review for Holiday Inn on AllMovie

Holiday Inn has one of the more ludicrous plots in a 1940s musical, but the Irving Berlin songs are first-rate, and it's tough to beat Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire for music-and-dance star power. Berlin is perhaps the film's real headliner: his White Christmas and Easter Parade would become cultural standards, and each song would inspire its own eponymous motion picture. Though the production numbers don't quite match the splendor of say, Busby Berkeley's, most are well-staged. The film's best moment is its simplest -- Crosby singing White Christmas sans accompaniment. Berlin won a songwriting Oscar for White Christmas, and the film was also nominated for Best Original Story.