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Directed by Elliott Nugent
Produced by Sol C. Siegel
Screenplay by Arthur Sheekman Adaptation by N. Richard Nash and Arthur Sheekman Story by Frank Butler
With: Bing Crosby, Joan Caulfield, Barry Fitzgerald, Wanda Hendrix, Frank Faylen, Elizabeth Patterson, Robert Shayne, Larry Young, Percy Kilbride, Charles Dingle, Don Beddoe, Thurston Hall, Lillian Bronson, Mary Field, and Paul Stanton
Cinematography: Lionel Lindon
Editing: Everett Douglas
Music: Robert Emmett Dolan
Runtime: 107 min
Release Date: 13 June 1947
Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1
Color: Black and White

In 1947's most popular picture, Bing Crosby plays an affable singing doctor hired sight-unseen as a temporary replacement for the longtime medical man of Fallbridge, Maine. The curmudgeonly country sawbones, played charmingly by Barry Fitzgerald, wants to take a long-overdue vacation but when he meets Crosby's carefree Dr. Jim Pearson he cancels his trip, unwilling to leave his community in the hands of such a superficial man. But Crosby sticks around once he meets the local school teacher (Joan Caulfield). He develops an antagonistic relationship with nearly all of the locals, despite his crooning skills, but slowly wins everyone over. Director Elliott Nugent and screenwriter Arthur Sheekman place their fish-out-of-water character in many amusing situations that don't require portraying everyone in the town as a rube. Instead, they mine regional humor in an intelligent way with snappy dialogue. It's not really a bonafide musical and the songs aren't especially memorable, but it's all perfectly enjoyable.

 

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Barry Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby square off as a curmudgeonly old country doctor and the carefree singing medical man from the city he hires to fill in for him in this affable comedy that became 1947s most successful picture.