Everybody Does It (1950)

Directed by

Edmund Goulding

Genre

comedy film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 38m

Rating

8.5 of 10 from 5 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A businessman discovers he has a natural singing voice while his wife fails at becoming an opera star. He goes on tour under a fake name, and his wife gets angry when she finds out.

lightheartedplayfulcomedicironicwhimsicaltongue-in-cheekfast-paced

What happens

Everybody Does It is a 1949 American comedy film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Paul Douglas, Linda Darnell and Celeste Holm. In the film, a businessman's wife tries to become an opera star, failing miserably due to her lack of talent. When it turns out that her totally untrained husband is found to have a marvelous singing voice and goes on tour under an assumed name, his wife is livid. Neither Douglas nor Darnell were known for their singing, but Darnell convincingly lip syncs long stretches of an imaginary opera, L'Amore di Fatima. According to a poster, the music for it was written by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In a little tongue-in-cheek detail, the poster lists Tedesco – who wrote real operas — as the composer. To add to the illusion of the opera's authenticity, Douglas also mouths the words to some known songs, including a musical setting of the Rudyard Kipling poem Mandalay and the Toreador Song from Carmen. The operatic scenes were staged by Vladimir Rosing. The film is a word-for-word remake of 1939's Wife, Husband and Friend, which starred Warner Baxter as Borland, Loretta Young as his wife, and Binnie Barnes as Cecil Carver. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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