Holiday Inn (1942) is the only Christmas movie explicitly built around the American calendar of holidays

Holiday Inn ( 1942 ) is the only Christmas movie explicitly built around the American calendar of holidays.

The director is Mark Sandrich , who made some of the famous Fred and Ginger musicals: Top Hat, The Gay Divorcee .

There’s much in the story about both modern America and the older America , with Irving Berlin's then-famous mix of nostalgia and confidence.

Bob Greene : Holiday Inn seems to be a story about the dangers that glamour poses to America .

He says it's a romantic comedy, but there's drama even in a musical musical, so he gets the girl, loses the girl and has to win her over again.

Greene: As soon as Bing ’s showbiz turns American history into entertainment, it in turn becomes obsolete.

Or is it a reality they have to come to understand, including finding their place in it, which is much more at the mercy of audiences than spellbinding them? Orchestrating the national memory is no mere joke and it does suggest artists have remarkable power in America , but that it accrues slowly over time, as each generation looks to remember its formative years .