Sound Off | |
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![]() Original film poster | |
Directed by | Richard Quine |
Written by | Blake Edwards Richard Quine |
Produced by | Jonie Taps |
Starring | Mickey Rooney Anne James John Archer |
Cinematography | Ellis W. Carter |
Edited by | Charles Nelson |
Music by | Morris Stoloff |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 83 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Sound Off is a 1952 American comedy film directed by Richard Quine and starring Mickey Rooney, Anne James, John Archer and Gordon Jones. The film was shot in August 1951 in SuperCinecolor for Columbia Pictures. [1]
This was the first of a three-picture contract between Rooney and producer Jonie Taps for Columbia, in which Rooney was paid $75,000 for each picture. It is also the first collaboration between Richard Quine, Blake Edwards and Dick Crockett. The same team next collaborated with Rooney in the Navy in All Ashore made the following year. The three worked together again on Rooney's television series The Mickey Rooney Show/Hey, Mulligan in 1954–55. [2] Their final film in the Columbia contract was the black and white crime drama Drive a Crooked Road .
The film's title comes from the military cadence by Willie Lee Duckworth [3] that was a major 1951 chart hit for Vaughn Monroe.
An obnoxious nightclub comedian at Ciro's is drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War. At his arrival at his basic training he meets a WAC Lieutenant and romantically pursues her. His activities irritate his drill sergeant and the entire army when he goes AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave) for her. He is imprisoned and sentenced to thirty days hard labour that turns him into a soldier. Then he is shipped overseas to join the Special Services.
Mickey Rooney was an American actor. In a career spanning nearly nine decades, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the silent-film era. He was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941, and one of the best-paid actors of that era. At the height of a career marked by declines and comebacks, Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized the mainstream United States self-image.
Susan Peters was an American actress who appeared in more than twenty films over the course of her decade-long career. Though she began her career in uncredited and ingénue roles, she would establish herself as a serious dramatic actress in the mid-1940s.
Richard Quine was an American director, actor, and singer.
That's Entertainment! is a 1974 American compilation film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate the studio's 50th anniversary. The success of the retrospective prompted a 1976 sequel, the related 1985 film That's Dancing!, and a third installment in 1994.
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Bring Your Smile Along is a 1955 American Technicolor comedy film by Blake Edwards. It was Edwards' directorial debut and the motion picture debut of Constance Towers. Edwards wrote the script for this Frankie Laine musical with his mentor, director Richard Quine. Songs Laine sang in the film included his 1951 hit "The Gandy Dancers' Ball."
The Desert Rats is a 1953 American black-and-white war film from 20th Century Fox, produced by Robert L. Jacks, directed by Robert Wise, that stars Richard Burton, James Mason, and Robert Newton. The film's storyline concerns the Siege of Tobruk in 1941 North Africa during World War II.
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Drive a Crooked Road is a 1954 American crime film noir directed by Richard Quine and starring Mickey Rooney and Dianne Foster. The drama's screenplay was adapted by Blake Edwards and Richard Quine from "The Wheel Man", a story by Canadian James Benson Nablo.
Baby Face Nelson is a 1957 American film noir crime film based on the real-life 1930s gangster, directed by Don Siegel, co-written by Daniel Mainwaring—who also wrote the screenplay for Siegel's 1956 sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers—and starring Mickey Rooney, Carolyn Jones, Cedric Hardwicke, Leo Gordon as Dillinger, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam, John Hoyt and Elisha Cook Jr.
Girl Crazy is a 1943 American musical film starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. Produced by the Freed Unit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it is based on the stage musical Girl Crazy – which was written by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. It was the last of Garland and Rooney's nine movies as co-stars, the pair appearing only once more together on film, as guest stars in 1948's Words and Music.
Off Limits is a 1953 American comedy film directed by George Marshall and starring Bob Hope, Mickey Rooney and Marilyn Maxwell. Hope plays a manager who enlists in the army to keep an eye on his boxer, who has been drafted. The picture was written by Hal Kanter and Jack Sher, and was released in the UK as Military Policemen, as the characters played by Hope and Rooney join the military police.
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Siren of Bagdad is a 1953 Technicolor fantasy adventure film produced by Sam Katzman and directed by Richard Quine set in the medieval Iraq. It stars Paul Henreid as a travelling Master magician who seeks to recover his troop of beautiful dancing girls who are to be sold into slavery. Patricia Medina portrays his love interest who seeks to overthrow the corrupt Grand Vizier with the magician's help. Hans Conried plays the sidekick to Quine's magician, who is transformed into a beautiful blonde woman who spies and distracts the Grand Vizier while retaining Conried's voice.
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