User Reviews

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.

I grew up watching this movie! My father owns a 16mm film print. I can recite all of the lines in perfect time! I think for new timers to this movie, it requires two screenings. The first one gives you all of the story ideas and then the second one allows you to concentrate on how hilarious some of the lines and reactions really are. Ms. Holm did not have to learn to sing for this job - she was already an accomplished singer on stage. However, Linda Darnel and Paul Douglas had to have their singing voices dubbed, as neither of them had vocal abilities. My favorite lines are:

Len: Doris, would you just stop and listen? Doris: Stop starting everything you say with "listen". Len: Well alright then - but listen.

Cecil: We saw quite a bit of each other. But we could hardly help that since we were singing together. Mrs. Blair: You were doing what? Len: Singing! You understand English, don't you? Mrs. Blair: Well, perhaps he'll sing something for us now. Len: Sure. I'll sing for ya. I'll sing you bold legged, mother!

And lastly, the line that will make me laugh so hard I nearly wet my pants happens when Lenard Borland is pushing his mother-in-law out of his apartment...

Len: It's time that you should be going now. You're getting to old to be banging around time at this time of night!

(Just typing that line made me laugh out loud!!!)

I highly recommend everyone to see this movie. It's ashame that it isn't regularly shown on one of the classic movie channels or available (to the best of my knowledge) on DVD or Video tape. I wish 20th Century Fox would open up their vault to more hidden classics like this one.

If anyone is seriously interested in seeing this movie and can't find it, you can contact me. I have made a video transfer from my father's original 16mm film print. While the sound and picture are clean, you have to adjust to the fact that the flicker shows (moving from 16mm film to 30 frames per second causes flicker unless you have it transferred by pros! I just wanted it for my own personal collection, but would be willing to share!!!)

Was there ever an opera star as beautiful as the flawless Linda Darnell? Maybe Anna Moffo and Anna Netrebko come close, but it was something to hear a gorgeous voice (Helen Spann's) coming out of Darnell.

Anyway, Darnell stars with Paul Douglas and Celeste Holm in "Everybody Does It," a very funny 1949 comedy that is a delight for opera lovers and non-opera lovers alike. Douglas and Holm play Leonard and Doris Borland - she's from money, he's a demolition man - and she once aspired to a career as a concert soprano. He thought she had given up her dream until he comes home and sees her taking a voice lesson. She's determined to do a concert, so she rents Town Hall and Leonard and his partner bribe and threaten everyone they know to show up.

In the audience is a famous soprano, Cecil Carver, who met Leonad earlier and has taken an interest in him. She invites him to her apartment and tells him that his wife has a nice voice, but she'll never amount to anything. While he's there, she gets a phone call asking her to sing a particular song for charity. She can't remember all the lyrics, so she asks Leonard if he knows it. Leonard does, and turns out to have a magnificent high baritone voice (Steve Kamalyan did the singing, and I suspect he could easily have become a tenor like many high baritones). His business failing, Leonard goes on Cecil's concert tour and sings under another name.

A ridiculous plot, some beautiful singing, and fine performances are the highlights of this film, the best part of which is Leonard's opera debut. It's almost right up there with "A Night at the Opera" - hilarious.

An underrated comedy - don't miss it.

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.

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 ****

In this comedy about a businessman whose wife mistakenly believes she is a talented soprano, Paul Douglas is terrific, not only as an actor but as a character. He is thoroughly realistic about his wife's voice, yet supports her all the way, and, considering the Hays Code was strongly in force, I don't think I am providing a spoiler by saying that, despite ample temptation and opportunity, he does not break his marriage vows with Linda Darnell. I also don't think I am spoiling by saying that, despite a generally witty script, the ending is the same tired old get-out frequently used in this type of picture. (Another reviewer says that Ray Milland suggested the specific gag that triggers the ending. He may have done, but it was previously used in the movie Princess O'Rourke in 1943.)

But, while one can enjoy Douglas's robust performance, the satire of society people who pretend to be cultured, and many other things, the treatment of the two lead actresses is quite dispiriting. Darnell looks gorgeous and acts very believably, but, except for a few minutes of being sophisticated and charming when she first appears, she is cold and predatory, without the fluffiness of a 1930s character that would have made her behaviour amusing and less threatening. She seems like an argument against giving women power-- they become as arrogant and demanding as the worst male bosses.

Celeste Holm comes off far worse. Except for a few minutes at the end of the film, when she gets to be compassionate and spirited, she is tiresome and deluded. Like Darnell's character, she is not treated as she would have been in a Thirties screwball comedy, in which she would have behaved like a complete fool. But the much more realistic treatment here is very sad. The scene in which she fails to get any concert engagements but determines to become a singer anyway is actually rather poignant, and completely out of key with a comedy. She seems to embody all the talented college-educated American women who felt frustrated and despondent as housewives in the late Forties and Fifties. Also, since Holm was an excellent singer, it is disturbing to watch her reining in her voice to sound amateurish and being told she is no good. Her entire role, as an unsuccessful performer and a far less attractive woman than Darnell, seems a humiliation.

It's also a mystery why such an otherwise clever, well-made movie has such a dog of a title. It sounds like the kind of thing that is slapped on a picture that no one expects to do well. Despite its flaws, it is a very enjoyable movie, but if women bristle at some of it they can take comfort in the fact that it explodes its own assumptions. If men really were so superior to women, they wouldn't have turned out a movie with so many weaknesses.

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.

I must have missed the line or suggestion in this film that is the basis for the title, "Everybody Does It." I know that just about everybody can sing - that is, carry a tune. But do they do it? And does everybody try to become an opera singer? Okay, so the matter of another Hollywood title that is meaningless with the subject of the film.

Leonard Borland (Paul Douglas) has a wife who at one time was pursing a singing career - specifically, opera. She has a nice voice for singing at home, in the shower, the church choir, radio sing-alongs, a family gathering, etc. But Doris is nowhere near the talent of the big stage. Celeste Holm plays the part well. Leonard loves his wife and encourages her, even against the advice of his business partner, Mike Craig (Millard Mitchell).

A very talented cast of other players have roles that are involved, and before long, true opera star Cecil Carver (Linda Darnell) discovers that Leonard is the one with a voice. Not just any voice, but super baritone for opera. The plot for this film is okay, but the screenplay jumps all over the place.

When Doris finds out she can't sing, but that Leonard has been singing with Carver on the stage under another name, she becomes furious. A little serious violence is threatened when she takes a golf club with which to club her husband.

This is not a comedy of witty dialog or even antics. The opera scene toward the end is the only real humor. Lucile Watson plays Mrs. Blair, Doris's mother whose family had lots of money. Her dad, Major Blair, is played by Charles Coburn. He totally dislikes his wife and drinks a lot. George Tobias plays Rossi, the voice coach who is leading Doris on by alluding that she will be an opera singer one day.

Cecil Carver's operatic songs are dubbed by soprano Helen Spann of the San Francisco Opera. Leonard's songs are dubbed also, and sung by New York City Opera baritone Stephen Kemalyan.

It's hard to tell who might enjoy this film. It's very light comedy as best, but there's nothing memorable about it. If one doesn't like long-hair music, it's best not to watch this one. But opera fans won't find a whole lot by way of much music to enjoy either.

Paul Douglas is magnificent communicating his frustrations trying to placate his headstrong and self-deluded wife -- portrayed marvelously by Celeste Holm -- who persists in pursuing singing endeavors despite everybody's best efforts to let her know that she just doesn't quite have the talent. Enter sumptuous diva Linda Darnell with designs on ruggedly handsome (!?!) Douglas -- especially when she learns, to everyone's surprise, that he has a powerful voice. Charles Coburn and Lucile Watson lead an immensely talented supporting cast. The script delivers sophisticated yet rapid-fire wit while the direction conveys all the nuances perfectly, but still manages to deliver a couple of belly-laughs. I highly recommend watching Everybody Does It.

OK, I'm a great Paul Douglas fan so consider me prejudiced, but this is just a plain terrific film. I understand from a video dealer that some legal problems has its rights tied up so if you get a chance to it, by all means do so. Perhaps some day it will be shown again on TV or maybe even a DVD will be for sale.

The short plot is silly beyond belief. Douglas is again a rough character thrown in among society types - this time with an opera background. Through an unlikely talent, this time he gets to be a performer, but as you will guess, things don't go as planned. If you don't laugh out loud at this film, you are dead and should consult with a mortician for immediate burial. Too bad this one is one of the lost ones. Maybe someday....we'll again hear why the monkeys have no tails

This is one of the best post war comedies. The performance of Paul Douglas is perfect against Linda Darnell. It has been said that Celeste Holm had to learn how not to sing, in order that she carry out this role.

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.

FINALLY scored a copy of this! What can I say, I adore Paul Douglas - and he delivers everything here. Love the farce, love the slapstick, love all the humor. And then, almost like another movie (think "Body Heat" spliced into "Mixed Nuts")we have Darnell and Douglas. These two have the most amazing heat, I wish they had done more than their three films together. Although I am eternally grateful for their time on screen (YOWZA!!!)it makes poor Celeste Holm even more insipid than she is written to be. No matter, the movie is great great fun. I even liked John Hoyt, an actor that normally annoys me. The much loved FOX rep company is well represented. Now the search is on for "THE GUY WHO CAME BACK"!!!

The beautiful music for the opera in the film, an imaginary work titled "L'Amore di Fatima," was written by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

In a little tongue-in-cheek detail, the poster for the opera lists Tedesco — who also wrote real operas — as the composer.

I imagine this might have sent innumerable musical scholars on a fruitless search for the complete score of this hitherto "unknown work" by the prolific composer.

To add to the illusion of the opera's authenticity, in the film Paul Douglas also sings some known songs, including a musical setting of the Kipling poem "The Road to Mandalay" (a real pot-boiler) and the "Toreador Song" from "Carmen."

The singing is in itself one of the film's recommendations. The producers were not afraid to include long stretches of music that are quite rapturous.