Magnificent Obsession (1954) on Netflix
Playboy Bob Merrick wrecks his speedboat and is revived with the town's only resuscitator while Dr. Phillips dies waiting for it. Merrick tries to make amends to the doctor's widow, Helen.
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- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bob Merrick, a spoiled playboy, behaves recklessly and loses control of his speedboat, which crashes and leaves him injured. Rescuers send for the nearest resuscitator, kept at Dr. Phillips's house across the lake. While the device saves Merrick, the doctor suffers a heart attack and dies. Merrick is treated at Phillips's clinic, where the staff resent what he caused. Helen, the doctor's widow, learns that her husband left little money, having turned away repayments offered to him during his life. Edward Randolph, an artist and the doctor's close friend, tells Helen what the words her husband used meant.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Magnificent Obsession (1954)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Charles Bickford was originally cast as Edward Randolph, but was withdrawn from the cast on September 15; with Douglas Sirk and Jane Wyman ill and Rock Hudson injured, filming was delayed longer than Bickford expected, and he walked out for the 1954 A Star is Born, playing studio head Oliver Niles. Free-lance actor Otto Kruger replaced him.
- For Rock Hudson's speedboat scenes, the production secured a real Unlimited Hydroplane speedboat named Hurricane IV, shot on Lake Arrowhead and piloted by racer Bill Cantrell.
- Frank Skinner's theme for the film inspired a song of the same title that The Four Lads recorded with the Percy Faith orchestra, while much of the score consists of Skinner's arrangements of Chopin, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and Johann Strauss II.
- Director Douglas Sirk sometimes claimed the story, adapted from Lloyd C. Douglas's 1929 novel Magnificent Obsession, was based distantly on the Greek legend of Alcestis.
