It was songwriter Irving Berlin’s original idea: a Country Inn/Nightclub only open on holidays, developed by director Mark Sandrich & scripters Elmer Rice/Claude Binyon into a pair of sequential Romantic Triangles for Fred Astaire & Bing Crosby vying over Girl #1 (song & dance partner Virginia Dale) then Girl #2 (song & dance hopeful Marjorie Reynolds) before it's all worked out as Romantic Quadrangle by the finale. Lightweight dramatics for sure, but enough to hang a truly phenomenal line-up of Berlin holiday-themed numbers on, all immaculately performed, most freshly written for the pic, including three new American Songbook standards (WHITE CHRISTMAS; YOU’RE EASY TO DANCE WITH; BE CAREFUL IT’S MY HEART), the rest old hits or catchy novelty numbers. It goes down smoothly, if not without a hitch as Lincoln’s Birthday is celebrated in BlackFace. And not just any ol’ BlackFace, but a compendium of the form, with dark makeup on the band; Crosby a la Uncle Remus; girlfriend Reynolds in ultra-stylized traditional ‘Pickaninny’ BlackFace*; plus actual Black waiters & waitresses in antebellum period servant outfits while back in the kitchen, Louise Beaver & her two cute kids are mercifully left as is to join in a chorus of the specialty song, ‘ABRAHAM,’ charmingly, even if Beavers does refer to ‘Darkies.’ The number gets cut in t.v. showings, but if you only see one of these things, HOLIDAY hits all the insulting varieties of the form in just one sitting.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Fred plays ‘drunk’ in one number. Yet even with impromptu partner Reynolds literally dancing circles around him, your eye is still drawn only to Astaire.
DOUBLE-BILL: Fred & Bing reunited on similar characters for BLUE SKIES/’46 in TechniColor; and nearly again for WHITE CHRISTMAS/’54 in VistaVision! Alas, Astaire was toying with retirement and a rewrite for Donald O’Connor had to be rewritten for Danny Kaye when O’Connor fell ill. Kaye’s last minute ‘save’ let him demand what may have been Hollywood’s most lucrative deal of the era, with gross participation on 1954's #1 pic. O’Connor finally (re)teamed with Bing on the lousy 1956 remake of ANYTHING GOES, Crosby’s Paramount adieu.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *(A Rare Topical comment @ MAKSQUIBS!) With multiple BlackFace scandals in current political news, note that while HOLIDAY INN’s ‘Minstrel Numbo’ goes all BlackFace; twelve years on, WHITE CHRISTMAS’s even splashier Minstrel Show goes without. So, if it had become unacceptable between 1942 & 1954, why does it show up three (and more) decades later in elite college year books?
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