Holiday Inn

The firecracker dance sequence was added to the movie as a patriotic number, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, which took place during filming. The montage preceding the firecracker dance includes shots of war-time production, military exercises, General MacArthur, and President Roosevelt. The dance number required three days of rehearsal and took two days to film. Fred Astaire did 38 takes of the number before he was satisfied with it.

The animated Thanksgiving sequence, in which a turkey jumps back and forth on the calendar between the third and fourth Thursday in November, is a topical reference to the “Franksgiving” controversy. Thanksgiving was always on the last Thursday in November, and in 1939 the last Thursday was November 30, the fifth Thursday that month. So in 1939 and 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to change Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday in November, instead of the last, in an effort to bolster holiday retail sales by starting the Christmas season earlier. This led to a joint resolution in Congress, which Roosevelt signed into law in 1941, officially designating the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Holiday Inn was released in 1942, the first Thanksgiving when this change was in effect.