Holiday Inn [1942]

Probably the most cohesive of the long list of popular musicals based on Irving Berlin songs, even outdistancing musicals like Top Hat and Easter Parade, among others, since Berlin's songs get a dominance in Holiday Inn that overshadows the stars frequently and powers the story (however thin the story actually is) in a way the other films don't allow.

There is some excruciating racial portrayals in the film (an extended minstrel segment) that are outrageous by 21st century standards, but were part and parcel of early 1900s vaudeville tradition and simply weren't out of place in a Hollywood movie of 1942. The black face routine midway through the movie might seem insane, but gave it a few minutes, it gets worse when Marjorie Reynolds appears in full "pickaninny" garb right out of a Ku Klux Klan nightmare.

Having Louis Beaver on hand as "Mamie" doesn't really soften up this movie's veer into nuclear-powered stereotyping. If there is an "in-joke" about this segment which made sense to racially-sensitive movie-goers of 1942, the transition to a post-WW2 world must have wiped it out, because I cannot make any sense of it being in the film.

The Plot of Holiday Inn

Bing Crosby is a stage entertainer who has left the limelight behind to run a farm in the New England countryside. He soon discovers his ideas of simple living and lazy days with easy work were illusions, landing him into a sanatorium. On the rebound, he enlists former partners Fred Astaire and love-interest/dancer Virginia Dale to appear at his revamped "Holiday Inn." Shop girl Marjorie Reynolds shows up shortly thereafter, steered by Crosby's former manager Walter Abel, soon she is the alternative love interest and both Asaire and Crosby are trying to cross-and-double-cross each other over the girls..

Chiefly a comedy with a light romance between Crosby/Reynolds, Astaire gets several solo showcases backed by extended Irving Berlin tunes, and of course Crosby gets to sit at a piano, crooning "White Christmas" for the first time on film: it wouldn't be the last (the story was remade in color as the musical White Christmas in 1954.)