In October 2014, Goodspeed Musicals and Universal Pictures collaborated on producing a stage musical based on the legendary Irving Berlin film from 1942, Holiday Inn. The saga of how this developed is fascinating.
Berlin conceived it (with a different title) as a live show, so the concept of adapting it to the stage seemed natural. On February 16, 1939, Berlin sent a letter to his lawyer: “`Happy Holiday’ by Irving Berlin. This is a first rough draft for a revue. The important holidays in a year will be shown in rotation...New Year’s Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Decoration Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Armistice Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
That list is interesting, as it includes several days that never made it into Holiday Inn and some fetes that have changed names since then.
Berlin's conception was farcical. His idea was to stage an Inauguration Day in a mythical 1956 when "the Republicans have finally elected a new president, but the Roosevelts won't get out of the White House." He also detailed a scene that included uncomfortable ethnic stereotyping. For St. Patrick's Day, Berlin wrote of a husband-and-wife "dressed ultra-Irish and with a brogue singing `When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’ They pick up coins that are tossed to them and they then start counting the silver that she collected and do it in pure, unadulterated Yiddish." Berlin had started his career at a time when scapegoating of ethnic groups was considered fun, but in 1939, Hitler was persecuting Jews and accusing them of having unpleasant characteristics that included avariciousness.
Although he, himself, was Jewish, the songwriter was insensitive in this area. He never understood why some of his This Is the Army company objected to a comic blackface number in that World War II all-soldier musical. And in the “Holiday Inn” film, white performers with black grease on their faces sang about Abe Lincoln, "Who was it set de darky free?" The use of blackface was common then. Al Jolson became a star by playing African-American underdogs who outsmarted their antagonists. Many of his songs included stereotypical Negro dialect although he sang the words with affection. According to Jolson biographer John Kenrick, “White men smearing their faces black and imitating African Americans . . . was just one form of the coarse humor that all racial and ethnic groups were subjected to at that time." In April 1941 Berlin met film director Mark Sandrich: “I told him about my idea of a musical revue based on holidays and he thought it would make a perfect movie for Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.” So the idea turned into a film and a plot was constructed about a singer who retired and bought a farm in New England, and finding it tough going he decided to turn the farm into an inn that would only be open on holidays. This became one of the most popular movies of 1942. Newly written for it was Berlin's tune, "Let's Start the New Year Right," with the optimistic words, "Let's watch the old year die / With a fond goodbye / And our hopes as high as a kite." This at a time when America was crawling slowly out of the Great Depression, and everyone was frightened by Nazi and Fascist dictators.
The film had two huge song hits—“Be Careful, It’s My Heart” (for Valentine’s Day) and “White Christmas.” Crosby’s recording of the latter became the best-selling single record of all time, and a 1955 movie was centered on that song and borrowed a bit of its plot from Holiday Inn. (The film “Holiday Inn” was so beloved that when a new hotel chain was founded after the war, its owners copied their name from the movie.)
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas came to Broadway in 2008, and there could be some confusion between it and Holiday Inn. White Christmas is about the love of World War II veterans for their commander; Holiday Inn is about two guys competing for the love of a girl. If you get the opportunity to buy a ticket to one or the other, be advised that Holiday Inn is the better show.
Goodspeed Opera, located in a small Connecticut town, is the perfect locale for the story, and executive director Michael Price and his staff are experienced with classic musicals. While the jewel box stage is not the same scale as a Broadway house, the production levels are. Gordon Greenberg and Chad Hodge have beefed up the plot and written a new script, which Greenberg directed.
Tally Sessions and Noah Racey assumed the roles originally played by Crosby and Astaire. Sessions's character is amiable and likeable; Racey acts self-centered and brash. He is the piece’s bad guy, but we can’t help being intrigued by him. Women will feel that they’d never marry this man but certainly would want to spend a night with him.
The new script made the female roles stronger than in the movie. Patti Murin played the former owner of the Connecticut property, an independent woman who is courted by both of the leading men. Relationships become provocative as she is interested in a career, while her loved one wants to retire. (That’s a conundrum that many non-showbiz folks also face, so it's eminently relatable.)
Susan Mosher provided laughs as the inn’s wise-cracking handywoman. Danny Rutigliano was a comically pugnacious agent. Hayley Podschun was the ditzy former partner of the song-and-dance team. Motion pictures never have enough songs in them to fill a two-act stage show, so Greenberg and Hodge searched the Berlin trunk for additional compositions to fill out the evening. Berlin had listed potential song titles including “I Pledge Allegiance to My Flag,” “The Wedding of Capital and Labor,” “If Columbus Came Back Today” and “We Fought the War to End All Wars”—but he composed none of them.
“Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk” from the 1949 Berlin show Miss Liberty provided a nice love duet. “Heat Wave” (introduced in his 1933 musical As Thousands Cheer) related to the summertime if not to a specific holiday. “Blue Skies” (written as an independent song by Berlin in 1926) demonstrated the optimism of the inn-keeper, while “What’ll I Do?” (written for Berlin’s 1923 Music Box Revue) was a poignant love song.
Murin introduced a little-known Berlin creation, “Love Leads to Marriage / that leads to divorce / that leads to lawyers / Expensive, of course,” which was an uncharacteristic curiosity. Berlin wrote it in 1956 for a never-produced musical The Legendary Mizners, a subject which Stephen Sondheim addressed, between 1999 and 2008, in his Wise Guys, renamed Bounce and finally called Road Show.
But the soul of Holiday Inn is the array of holiday-specific songs, such as “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade” and “Song of Freedom,” which provided a Fourth of July tap dance with firecrackers by Racey. “Let’s Start the New Year Right” sizzled with streamers and balloons. All of the holiday scenes at the inn featured spectacular hoofing, choreographed by Denis Jones.
(In case you wondered how the adapters handled Berlin's composition for Lincoln's birthday that includes the line "Who was it set de darky free?," they simply eliminated the song.)
Greenberg’s direction made innovative use of Goodspeed’s tiny stage and cleverly reached out into the aisles to envelope the audience into the festivities.
