Walter Abel

A simple group of commercial flyers, post WWII, one plane is downed in uncharted Canadian tundra, dead of winter, wicked cold. Limited resources. Other pilots start a search. Simple, huh? Remember...No GPS, No Radar, Limited radio and supplies! And that relentless bitter cold! But wait. These aren't ordinary commercial pilots. We soon learn these guys have some real history, military types, probably in WWII. They're tight, driven and fearless, and they're gonna find and rescue The Duke and his crew if it kills them! Like a fine wine, what starts out as a simple story draws us into the lives of these fine men, and their families as well. Before you know it, your heart is racing, and the tears are flowing! Perhaps an overused cliche, but truly, they just don't make films like this anymore! What's more, you get to see James Arness cry! Real men, these.

Famous showbiz trio breaks up, as crooner Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby) plans to take his fiancée Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale) out to Connecticut to live on a farm and enjoy the lazy life. The problem is that suave dancer Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire) has stolen Lila from Jim and runs off with her to continue their showbiz careers. Farming does not prove as easy as Jim had hoped and after a year, he ends up having a nervous breakdown. In the sanitarium, Jim comes up with the idea to turn his old barn into a nightclub that is only open on holidays. Jim visits Ted and Lila in New York and tells his old agent Danny to send him any talented acts for his club. Danny encounters a young woman at a flower shop who is bent on a career as a dancer and singer. Her name is Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds), and he gives her tickets to a show and tells her to audition at Holiday Inn. At the show she meets Jim and both pretend to be more important than they really are. When she arrives in Connecticut they are surprised to be caught in their lies. Linda auditions and Jim agrees to let her star in his shows beginning with the upcoming New Year's Eve performance. In the meantime, Lila leaves Ted for a Texas millionaire. This starts Ted to drinking, and sends him to his buddy who knows what it is to have the woman you love stolen away from you. When he arrives at the inn he is extremely drunk and ends up dancing with Linda. They dance an incredible improvised comic dance routine that is still a classic. Agent Danny arrives in time to see Linda's back as she walks up the stairs. In the morning when Ted wakes up, he can't remember anything about her but the way that she danced and he know he wants her to be his partner. He and Danny decide to come back to the club on Lincoln's birthday to scout for "the back of a woman they don't know." Meanwhile, Jim has fallen in love with Linda, who can really sing and dance, and he offers her a life at the Inn, and sort of proposes to her. She agrees to stay with him at the Inn and is excited to be sort of engaged. Of course, Ted has also fallen in love with his mystery dance partner who he rediscovers on Valentine's day. He decides to stay at the inn and dance with Linda there. In an elaborate plan to get Linda away from the inn and Jim, Ted arranges for men from Hollywood to watch the 4th of July performance. Jim learns of this plot and decides to sabotage their routine by preventing Linda from arriving that day and inviting Lila, whose millionaire was not who she hoped he would be, to come in her place. In her attempts to get to the inn, Linda meets up with Lila and learns of Jim's plot. When she finally does arrive she is furious with Jim and in her anger agrees to leave with Ted for Hollywood. Jim closes the inn and mopes around. His housekeeper gives him sage wisdom that sends him to Hollywood to get his woman back. He arrives on the day before Linda and Ted's wedding, and sneaks onto the set. Linda gradually picks up signs that he is there and when he finally reveals himself she joyously runs to meet him. The movie culminates with a rewrite of the opening number in which we learn that Jim and Linda will be staying together at the Inn to sing and Ted will resume his dancing career with Lila. Holiday Inn is a Christmas treasure that shows a simpler time in history in a warm and endearing light.

When a wrongly-accused prisoner barely survives a lynch-mob attack and is presumed dead, he vindictively decides to fake his death and frame the mob for his supposed murder. Joe Wilson and Katherine Grant are in love, but he doesn't have enough money for them to get married, so Katherine moves across the country to make money. But things go disastrously wrong for Joe when he stops in a small town and is mistaken for a wanted kidnapper. Through the course of the movie, Fritz Lang shows us how a decent and once-civilized man can become a ruthless and bitter man. Based on the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna. —Andre'a M. Thompson <athompso@ziggy.st.hmc.edu> Hard worker Joseph "Joe" Wilson and teacher Katherine Grant are in love but do not have enough money to get married. Katherine gets a better job in Washington and together with Joe, they save money to get married one year later. Joe quits his job in the factory and uses his savings to buy a gas station, working with his brothers Charlie and Tom. He makes enough money to get married with Katherine and buys a car. While driving with his dog Rainbow to meet his fiancée, Joe is stopped in Strand by the redneck deputy "Bugs" Meyers as a suspect in the kidnapping of a girl in the Peabody case. When they find peanuts in his pocket and a $5 bill in his pocket with the numeration of the money paid for ransom, Joe is arrested in jail for investigation. "Bugs" Meyers makes a comment in the barbershop about the prisoner and sooner the gossip is spread in the little town. As a tale never loses in the telling, Joe is accused by the population of kidnapping and they try to invade the police station to lynch him. For political reasons, Governor Burt does not send the National Guard to help Sheriff Tad Hummel to protect Joe and the police station is burnt down by the vigilantes. Katherine witnesses the action and has a breakdown. Joe is presumed dead but out of the blue he appears at his brothers' apartment seeking justice. He had learned that in accordance with the laws, Lynch Law is murder in the first degree and his brothers open a case against 22 inhabitants of Strand. The prosecutor Mr. Adams accepts the case and Katherine Grant is the prime witness. Joe's revenge is set in motion. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil It's been one year since Chicago pump jockey Joe Wilson and schoolteacher Katherine Grant have seen each other, when Katherine moved to Capitol City for a better paying job so that they jointly could earn enough money quicker to be able to get married. Joe is now driving to Capitol City in he feeling they have enough money for that permanent reunion. En route in the small town of Strand, Joe is stopped by the local sheriff in they having circumstantial evidence that he may be involved in a kidnapping. Word spreads quickly throughout the town that "a perpetrator" in the kidnapping has been apprehended and is being held in the local jail. Wanting their form of justice faster than what the sheriff's department is able to do, many of the townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands and storm the jail, ultimately burning it down, the fire started just as Katherine, hearing about Joe's incarceration, arrives on the scene to see Joe in the cell window of the burning building, she witnessing Joe's death which places her in a semi-comatose state in emotional shock. Two subsequent items emerge which change the nature of the matter. First, the true kidnappers are apprehended in another town, they who confess to the crime. As such under the law, those in Strand that stormed the jail and burned down the building could be charged with Joe's murder. And second, Joe, aware of the law, reveals himself to be alive only to his two brothers, Charlie and Tom Wilson, back in Chicago, Joe who was able to escape from the burning building. With Charlie and Tom's help, Joe wants his own form of vigilante justice to see that those who "killed" him are charged and convicted with his murder which he doesn't believe will happen in the townsfolk protecting their own regardless of what they know to be the truth. In the process of the subsequent trial, Katherine has evidence that Joe is actually alive. She herself has to decide what to do, especially in believing that Joe's own vigilantism is not the man she knows and is not a foundation for a life together with him if that's what he still has in mind. —Huggo Passing through a small town, Joe is arrested for kidnapping. A lynch mob burns down the jail and Joe is believed killed. The incident has been captured on newsreel film and, for revenge, Joe urges his brothers to use the film to prove the mob guilty of his murder. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>