Everybody Does It

If you liked the modern comedy The Fourth Tenor, you'll find the 1949 opera flick very funny. The ending is terrible, but it's entertaining up until the last ten minutes. Big-hearted teddy bear Paul Douglas plays an opera singer!

He starts the film completely in love with his wife, Celeste Holm. She has a deluded dream to be an opera singer herself, so Paul rents her a concert hall and bribes business acquaintances to fill up the seats. He buys her dozens of roses for her opening night, and even confronts a critic who refuses who write a review. Isn't he a dream? Yet, when Celeste finds out his secret (that he himself has a beautiful operatic singing voice), she attacks him with a golf club. Throughout the movie, she's made out to be a pretty terrible wife, so I don't know why he was so in love with her.

For those of us who prefer to see him paired up with Linda Darnell, good news: she's in this movie! She plays another opera singer (if you don't like that type of singing, don't even think of renting this movie), and she's impressed by Paul's devotion to his wife. She hears him sing accidentally and immediately wants him for her next leading man. So, for all the lack of chemistry between Paul and Celeste, he and Linda make up for it. They're such a great screen couple, you'll wish they got married in real life.

Parts of this movie are very funny, especially for Paul Douglas fan. I really couldn't stand Celeste Holm, and the message put forth in the end made me cringe. But if you want to rewrite the story and just enjoy the comedy, I won't tell anyone.

Most viewers who discover this totally-unexpected satirical 'send-up" of opera, social snobbery and several other human pursuits simply find it hilarious. I love it because of the inexorable logic of its line-of-development--and because its humor is so infectious. This is adult humor, not compulsive misbehaviors being committed by parodies of human character (as in too-many TV "sitcoms" and badly-scripted comedies); here everyone tries his/her best and does pretty well considering that the scheme of things" is against them all. Doris Borland, played charmingly by Celeste Holm,, is married to nice-guy wrecker Paul Douglas, who has a partner, Millard Mitchell. Her parents, Charles Coburn and especially Lucile Watson, encourage her singing aspirations; Dougals as Leonard Borland isn't interested. The final shove to the family's already-tilting applecart--her side is wealthy, he just runs a business--occurs when Douglas discovers that he has a magnificent operatic singing voice. Encouraged by gorgeous Linda Darnell, a singer herself, and coached for stardom, Douglas reveals his talent to his astounded in-laws and his furious wife; then he goes onstage for his debut--only to be undone by unforeseeable bad luck. The entire script's development, from a James M. Cain story via Nunnally Johnson and director Edmund Goulding, derives every bit of humor possible from what is fundamentally a two-line joke about upper-class snobbery and lower-class down-to-earth realism. Kay Nelson's costumes are unusually fine; the competent music is by Afred Newman. But this is an actors' film. Douglas and Mitchell are wonderful together and separately; Darnell is lovely and right for a difficult part; Holm nearly steals the film by her ladylike reactions to goings on; Coburn and Watson add to the proceedings, as always. Others in the cast are John Hoyt as a music professor, fine actor George Tobias and Leon Belasco. The climactic scene of the film, Leonard Borland's operatic debut, is probably worth the price of admission alone. But the ending, which I won't reveal, is arguably the perfect commentary on the entire experience everyone has suffered. I recommend this humorous surprise of a film to everyone I know who isn't deceased--for the laughs.

Fox's remake of their own 1939 comedy "Wife, Husband and Friend" (both versions produced and written by Nunnally Johnson, working from James M. Cain's story "Two Can Sing") is a faltering marital comedy which generally fails to stay the course. Paul Douglas is wonderful as a newly-discovered baritone singer who ends up on the concert stage under an alias, however society wife Celeste Holm (who fancies herself a professional soprano) treats her working-stiff spouse like a cuckold, and allows her pretentious mother to openly patronize him. When Holm finally hears Douglas sing at a party, she becomes furious and leaves him; Douglas' response is to get drunk and disappear for four days. Johnson certainly had the makings of great comic material here--and the perfect leading man in Douglas--but he allows the principals to come apart too easily, and spends too much underlining Holm's irrational nature. As such, the finale (meant to bring the marrieds back together) is self-defeating. **1/2 from ****

One of the all time sleeper... I cant tell you how super this little movie is. But it is a super LITTLE movie. What was called a B movie. What a laugh. The problem is its out of print and its not shown on TV any more... Paul Douglas is a man with a rich wife. He runs a wrecking company in NY and his wife wants to sing on stage. So he has to rent a hall and force all his friend to buy tickets. And she cant sang. At a party at the rich in-laws, he sings and breaks the mirror. Wonderful. But the wife is fit to be tied because she didn't know he has an opera quality voice. So she goes home first and gets a golf club out and stands on a chair in the dark to club him as he comes in. One of the ladies at the party is an opera singer and wants to get it own with him and talks him into taking lessons to refine his voice so she can take him on the road with her. But he is reluctant but does it lying to his wife about what city he is in and that he is looking for wrecking business. And then the big chance at the Met. He is a little sick and everyone gives him "their" best medicine to fix him up but it only cause him to become drunk.. and then he goes on stage..drunk..but it is what the wife needed to see, him in trouble in front of the world...The production is first rate as is the script and acting. Just a wonderful little movie. I have my TIVO set on Paul Douglas to see if I can catch this little movie and for the last 15 months no luck...but I will keep trying.

Although I am a fan of movies from the 1940's and 1950's I somehow had never seen this film before. This is one of those delightful comedy sleepers like "Champagne for Caesar". I happened to see it listed on the DIRECTV TCM channel view-on-demand list and downloaded it to my DVR via the internet for viewing.

The cast performance is excellent from the major players down to the minor characters.

My favorite scene is when Mrs. Blair titters and flits about as she informs the party guests that her son-in-law is going to give a singing performance.