Out of This World | |
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Directed by | Hal Walker |
Produced by | Sam Coslow |
Written by |
Walter DeLeon Arthur Phillips |
Starring | Eddie Bracken, Veronica Lake, Diana Lynn |
Music by | Victor Young |
Cinematography | Stuart Thompson |
Edited by | Stuart Gilmore |
Production
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Release date
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Running time
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96 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Out of This World is a 1945 romantic comedy film directed by Hal Walker and starring Eddie Bracken, Veronica Lake, and Diana Lynn. The film featured Eddie Bracken apparently singing with Bing Crosby's voice.
Betty Miller (Diana Lynn) and her all-women orchestra are struggling until singer Herbie Fenton (Eddie Bracken) joins the band. The picture was a satire on the Frank Sinatra ‘bobby soxer’ cult.
Bracken has the role of a shy Western Union messenger who is accidentally pushed on stage to become an overnight radio sensation when he sings at a benefit show where Diana Lynn and her all-girl band is playing. He has a romance with Diana Lynn who sells more than 100% of his contract to various ‘managers’ and he receives only fifty dollars per week. One of his ‘managers’, played by Veronica Lake, hires ‘bobby soxers’ to swoon at his performances.
The film was originally known as Divided by Three. It was meant to star Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton after their success in Miracle of Morgan's Creek. However Hutton was then assigned to the film California, so her role was assigned to Diana Lynn.
Veronica Lake was then brought in to play the third lead. It was a step down for Lake who had been one of Paramount's biggest stars. Hedda Hopper wrote that Paramount gave her the part supporting Lynn because "Lake clipped her own wings in her Boston bond appearance... It's lucky for Lake, after Boston, that she isn't out of pictures."
Filming started in June 1944.
In one scene, Bing Crosby’s four sons are seated in the front row at a radio show when Bracken is singing. ‘Where have I heard that voice before?’ asks the first one. ‘I was just thinking that’ says the next. The third says, ‘Aw shucks, I’d rather hear that bow-tie guy sing anyway’ (meaning, of course, Sinatra). The last one says, ‘You’d better not let mother hear you say that’.
In the finale the five orchestra leader-pianists, Carmen Cavallaro, Ted Fio Rito, Henry King, Ray Noble and Joe Reichman combine their talents in a joint pianistic effort.