Trailer
Plot summary
Jim Hardy, Ted Hanover and Lila Dixon form a popular New York song and dance act. Jim intends to quit, marry Lila and settle on a Connecticut farm, but Lila has fallen for Ted, and the pair stay in the spotlight as a duo. Jim works the farm for a year, then decides to keep the land and open it as Holiday Inn, a place that runs on the fifteen holidays each year and stages dinner shows he writes and stars in. He hires Linda Mason, an up-and-coming performer, as his leading lady. Ted's manager Danny Reed pushes for bigger things, and Ted arrives at the inn with his eye on Linda as a partner.
Cast
- Shelby Baconas Vanderbilt
- Joan Arnoldas Daphne
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Holiday Inn (1942)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The fake snow in Holiday Inn was made of chrysotile asbestos, used in the scene near the end of the film where "White Christmas" is reprised.
- The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came halfway through filming Holiday Inn, so the Fourth of July segment was expanded beyond Fred Astaire's firecracker dance to a patriotic number highlighting the US military's strength.
- Beginning in the 1980s, some broadcasts have cut the "Abraham" number, staged for Lincoln's Birthday, over its blackface minstrel imagery, though Turner Classic Movies still airs it intact.
- In 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May named Holiday Inn as her favorite Christmas film, causing controversy over the blackface performance in the "Abraham" segment.
- The Holiday Inn hotel chain took its name from the film, which also inspired the 1946 renaming of a small 19th century inn in Intervale, New Hampshire.
- Fred Astaire was offered the second lead in White Christmas (1954) but turned it down after reading the script; Donald O'Connor was injured before filming began, and Danny Kaye took the role.
- Irving Berlin conceived the song that became "White Christmas" on the set of Top Hat in 1935 and hummed the melody for Fred Astaire and director Mark Sandrich, who passed on it.
- Irving Berlin's assignment for Paramount was to write a song about each major holiday, and he found writing about Christmas the most difficult because of his Jewish upbringing.
