Everybody Does It (1949)

Everybody Does It is a 1949 comedy film 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.

Darnell sings long stretches of an imaginary opera, L'Amore di Fatima. The music for it was written by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In a little tongue-in-cheek detail, the poster for the opera lists Tedesco – who wrote real operas — as the composer. To add to the illusion of the opera's authenticity, Douglas also sings 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.

Synopsis

Leonard Borland (Paul Douglas) lives and works in New York City as a wrecking contractor, married to socialite Doris (Celeste Holm). Even though – according to her husband – she has no singing talent, Doris considers herself an aspiring opera singer and regularly pressures Leonard to accompany her to operas. Already dismayed by his father-in-law Major Blair's (Charles Coburn) insistence that Doris takes some singing lessons, Leonard further estranges from Doris when her career takes off. Despite financing her recital and arranging an important critic to watch her performance, Doris shows no gratitude.

Actors