Along with Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, the 1951 Scrooge/A Christmas Carol, and the Canadian-American classic A Christmas Story, Holiday Inn is among the most beloved holiday movies of all time.

This marvellous 1942 musical stars Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire as song-and-dance men falling for dishy dames played by Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale. Built around all holidays but culminating in the bittersweet romance of Christmas and New Year’s, the movie introduced Irving Berlin’s song White Christmas, one of the biggest hits in popular music history.

Now you can see (and hear) the movie as never before. Holiday Inn has been restored. It has also been — shock and awe — colourized. There is a new three-disc Collector’s Set offering the movie in its original B&W on one disc and in the colour version on another. A third disc is a CD of the 12-title songbook sung by either Crosby or Astaire.

Colourization is still a controversial process — and it should be. Each case must be rigorously debated because colourization can damage a film’s integrity. But Holiday Inn, directed by Mark Sandrich, may be a rare exception. Mary Crosby, Bing Crosby’s actress daughter with second wife Kathryn Grant, certainly thinks so. In fact, she is enthusiastic about colourization.

“I can speak for the whole family,” she tells Sun Media from her home in California. “We were thrilled and I really do think it was subtle and elegant and everything that my dad would have wanted the film to be.”

The colourization was done at Legend Films in San Diego under the supervision of founder Barry Sandrew. The film itself first had to be meticulously restored.

“They didn’t start with perfection,” Crosby explains. “I think they really worked hard to get there and it was (a process) of really fixing up the movie before they could add colour.”

Once that was done, more research was required. For example, in one of the film’s lovely musical scenes — when Bing Crosby introduces Marjorie Reynolds to the patrons of his inn — she sweeps down the stairs in a beautiful frock. In B&W, we don’t know what colour it was. In the colourized version, Sandrew decided it should be red. Then a researcher discovered a written record noting how every gold bead in Hollywood was gobbled up by Sandrich’s costume department to make Reynolds’ dress. Sandrew was obliged to change the colourized version into a shimmering gold. And it looks stunning, even though Sandrew personally still prefers the red.

“Don’t you just love it!” Mary Crosby says of the anecdote. She also loved revisiting one of her father’s best-loved movies for the first time in years.

“I was so pleased and amazed at how extraordinary the movie is and how it holds up over time and how insanely talented everybody was.”

In her father’s case, Holiday Inn reminded her of his comedic skills as well as his acting and singing chops. She was also reconnected to his legacy. In part because of Holiday Inn (and its 1954 spin-off, the popular Technicolor musical White Christmas), Crosby is forever linked to the Christmas holidays.

“After he died (in 1977) it was really sad and hard for me because he is so much a part of the holidays,” Mary Crosby says. “It was kind of ouchy when I would go do groceries and hear him (in public).

“But now it’s been so long and it just makes me so happy that he still represents the holiday season and does so for a new generation. And I think Holiday Inn is very much a part of that.”

bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca