Featured Movies
Partners
Holiday InnJoe Hardy (Crosby), Ted Hanover (Astaire) and Lila Dixon (Dale) are New York club performers. Their act - pitching the two men and their respective talents for song and dance against one another for the love of the girl - bears an uncanny resemblance to their lives. Joe wants to leave the business for a lazy life in the country, but Lila, also his fianc?©e, chooses dancing and Ted over him. The trio is no more.
After trying his hand at agriculture, Joe opens his Connecticut farm as the Holiday Inn, a supper club that opens only on public holidays, to great success. When Lila leaves Ted, he comes back to his old pal Joe and promptly sets about stealing his new leading lady, Linda (Reynolds).
Holiday Inn is the kind of lavish, enjoyable, insubstantial musical that Hollywood excelled at in the 40s. Containing some of Irving Berlin's most well-known songs, including the debut performance of 'White Christmas', it takes a whisper of a plot and the somewhat awkward pairing of Fred Astaire and Big Crosby and constructs a delightful, if uneven spectacle around the famed talents of the two leading men.
Crosby and Astaire are very different performers and what little narrative tension there is, comes from the way they are pitched as rivals. Astaire, who got second billing on the film's release, shines throughout, playing the arrogant, fame-obsessed Hanover with relish. He's particularly impressive in a drunken dance scene with a passable Marjorie Reynolds (she ain't Ginger, but she'll do), and the lively Fourth of July set piece where he is literally explosive. He would overshadow the more inflexible Crosby and his crooning if it weren't for the touching melancholy that infuses the singer's baritone - perfect for the role of lover scorned.
The production numbers themselves range from the spectacular and patriotic (Fourth of July), to the downright embarrassing (the Lincoln's birthday number is performed in blackface). Berlin's songs are instantly familiar, deeply sentimental but oddly heartwarming.
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