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Holiday Inn | 
 enlarge | Actors: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale, Shelby Bacon
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $17.12
You Save: $9.86 (37%)
New (39) Used (5) from $17.12
Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 1747
Format: Box Set, Black & White, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 3
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.7
MPN: MCAD61102370D
UPC: 025195018623
EAN: 0025195018623
ASIN: B001DXS4E2
Theatrical Release Date: 1942
Release Date: October 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Five Star Seller!!! New, factory sealed US Region 1 DVD. Item is 100% guaranteed not to be a bootleg or import. Item is shipped directly from our warehouse. Easy exchange if item defective or damaged in shipped.
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Product Description
Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 10/14/2008 Rating: Nr
Amazon.com
In 1942, Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby teamed up at Der Bingle's Paramount Pictures for Holiday Inn, a black-and-white musical that proves more entertaining than Crosby's color semi-remake White Christmas in 1954. Astaire and Crosby play partner/rival song-and-dance men who compete for the hand of their performing partner, played by Virginia Dale. After Crosby loses, he moves to the Connecticut countryside where he creates a resort that is only open on holidays and puts on the shows with the help of Marjorie Reynolds. Dumped by Dale, Astaire makes a drunken arrival at the inn on New Year's Eve and dances with Reynolds. He decides she'll be his new partner, but doesn't remember what she looks like, setting off a frenzied search at every subsequent show while the once-bitten Crosby does his best to steer him off track. The theme gives Irving Berlin an excuse to craft or recycle a number of holiday-themed songs, such as (in the former category) "Washington's Birthday" or (in the latter) "Easter Parade." The most famous of the new material, of course, is "White Christmas," which became one of the bestselling songs of all time and the title song of Crosby's 1954 film. Astaire and Crosby also team up for "I'll Capture Her Heart," which playfully contrasts the stars' specialties, and Astaire's "It's So Easy to Dance with You" became one of the signature songs of his post-Ginger Rogers career. Astaire and Crosby teamed up again for Blue Skies in 1946. --David Horiuchi
Bonus Descriptions
Disc 1: Original Black & White Version
- A Couple of Song and Dance Men: An intimate retrospective of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire featuring an interview with Ava Astaire-MacKenzie
- All Singing-All Dancing: Experience the making of the unforgettable song and dance numbers of Holiday Inn
- Audio Commentary: Feature-length audio commentary with film historian Ken Barnes with archive audio comments by Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and John Scott Trotter
- Original Theatrical Trailer
Disc 2: New Color Version
- Coloring a Classic: Learn how Holiday Inn was color-designed using amazing new technology that transformed the black and white classic to color with the help of Jan Mucklestone, personal sketch artist of the famed costume designer Edith Head
Disc 3: Music Soundtrack CD
- 12 classic Irving Berlin holiday songs from the original soundtrack including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and "Happy Holiday"
Track Listing
1. I'll Capture Your Heart (Bing Crosby & Fred Astaire)
2. Lazy (Bing Crosby)
3. You're Easy to Dance With (Fred Astaire)
4. Happy Holiday (Bing Crosby)
5. Let's Start the New Year Off Right (Bing Crosby)
6. Abraham (Bing Crosby)
7. Be Careful, It's My Heart (Bing Crosby)
8. I Can't Tell a Lie (Fred Astaire)
9. Easter Parade (Bing Crosby)
10. Song of Freedom (Bing Crosby)
11. I've Got Plenty to be Thankful For (Bing Crosby)
12. White Christmas (Bing Crosby)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Astaire's deft dancing, acceptable Crosby crooning, nothing much else November 17, 2008
William Sommerwerck (Renton, WA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this set largely due to my interest in seeing a "classic" B&W film in faux color.
Some B&W films (such as "Citizen Kane", "King Kong", and almost anything film noire) were conceived in and for B&W, and should not be converted to color. Comedies and musicals are a different matter.
Until recently, attempts to "colorize" B&W films have been barely acceptable at best, and utterly putrid at worst. Not only were the colors poorly chosen, but medium-to-fine image details remained in B&W.
The older colorizing systems were analog. The ability to digitally dissect each frame into millions of pixels now makes it possible to do just about anything to the image, limited only by time, patience, and money (of course).
The conversion is done by Legend Films, which has colorized a number of Shirley Temple movies, and (unfortunately) "It's a Wonderful Life". (It's a dark drama about American values, and should remain in B&W.)
The results are remarkable. If you'd never seen a Technicolor film, you'd think "Holiday Inn" was shot in color. The colors are (mostly) well-chosen, * and _everything_ in a scene is colored, even the fruit in a background bowl, or the fine details in the wallpaper. (Once a key frame has been hand-colored, computer software does most of the work of applying the color to subsequent frames.)
The problem is that many viewers _do_ know what Technicolor looks like. It's somewhat disturbing to watch a realistically colored B&W film that _does not_ have the high contrast and extreme saturation of Technicolor. But B&W was lit differently -- even _costumed_ differently -- from color, so altering the image to match Technicolor's rendering would result in even greater changes than those brought about by colorization.
Other than the generally appealing color, the only good thing about this film is Fred Astaire's dancing (though Der Bingle sings well, with less of his trademark crooning than usual). There are two classic sequences, one with firecrackers, the other in which he dances drunk. The rest of the film is little more than a showcase for a dozen Irving Berlin songs, none of which is bad, but only four of which are standards.
It's a boring, almost tedious film. (Maybe I'm just getting old.) The plot revolves around the typical love triangle (which becomes a rhombus), which is worked out so mechanically, and with such a lack of wit and genuine humor, that the viewer really doesn't care. (Twelve years later, "White Christmas" would rehash the same plot devices in a not-dissimilar story, with the same humorless and irritating results.) I'd _like_ to give "Holiday Inn" three stars, but I'm giving it four, simply because of Astaire's work. Heck, Astaire "dances" almost every time he _moves_.
For those wondering why the animated turkey is confused about which Thursday is Thanksgiving... Roosevelt had moved Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of November (from the fourth), in the hope that the week-longer holiday season would help retailers. People didn't like it. Now that the holiday season starts in late August (at Costco, anyway), it seems rather quaint.
Viewers with children should be warned that this film includes an embarrassing black-face number (which, as another reviewer pointed out, is mistakenly rendered as "brown-face", despite Bing Crosby having applied black burnt cork in the preceding scene!).
* Skin tones are spot-on and vary appropriately for each character, but hair colors don't look quite right, and Fred and Bing's hairpieces have never been more-visible. Fred's heavy makeup is rendered more-visible, his face sometimes resembling the Rankin-Bass puppet. The tainted peach preserves Bing gives Fred are about the right hue, but not sufficiently saturated.
 Holiday Inn November 14, 2008
Shane Cawley (Toronto Canada)
What a wonderful addition to Christmas or any other holiday in the year (as the plots works around all the holidays throughout the year). This is the first original use of the song, White Christmas. It's a collectable !
'Holiday Inn' - colourized version November 12, 2008
Ronald G. Field (Bermagui. NSW. Australia)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am not a fan of the colourization of black and white films, but this one is really terrific in colour and those responsible are to be congratulated.
Thoroughly recommended.
Good for the most part but they didn't get the Abraham number right October 29, 2008
DodgyUSA (Jamaica Plain, MA United States)
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Abraham number in the colorized version is brown face not black! Blackface is burnt cork, and Bing mentions the word at least 2 or 3 times. But they "colorized" it brown face. Sorry. WRONG !
If you are going to colorize a film that has blackface, don't opt to be politically correct. Do it right!
Otherwise most of the other colors are fine. Although there are sections in each frame that they left b/w. It seems 2/3 colorized.
Marvelous October 23, 2008
Tim Lasiuta (Red Deer, Alberta)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As one of the true classic films of the golden age of Hollywood, and one of the two cinematic productions of the Iriving Berlin musical, Holiday Inn is welcome in any format. The `new' presentation includes both a color and b/w edition of the film on separate discs AND a soundtrack CD of all the music from the film.
I have always enjoyed the `original' versions of films pre-colorization, but this time, the fine folks at Universal have managed to do an exceptional job of updating this film for new film goers. Edith Heads' assistant provided input into the process to make the costuming more accurate and consistant. This time, the color is not a distraction, but a bonus.
We know the story, a small out of the way Inn becomes the center for a series of period and holiday based musicals. Bing and Fred `duel' for the affections of the lead actress/dancer and in the end, true love wins out for both men (and women). The musical score by Berlin is remarkable, and even today sets toes a tapping out he jazzy beat. The first appearance of White Christmas is just one of the jewels on this DVD.
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