As a film for all seasons — one that features musical numbers celebrating everything from Christmas to the 4th of July — 1942’s Holiday Inn was the first (and finest) of three movies to include Bing Crosby chirping “White Christmas.” The star also groans Irving Berlin’s holiday anthem in Blue Skies (1946), and the biggest-selling music single of all time (100 million copies) earned title status for the 1954 remake, White Christmas. Crosby costars with Fred Astaire as one member of a song-and-dance team determined to step away from a routine that finds them performing year-round. It’s Der Bingle’s idea to relocate the show to an isolated farm in Connecticut and only work the 15 or so days marked in red on the calendar. If remade today, musical tributes to Kwanzaa and Hanukkah would be de rigueur, and the regrettable “Abraham” number, which B-B-Bing b-b-belts in b-b-blackface to “honor” Lincoln’s Birthday, would be replaced by politically correct tunes showcasing nonexistent but nevertheless profitable “Hallmark Holidays,” like Boss’s Day, or Sweetest Day. Director Mark Sandrich, veteran of five Astaire/Rogers musicals, keeps the down-time between numbers to a minimum. The film’s biggest donut hole is leading lady Marjorie Reynolds, whose affections vacillate between Crosby and Astaire. The actress can’t carry a tune (her singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears), and she’s no match (who was?) for Astaire when it comes to shaking her tootsies. Please allow me to direct your attention to 1:34:39 on your DVD counter for an intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a dream factory at work. While I never again want to spend a day with shoes soaked frozen on account of snow, there is nothing quite so lovely as watching a Tinsel Town flurry, particularly one filmed on black-and-white stock. Word of the Inn’s success quickly travels west, and before long, Reynolds is on a Paramount soundstage lensing the big-screen adaptation. For a brief moment, we’re allowed a self-reflexive look at movie magic as our star recreates a sentimental scene: her return from a success in pictures to the desolate barn that sparked her fame. The makeup men disperse, “Action!” is called, and Cinderella’s horse-drawn carriage whisks the star from Bronson and Melrose to a snow-covered entertainment-venue/theme-restaurant situated somewhere back East. The camera pulls back to reveal a sky-high ceiling, with Ivory Laundry Flakes — shaken lightly from its mechanized rafters — landing on the cast and crew below. The audience watching is asked to imagine that the blizzard conditions they witnessed back at Holiday Inn were an act of God, and what we now see inside Hollywood Inn is a gifted craftsman’s tribute to nature’s glorious handiwork. Both scenarios are illusory, and while the reveal doesn’t last for more than a minute, the thought of cameras filming cameras filming an indoor snowstorm adds the surrealistic touch of a funhouse mirror, peeling back layers to reveal moviedom’s elusive and ever-glorious artistry. (1942) — Scott Marks