Exclusive“Holiday Inn” (1942): Reel Thoughts New Year Special

Happy holiday, happy holiday While the merry bells keep ringing May your every wish come true Happy holiday, happy holiday May the calendar keep ringing Happy holidays to you If you're burdened down with trouble If your nerves are wearing thin Hark your load down the road And come to Holiday Inn If the traffic noise affects you Like a squeaky violin Kick your cares down the stairs And come to Holiday Inn If you can't find somebody Who will set your heart awhirl Get in your car and motor to The home of Boy Meets Girl If you're laid up with a breakdown Throw away your vitamin Don't get worse, grab your nurse And come to Holiday Inn Happy holiday, happy holiday While the merry bells keep ringing May your every wish come true Happy holiday, happy holiday May the calendar keep ringing Happy holidays to you On the twelfth holiday Classic movies gave to me Twelve strokes of midnight Eleven Christmas carols Ten pumpkin pies Nine jack-o'-lanterns Eight happy workers Seven firecrackers Six Easter bonnets Five more cherry trees Three valentines Two stovepipe hats And an evening at Holiday Inn I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. This is Real Thoughts on Cinema. Welcome to our New Year special. Many movies which feature one holiday. Some even feature two or three. But there's only one classic movie musical which features all the holidays on the calendar. This movie is Holiday Inn from 1942. In the early 1940s, there's a trio of performers who are some of the top performers in New York. A lady and two men. One of their most popular skits is that the two fellas are fighting over the one girl. Little do they know that the same drama is happening offstage. Jim, the lovable singer, is planning on marrying his co-star Lila and retiring from show business to a farm in Connecticut. Little does he know that Lila has decided to stay with her dancing career with his co-star Ted who wants them to keep making people happy with their feet. Jim decides that he's going to still rejoin the human race so he goes to the farm in Connecticut only to find that it's much harder work than being a performer. So after a year of hard work, he decides that he's going to find a way to seek that kind of laziness and rest without rejoining the bustle of show business. So he decides to turn his farm into an inn. But what an inn. It'll be called Holiday Inn and only be open on the 15 holidays every year for a show, a home-cooked meal, and a really cozy experience. At first, his showbiz friends are a little skeptical of the idea but Jim is determined that it will work. On Christmas Day, a young hopeful is sent out to the farm to audition for him. And this is Linda Mason, a young lady who's been working in a flower shop but who has aspirations to become a singer and dancer. They quickly hit it off, so he puts her in his first show which opens on New Year's Eve. However, on that same evening, Ted arrives at the inn, drunk and depressed because Lila has left him for a Texas millionaire. In his drunken stupor, he does a fabulous dance routine with Linda not knowing what he's doing. When he wakes up with a hangover the next day, he has no recollection of who the mysterious girl was. So Jim does his best to keep her identity secret so that Ted won't steal yet another girl from him. This film was made by Paramount Pictures. It was produced and directed by Mark Sandrich. It stars Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds, and Virginia Dale. The opening credits of this film highlight the fact that the idea was originally suggested by Irving Berlin, who also wrote the whole score. Yes, I think accounts kind of vary on exactly how he thought of this idea. A lot of people believe it was inspired by the song Easter Parade. There are 12 songs in total in the score, and 11 of them were written originally for the film. But that one he wrote back in 1933 for a musical called A Thousand's Cheer. Yes, and he came up with this idea of a show originally, a Broadway show that would feature all these different musical ideas depicting the different holidays. And so then, it became a movie. And you have to say, it's a pretty unique concept to have a movie that features so many different holidays and such great songs. And of course, those songs by Irving Berlin, words and music, are really the heart of this film. Absolutely. All but two of them are centered on holidays. And those two are I'll Capture Her Heart, which is the trio, the first number in the film that Ted, Lila, and Jim perform. Yes. And then Lazy, which we hear Bing Crosby singing over the montage of his first hard year on the farm. Yes, it's such a great feature for these four performers. The two men, of course, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, fabulous musical performers, both singing and dancing. And the two women, neither of whom that well-known of performers, but everybody gets featured really well in this film. And of course, out of the whole great score, it's interesting to see which holidays were featured. Absolutely. The two most notable exceptions, I would say, are St. Patrick's Day and Halloween. Yes. The two really mainstream ones that aren't featured. But interestingly, the one holiday that's actually mentioned that isn't featured is Labor Day. Yes. And there was originally, I believe, a tap dance number written for that called This is a Great Country. It ended up getting cut, but Irving Berlin later reused it in a musical called Mr. President. Yeah, it's interesting to see because he mentions, oh, there are about 15 holidays. So people have speculated, what are all the 15 holidays? Since only eight are featured in the movie. Right. And it begins on, of course, Christmas. And then there's also a couple of New Year's scenes. There's Washington's birthday, Lincoln's birthday, Valentine's Day, Easter, and as you mentioned, St. Patrick's Day is not featured. Then 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and then back to Christmas. I think the two presidents' birthdays will be interesting to modern audiences because Lincoln's birthday is not really celebrated anymore. No. And Washington's birthday is now called President's Day, so we can honor all the presidents on that day. Yes, and it's been absorbed to the Monday that's closest to his birthday. But this, back in those pre-President Day days, has two really great musical numbers which features the presidents separately to represent them individually. The executives expected the Valentine's Day song, Be Careful, It's My Heart, to be the big hit of the film. And I can see why. It's a really beautiful love ballad. It wouldn't have to be for Valentine's Day. It's just a romantic song. And it's really the only straight love song in the whole show. Great solo for Bing Crosby. And the dance number, which Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds do to that, is one of my favorites in the film. And honestly, one of my favorite Fred Astaire numbers. It's very reminiscent of some of his Ginger Rogers dances. Yes, it is. So I can see why they were expecting that one to be the hit. And it was successful at first, but very soon, as we all know, it was eclipsed by White Christmas. Now, we have to talk about the success of White Christmas itself, because I think that probably this movie's greatest claim to fame is how it catapulted White Christmas to such notoriety. And it won the Academy Award for Best Song that year, which is interesting because it wasn't technically debuted in the film. He did write it for the movie, but about halfway through filming, Bing Crosby debuted it on the Kraft Music Hall, which was a radio program on Christmas Day, 1941. I have a dream Of a White Christmas Just like the ones I used to know And that highlights the fact that this is so interesting to me, that this movie was not released in the holiday season. It was released in the summer of 1942. That's less surprising than it would be with some other Yeah, because like we said, it's a bunch of movies, a bunch of different holidays. Yes, it really is a tribute to all the holidays. Our family always watches it around Christmas and New Year's, but really it is appropriate to watch any time of year. I think because Christmas and New Year's are featured more, like several times. Yes, that's true. Technically it goes through, it covers three years, right? Yes, well, two full years. Because first you see him on the farm. Two full years, yeah. It covers two full years, so technically there are three Christmases and three New Years in the movie. White Christmas is of course an amazing song any time, any place. But I think the reason for its overwhelming success was the timing. Like you said, he debuted it on Christmas Day of 1941. This was less than a month after Pearl Harbor. So we were already in World War II. And that is the secret to the success of this song, that it was really a wartime song. Why are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Well, maybe because you're overseas. Maybe because you're stationed far away from your family in a camp. That longing for home, for the homespun days of your childhood, that's why this song became such a huge success. And a lot of kind of musical historians consider the release of this song sort of a turning point in Christmas music. Yeah. It was, you'll notice, you don't hear that many Christmas songs from the 30s. That's true. So this was really, other than of course the great carols and the religious... Yes, sacred music goes back centuries. But the more secular Christmas music I think really was kind of turned into a mainstream industry by this song. Particularly the more sentimental secular, right? Because you had jingle bells, you have Here Comes Santa Claus. Right. Those were around before that. But this with the real deep heartfelt meaning, but not the religious aspect. And it makes sense with Irving Berlin, the composer, being Jewish. So the Christian elements of Christmas wouldn't mean as much to him. But it shows how people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, even Jewish people, can enjoy the secular celebration of Christmas. And that heartwarming feeling. And that you don't have to believe in the religious aspects of Christmas to enjoy it. But you also can still enjoy a heartwarming song like this even if you do believe in the religious aspects of the holiday. And of course the moment when Bing Crosby introduces this song is so meaningful as he sings it to and then with Marjorie Reynolds, who's overdubbed of course, on Christmas, at the holiday. And when he says he hoped to be open by that time, but he made a promise to himself that he would sing that song at the end of the evening. And he's playing the piano, the fire is burning in the background, there's this Christmas tree there and he takes his pipe and plays the little bells on the tree. And of course, Bing made so many recordings of this song. But it's always so nice to hear that original arrangement. Speaking of World War II, and its association with the film, it doesn't feel like a wartime film at all because they started production before we joined the war. Yes. But the exception to that is the 4th of July sequence. Right. There's a, almost a newsreel type video played during the song. a movie screen in this outdoor theater. And you can see, if you think about it, because I didn't think about this for years growing up watching this movie until just recently knowing more about the history of saying, oh that's the beginning of the war, that footage you're seeing of the factory, the rivets, and so forth. And, I believe that that was actually added after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And it makes sense. Fred Astaire's firecracker tap dance, I believe, was already in, but they added that song. The song, Bing Crosby and the Chorus sing a song of freedom. And, if you know a little about history at this time, it's very interesting that the lyrics to that song are directly inspired by President Roosevelt's annual speech to Congress, which he gave on January 6th of 1941, which has been dubbed his Four Freedoms speech. In it, he said that the people of the world were, had the right to four different freedoms. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Those are the lyrics. Free to speak and free to hear, free from want and free from fear, free to sell the seven Zs, free to worship what is pleased, all those things are in the song. Wow, he's quoting Roosevelt's speech. And at the end, they show a little footage of Roosevelt probably making that very speech, wouldn't you say? Yeah, that's definitely some newsreel speech of Roosevelt from around the time. So that gives you a little historical context. Now, do you have to know about that to enjoy this film? Absolutely not. Like you're saying, we didn't really know about that when we watched it from our earliest childhood. It's a great film without that historical context. But I think if you watch it as you're older and more aware of American history, it gives it even more meaning to see how people felt as they did. Now, again, back to White Christmas. That song and Bing Crosby's rendition of it has often been said to hold the record even to this day as the top-selling single of all time. Right. There's actually kind of a... There's a little debate about it. Yeah, not a controversy, but a debate about whether or not it was surpassed by Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana in 1997. That was, of course, Goodbye England's Rose, an adaptation of Candle in the Wind, and was very, very popular. But the issue is when White Christmas was first topping the billboard charts in 1942, it was 11 weeks straight on the top of the billboard charts. They weren't tracking as carefully how many records were being sold. The sales were a little different then. So, many people believe that while Elton John's record sold 33 million, that Bing Crosby was more like 50 million. We're not 100% sure, but honestly, I'm going with White Christmas. I say White Christmas is still number one. And the amount of adaptations that have been done of that is just mind-blowing. Everyone sings that on his or her Christmas album. Speaking of other historical notes, one of the funnier sequences, because there are these little animated sequences throughout. Every time you see the calendar, it's so cute. It shows you years and little animations on the holiday. And for, and I believe those were done by Robert Allen, who's graphic design credited. But, on Thanksgiving, there's a little turkey, a little cartoon turkey, who keeps running back and forth between these two Thursdays. And, you know, I thought, because you're never sure when Thanksgiving is going to be, because it's not a fixed day holiday. But that's in reference to sort of a little controversy about when Thanksgiving was in the late Roosevelt administration, which was dubbed by critics Franksgiving. Because, beginning when Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving really an official holiday, it was always the last Thursday of the month. But in 1939, there were five Thursdays in November, and this was during the Great Depression. And at this time, because at this time merchants had respect for Thanksgiving, which now we don't care anymore. They're looking at you. Yeah, put up those decorations as soon as the 4th of July is over. But back then, it was considered immoral for stores to start advertising Christmas before Thanksgiving because it was seen as putting commercialism ahead of gratefulness to God. So, merchants were concerned they wouldn't be able to make enough money because of how late Thanksgiving was, so Roosevelt decreed that Thanksgiving would be on the 4th, which made it very early. The 4th Thursday of the month. Yeah, the 4th Thursday of the month. among the calendar makers, the football teams, the school years, businesses, oh, all of a sudden the holiday is on a different day because it was kind of last minute. So, not all the states observed this. And it continued that way for the next couple of years until finally in 1942, he officially made it law that it would always be the second to last Thursday, whether it was 4th, 5th, what have you. And that is the issue that's being sort of parodied in that little cartoon. The turkey's confused. The turkey's confused because he's like, I don't know. Talking a bit about the musical performers, I would say the real star of this film is Bing Crosby. Definitely. He is definitely the sympathetic leading man. This is the closest, honestly, to not a villain exactly, but an antagonist I've seen Fred Astaire play. Yeah, because, I mean, you can't help but love him since he's Fred Astaire. Yeah, if it were anyone else, it's like, this guy's a jerk. But because it's Fred Astaire, he's still kind of endearing. you know, first, he steals his girl when they're engaged. They're about to get married. He's bought the farm, he's bought the ring, and he convinces her to stay in show business with him. Now, obviously, Lila has kind of a wandering eye. She's a very fickle woman, and she doesn't have particularly deep feelings for anyone, but he does tempt her away from his friend, and then, a year later, they're still not married, which shows that he wasn't really that serious. He just didn't want to get a new dance partner for Pete's sake. He'll go to any length to keep a good dance partner. I mean, I'm not saying I can't relate, but it's still not good to steal your friend's girlfriend. So then, when she leaves him, he goes, and then he's trying to steal his girl again, the new girl, because it's more than just so they're going to dance together. He's like, oh, I'm in love with you, Linda, and we're going to dance together, and he immediately tries to get her away from Holiday Inn. So he's rather unscrupulous, but through it all, he's a great dancer and a good singer, and we can't help but enjoy the talent we see on display. I think his shining moment to this is his firecracker dance on the 4th of July. Yes. The explosions. They did 38 takes of that before he was satisfied. He was noted for being a perfectionist. Yes. And kind of a little behind-the-scenes detail I love is at the end of the number, he hits his end pose and then he kind of does this gesture like that, like he's really excited, and that was unscripted. He was just so glad that he finally got it right. It's so real, and it's such a rare candid moment you see from Fred Astaire. He's very controlled. Because he's so polished, so perfect, so practiced, but at that moment he's like, yes, I got it! And it's great to see that moment of realness from him. And there's so much enthusiasm in that number that it feels, you know, the energy is so high, you can really feel his excitement. I love to see the back-and-forth which he and Bing Crosby have. They were such a great team as these sparring partners, and the jokes about, you know, that Fred doesn't really sing and he doesn't really dance, but they both were great at both, as especially evidenced in the great I'll Capture Her Heart number, as they're joking about one will capture her heart with singing and one with dancing, and then they're trying to do the other person's talent. They were so great at being funny without being goofy. There's so much goofiness today, so it's very refreshing to see the clean-scrubbed, heartwarming humor of the early 1940s. Now, as you mentioned, the two ladies are not particularly notable other than that they were in this film. That's right. Marjorie Reynolds had been... She's really the leading lady. She is definitely the leading lady. She plays Linda, and she's the one who really falls for Bing. Now, she was overdubbed while Virginia Dale did her own singing, but I would say that she is a better dancer. Yeah, definitely. So we'll forgive her for not doing her own singing. And she has such a... The voice, which is not her voice, is so beautiful, especially singing White Christmas and some of the other songs. You can tell, you know. And her singing was dubbed by Martha Mears. It's a very lovely voice. Yes. And both of the ladies were trained dancers. Virginia Dale actually trained on point from age 9 for a few years. So she was a ballet dancer. Yes, but she got blood poisoning in her foot when she was quite young, and they had to graft some lamb skin on top of her foot, and it limited the mobility of her foot so she couldn't dance on point anymore, which was actually good because she hated it. But then she and her sister were actually a dance team, and they worked in New York until Darryl F. Zanuck saw her and signed her to 20th Century Fox. Interesting. So I guess she must have been loaned out for this picture. Yeah, it's true. And neither one of them is a big star. I feel that there's a bit of inspiration from Ginger Rogers for her character. Mark Sandwich originally wanted Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth to play the two parts. Do you know which is which? I don't. I've read that too, and there really isn't any information on that point. What would you guess? I would guess that Ginger Rogers would have been the Linda Mason role, even though technically she ends up with Bing Crosby. Yeah. And Lila ends up with... It would be more fitting to their character to be the other way around, but who knows? I don't know why, I just... Well, I guess Rita Hayworth was younger, wasn't she? Yeah. I always think of Rita Hayworth as older for some reason, but I think... She was quite young at this point. I'm probably wrong. She made two very successful movies with Fred Astaire in 1942. Okay, it probably would have been the other way. Because he has to end up with Ginger, it would be wrong if he didn't. That's true, and I think the way that she sort of leaves him straying for greener pastures is a bit of a light-hearted commentary on the fact that a few years earlier Ginger Rogers had wanted to stop making movies with him to pursue dramatic acting on her own. It's interesting to see Fred Astaire's different dance styles with the two women. As we noted, Marjorie Reynolds is definitely a better dancer. She's smoother, she's taller and thinner, so I think she matches him a little better. She's very much a Ginger Rogers type, despite what we just said about Rita Hayworth and so forth. I find their big number together, the Valentine's Day number, to be very reminiscent of his style when he danced with Ginger Rogers. And of course, they do the really great and funny New Year's dance as he's... All the people in the crowd think he's just acting drunk, like he's just pretending. And even she seems to think he's joking around. But he dances a lot with the other woman, too. Mm-hmm. They do the... Of course, they dance in Capture Her Heart. Probably his biggest number with her is You're Easy to Dance With, which actually is a third non-holiday song. You're right. I was incorrect. But they do it on Christmas Eve. Yes, they do. It's a big nightclub number. And you can tell from her... You know, there are beautiful Christmas trees around. It's a very festive routine, even though it's not actually a Christmas song. And in that dance, I think it's one of the greatest examples of Fred Astaire's leading abilities. If you really watch, I mean, she's doing it, but he's really making her do it. I mean, he's leading her all over the place. She's also shorter than a lot of leading ladies he had. So that's an interesting bit of a dichotomy. Mm-hmm. Now, speaking of holidays, since this is our New Year's special, we have to talk about the New Year's Eve sequences. Right. So although we go through New Year's three times... Yeah, the first New Year's Eve, we just see Bing Crosby beginning to work on the farm. Yes, he's carrying firewood, I believe, and falls down the stairs. So that's not really an important event. But the... But the first one that's really important, which is the second year, is the opening of Holiday Inn on New Year's Eve. They sing the song Happy Holiday, which is now a very well-regarded Christmas song, actually. Yeah, one of the old ones. Andy Williams sings the New Year's song as One Minute to Midnight, which he sings in the kitchen while they're serving up food, and she's got a little checkered apron on over her fancy dress. It kind of is a medley into We'll Start the New Year Right. Yes, you're right. Almost two separate songs. And it's sort of a tender moment between them as, you know, they've only known each other a week, but you see the beginning of, they're beginning to really feel strongly about each other, both as they're growing together as musical partners and maybe in real life too. And then, of course, Ted shows up and does his first number with Linda. Yes. Which, supposedly, Fred Astaire, in order to get into the proper mood for the scene, took a couple of drinks of bourbon beforehand, and then he took an extra drink before each take, and they did seven takes. And the seventh take is the one they use, so I think he's actually rather tipsy. He was a method actor. But it's funny to watch that number as a dancer because there are several kind of partnering fails in it, and if you dance, you feel like, yep, that happens very easily. It's like they miss each other's hands or you can't find her. Especially when your partner's drunk. And the music, that's not a sung routine, but the music is, you're easy to dance with. Right. It's sort of a comical arrangement, almost like it plays on it. So a reprise of that, and then it ends on New Year's Eve. Yes, it does, with sort of a reopening of the end on its first anniversary. And it starts out with a reprise of I'll Capture Her Heart with some new lyrics, and then goes into We'll Start the New Year Right Again. Yes. It finishes with their singing, and Ted and Lila are dancing. Beautiful exterior shot of the snow. Very festive. My outfit is inspired by the gown which Linda wears at the opening of Holiday Inn on the first New Year's Eve. It is a long, rather form-fitting gown like this with a lot of sparkles. My dress is inspired by the gown which Lila wears on the reopening of Holiday Inn at the closing scene, which is the third New Year's sequence. It's a long gown which is white on the top, black on the bottom, with sort of a form-fitting silhouette. She wears long black gloves and some sparkly jewelry, and she often wears many sparkly headpieces. Now, of course, I would recommend this movie to anyone during the holiday season, and I think you can also watch it on either the President's birthdays, Valentine's Day, Easter, Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving. It's sort of our tradition to watch it on Thanksgiving, and then we often watch it again later, either on Christmas or New Year's, or sometime in there. Now, in recent years, some television networks have stopped wanting to play this film because there's a blackface sequence in it. That's right, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday because he freed the slaves. So the whole number is the song Abraham, and it's talking about what a great man he was, and everybody is in blackface, all the instrumentalists, even the waitresses. The girls, in kind of standard Hollywood form at this time, are wearing more of a brown face, like a light, it's like a really dark tanned makeup. Except for Linda, who's in full blackface, because it's actually, what they play it as, he wasn't going to do the number in blackface originally, and he decided to do so to disguise her from Ted because he's looking for her. Now, it's understandable why blackface is now considered problematic. Right. Even by the time that White Christmas was made, 1954, the Mandy number was not done in blackface because by that time it was considered controversial and offensive. Yeah, but 10 years earlier, it's a minstrel number. It absolutely would have been done in blackface. Yeah. So the question remains, was this done as a parody or to make fun of someone, or can we find something positive about it? Well, I think the character of Mamie, who is his maid at the inn, played by wonderful black actress Louise Beavers, I think she's a really great character in the film. She gives him some good romantic advice later. She's sort of like a mother figure. Yeah, both him and Linda. And during this number, they cut to her in the kitchen with her two children, and she sings one verse of it about how he freed the slaves, and I think it's quite a beautiful tribute. Yeah, that's a nice moment that they do feature her showing that she gets to sing. She gets to have a feature moment as do her children. And yeah, if you want to be really sensitive, sure, you can be offended, or you can understand that this was still considered okay at the time, and that Bing Crosby was really good friends with a lot of black musicians. Louis Armstrong, he learned from their style of music and actually brought that into his own style. This film actually was, or not this film, sorry, White Christmas, coming from this film, was the first of Bing Crosby's records to be in the Harlem top charts. Oh, interesting. So it was his first record that was ranked by sort of the black audience. Interesting. So yeah, he was very close with the community. Like, in his early days, he worked with the Mills Brothers, and you hear that kind of scat singing, that laid-back style he had, which was different than a lot of other white recording artists at the time. And that's one reason why he was so popular. So I think if you want to be offended by everything, you can be offended, but if you can, just like we talked about Thanksgiving and the beginning of World War II, if you can open your mind a little and try to look at it from that point of view, and it's the product of its era, and consider maybe they didn't mean this as something offensive, but as appreciation. Maybe we can consider it racial appreciation instead of racial appropriation. That's beautiful. Maybe it's no worse than having a Chinese dance in the Nutcracker, which I know some people are starting to consider offensive, but maybe we just could consider it a loving tribute to another race and not consider it something offensive and try to look at it with a bit of a more open mind. What was surprising to me, actually pleasantly surprising, is in spite of that, one thing that might be controversial about Thanksgiving is that when you go film, it has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based off of I believe 27 critic reviews, and that's a lot. That just goes to show that deep down when you watch an old movie, it's because you want to be transported to a different time, and you have to do it by understanding that. It's like when you go to a foreign country, you need to understand the customs of that country. When you go to an old movie, you need to understand the customs of that time. When in Rome. Yes. So when you're in classic Hollywood, try to put yourself there like you're a guest at Holiday Inn. How would you react to these things, and are you just going to have a knee jerk reaction, or are you going to actually listen to the lyrics of the song and take it in and see this isn't actually offensive. It's actually paying tribute to that it was good that the slaves were freed. It wasn't saying it was good that there were slaves. It's good that they stopped being slaves. So I think that, you know, we can't pretend it doesn't exist, and I don't think we need to. I think we need to understand these interesting issues of the past, and at the same time appreciate how unlike the modern Christmas classics that are full of violence and inappropriate content and bathroom humor, this movie is a beautiful, clean, inspiring, and morally uplifting film that people of all ages and backgrounds can enjoy. And that's the beauty of this era of Hollywood. This movie, because it's very popular, is available to watch both on DVD or Blu-ray from Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Barnes & Noble, or for streaming. You can rent or purchase it, often at a reduced rate during the holidays, on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, and many other streaming platforms. But I must caution, in recent years, there is a colorized version that has often been perpetuated. It's okay, but I urge you to stick with the original black and white. It's the classic and how it was made. If you enjoyed our New Year's special, we hope you'll watch our other episodes. We have a weekly release where we talk about a different classic film every week from all different genres to help you start your classic film journey. Thank you for watching! Happy New Year!