Spitball Army

* Marjorie Reynolds to Danny, Fred Astaire’s manager

My affection for Holiday Inn knows no bounds, especially during the Christmas holiday season.  In my viewings lately, I’ve been focusing on the superb dancing of Fred Astaire – especially the two numbers featuring “You’re Easy to Dance With” – but I find that there are many rich veins to mine within this production.

So much of the context of this film seems dated today, from the blackface Lincoln’s Birthday number (political incorrectness on steroids!) to the cars, hairdos, telephones, mink stoles, and those short, wide ties!  Yowzah!  And, while most of the humor sounds cornball by today’s standards, it is also sometimes biting and sophisticated.  Combined with some colloquialisms that sound like they are from another century (oh, wait, they are!), the resultant dialogue in this film features dozens of zingers just waiting for re-discovery and use.  Here are some good ones:

• Bing Crosby, handing Fred Astaire a cup of coffee:
  “Here, have a slug out of the mug.”
• Fred, trying to remember the drunken night before: “Then I think I had a drink.”
  Bing: “A drink?  Boy, you were fractured!”
• Fred: “Jim, you’d better dream up a number for us.”
  Bing: “Well, just what did you visualize, Ziggy?!” [a reference to stage impresario, Flo Ziegfeld]
• Fred, to Marjorie Reynolds, after being given the cold shoulder by Bing, who rightly assumes that Fred is out to steal her away from him: “The world doesn’t change – a gentle smile often breeds a kick in the pants. But for your sake, Linda, I’ll be big.”
• Fred, regarding his former fiancee: “Poor girl, always straying to greener pastures and finding spinach.”
• Hatching a plot to get Bing’s girl under contract as Fred’s dancing partner.
  Danny, Fred’s manager: “This is no time to be honest!”
  Fred: “Well, what should I do?”
  Danny: “All we have to do is to convince Jim that he’d be a heel if he stood in the way of a chance like this.”
  Fred: “Oh, that’ll be easy.  Like peeling a turtle.”
• After purposely giving Virginia Dale wrong directions, forcing her car into the middle of a stream.
  Marjorie: “There’s a farmhouse near here, and I’ll have us towed out in a couple of minutes.”
  Virginia: “Oh, for the love of mud, hurry!”
• A lonely Thanksgiving dinner, Bing alone at the Inn.
  Mamie (housekeeper/cook): “Why you ain’t et a bite!”
  Bing: “I’m poutin’, Mamie.  Who is this [pointing to the turkey]?”
  Mamie: “That’s Mr. Jones.”
  Bing: “Jonesy?  I’m sorry, I knew him too well.”
  Mamie: “But you’ve got to eat.  The trouble ain’t with that turkey, Mr. Jim, it’s you!”
  Bing: “I feel alright.  I’m ridin’ high, Mamie.”
  Mamie: “Well, why you close the Inn, and sit around like a jellyfish with the misery?  ‘Cuz a slicker stole your gal, and you ain’t got fight enough to get her back!  Oh, excuse me, Mr. Jim, but…”
  Bing: “Well, I tried to keep her here!”
  Mamie: “What kind of keepin’ is that?  Nothin’ but tricks! If you went to Hollywood and told Miss Linda how much you loves her, and misses her, and told her that the way a lady likes to hear it told, hmph, I bet you she’d be the quickest ex-movie star that ever ex’d!”
  Bing: “You’re crazy, Mamie.”
  Mamie: “I’m crazy?! I knows Miss Linda, I knows her like I knows my own kids.  Why, she ain’t the fancy type no more’n you are.  What she wants is what you’ve got right here, but women has to have them things told to ’em the right way.  You could melt her heart right down to butter…if you’d only turn on the heat!”
• Bing, to waiter at swanky nightclub: “I’ll have a bowl of coffee.”