Synopsis for
Holiday Inn (1942)

When their showbiz trio breaks up, the suave dancer (Fred Astair) steals the crooner's (Bing Crosby) fiancée (Lila played by Virginia Dale) and runs off with her to continue their showbiz careers. Joe (Crosby) retires on a farm in Connecticut. After a year of farming, Joe comes up with the idea of a nightcub that is only open on Holidays hence the name Holiday Inn. Joe visits Ted and Lila in New York and meets a shopgirl named Linda Mason played by Marjorie Reynolds. Lila leaves Ted for a Texas millionaire. This start Ted to drinking, and sends him to his buddy who knows what it is to have the woman you love stolen away from you.

In the mean time, Joe has fallen in love with Linda who can really sing and dance, and he offers her a Life of the Inn contract as his wife, and she accepts. Of course, the timing coincides with Ted meeting Linda while nearly blind drunk, and dancing an incredible improvised comic dance routine that is still a classic. Never has it been done as well, or as funny...

Eventually, Ted steals this new love from Joe again, this time with the help of Hollywood's allure. Joe mopes around the Inn, which he closes. His housekeeper gives him sage wisdom that sends him to Hollywood to get his woman. The high point of this movie is the emotion generated by Crosby's playing of the bells on the Christmas tree ornaments, and whistling in Irving Berlin's white Christmas.

Holiday Inn is a Christmas treasure that shows a simpler time in history in a warm and endearing light.