Holiday Inn (1942)

Director: Mark Sandrich

Cast: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Somehow, I managed to skip it in my nearly 40 years of life, made all the more incredible considering how improbably large a part of my life White Christmas (1954) has become.

Did I Like It: Maybe this will be viewed as borderline sacrilegious by some, but since I’d hardly be considered a true believer, I’m going to say it anyway. There’s something so distressingly flat about a musical in black and white. This film is retroactively saddled with competing with the later, more famous film*. None of this may be my genre, but if you’re going to be singing to me at Christmas, I need bright colors. Technicolor preferred, Vistavision accepted, but something along those lines is absolutely needed.

Then again, it may not be unfair to stack these two films up against one another and find one of them wanting. I remember watching White Christmas for the first time in a number of years recently, and when they get to the dress rehearsal for the Minstrel Number, clenching reflexively at what was about to come. There, it turned out to be not so bad. Here? Well, let’s just say that if you are of a mind to roll through this film, just brace yourself for the number during Lincoln’s Birthday. It’s a symphony of 21st century horrors.

*Oddly enough—and one assumes you’ll forgive me for getting a head start on the yearly trove of Bing and Company trivia, but the Columbia Inn in White Christmas and the titular Holiday Inn here are the same set. I can’t help but marvel at the fact that Paramount was able to preserve such a thing for those particular years. Makes one wonder what reassures might be holed up in warehouse space in any of the major studios.

White Christmas (1954)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m sure I have. It is one of my mother’s favorite movies, if not the absolute favorite. I have the strongest memory of a VHS copy sitting on a shelf as a kid, along with all of the other grown up movies. I’m sure I had to watch it at some point.

Did I Like It: As much as I love Singin’ in the Rain (1952), the “Broadway Melody” feels as awkwardly forced into the movie as it would have in The Dancing Cavalier.

It’s a reality of the genre, also on display here* that things eventually have to devolve into a musical number. Fortunately, here, as all concerned are also just putting on a show, the numbers feel less tacked on**.

But this should really be less about Singin’ in the Rain and more about the film in question.

I’ve often said that each year I have—at best—48 hours of Christmas cheer per year. Never mind that the larger world would be more than content to exhaust it sometime in early November. There’s a possibility I may have to strictly budget that cheer over the coming weeks, because this movie might be demanding just a bit more out of me before everything is said and done.

Or maybe I’ll have to find some deeper levels of cheer. The movies just might be worth it.

*That genre being the “1950s film where two rapscallion show folk fellas get into some shenanigans and at least the leading man (read: less funny of the two) meets and wins over the girl of his dreams.” See Singin’ and Some Like It Hot (1959) for examples.

**Maybe if we watched the sequence play out in the middle of an exhibition The Dancing Cavalier and not the pitching of those added scenes.