From an era prolific with singing-and-dancing pictures, this one has some standout features:
The intersection of great talent: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Irving Berlin.
The gimmick is a good one: a country inn open only on holidays, said to number 15 in the year. We never hear the complete list: is Arbor Day included?
Rich settings, more country locations than usual.
Introducing the best-selling single recording of all time.
Some metaphysical disorientation: they abandon the Inn, move to Hollywood and reconstruct the Inn on a soundstage (obviously the same set as the "real" Inn in Connecticut), film a story about returning to the Inn, then return to the Inn in Connecticut for the finale.
The downsides are the expected limitations of musicals: thin plot, some weak skits and inconsequential love triangles.
The female leads are talented and likeable, but we wonder what a little more star power would have provided. In fact, they wanted Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth but didn't have the budget. That would have been something to see!
This has a famous black-face Lincoln's Birthday number, which I'm told has been censored on TV. The song is a good one. Minstrelsy obviously seems very weird today, although not intended as racist or offensive at the time. Patronizing and insensitive: sure. It was still big in the 1940s; by the time we get to White Christmas (1954) they could still do minstrel numbers, but without the blackface.
Misc notes:
The scene where Astaire dances drunk: he really was, just trying to be convincing.
You know: there's nothing wrong with his singing voice.
We get FDR's Four Freedoms in one of the routines.
Edith Head gowns.
Available on Blu-ray in both original and colorized versions, with the traditional pastel palette for color. The B&W version is from a better master. A commentary track gives good background info.
For a change I've used the colorized versions for the thumbnails:
