That touch of mink (Doris Day)

(Amazon UK link)

Over a year ago, now, we were given a selection of DVDs by an older friend who was downsizing. We have watched some of them, but not all. Last night we decided to watch another Doris Day movie, ‘That touch of mink’. We were surprised to learn, after watching it, that it was made in 1962. It had a much older ‘feel’ to it, as if it were a 1950s or even 1940s film (albeit in colour).

The film opens with a sequence showing Cathy Timberlake (Doris Day) standing on a street corner in pouring rain, only to be splashed quite badly by a car driving past. Nobody stops, and she is furious. 

After the title sequence, we see Cathy - still rather dripping - in an unemployment benefit office, claiming her cheque and insisting that she is trying hard to find work. She talks to the rather sleazy Everett (John Astin) who clearly wants to take her up to his apartment and seduce her. She is not remotely interested, and makes that clear.

We then see her ordering lunch in a cafe where her flatmate Connie (Audrey Meadows) works. Connie is full of advice, and annoyed on her behalf when she hears about her being splashed.

Meanwhile, in an expensive-looking office, Philip Shane (Cary Grant) is feeling slightly guilty about the incident in which he was involved that morning. He looks out of the window and happens to see Cathy as she goes into the cafe. So he asks his assistant Roger (Gig Young) to go and apologise on his behalf, and also to offer to pay for any damage or cleaning that is necessary.

I liked Roger enormously. A lot of the humour in the film comes from his insistence that he was happier in his previous job, and coerced to stay with Philip due to salary increases and benefits. Perhaps the joke is dragged out a bit far, but it was bizarre enough that I smiled, and sometimes even chuckled at it, each time. Roger also has some sessions with a therapist, Dr Gruber (Alan Hewitt) which lead to an amusing misunderstanding, one which would probably have been considered very risqué in the early 1960s.

I didn’t much like Philip Shane, however. Cary Grant was often typecast in this kind of wealthy businessman role, but I don’t think he’s all that good-looking. It was hard to see why Cathy fell for him when she was planning to give him a piece of her mind (much to Roger’s approval). All we could see was her facial expression, as it changes from one of righteous anger to a somewhat goofy star-struck look . Doris Day’s expressions are believable and very well done; but Philip is rather sleazy, and a known womaniser. His eventual plans for Cathy are a long way from the principles she absorbed from her small-town religious upbringing. 

The plot is somewhat predictable and stereotypical, but there are lot of asides and subplots that make this a surprisingly amusing and enjoyable film. The rating is U as there’s no nudity, no bad language, and nothing explicit. But a great deal is implied; it's full of innuendoes. It’s not a film I would recommend to children, even though most of the implications would probably go unnoticed. 

Having said that, there’s a bit of slapstick humour when the unfortunate Roger is mistaken, by Cathy’s flatmate, for Philip - again, more than once. It’s also very well done, and although I gasped, some viewers might find it very funny. 

The pace is good, if typical for films of this type, and the script very clever, with some excellent timing from the principal actors. There's not much chemistry between Philip and Cathy, but although it's a boy-meets-girl story, the focus is more on comedy than romance. 

All in all, we liked it a lot more than we expected to.  

x Review copyright 2025 Sue's DVD Reviews

Lover come back (Doris Day)

(Amazon UK link)

We’re still slowly working our way through the DVDs given to us by a friend who was downsizing about a year ago. This time we decided to watch ‘Lover come back’, another one in the Doris Day collection. We had no idea what to expect: the cover photo looks decidedly risqué, but the rating is PG.

I found the first few minutes a little confusing, but gradually realised what was happening, and was drawn into the film. Carol, Doris Day’s character, is a young woman who works in advertising. She’s enthusiastic and has lots of good ideas, and likes to get new accounts after doing a lot of research and hard work. She is contrasted with Jerry (Rock Hudson) who lazes about, and wines and dines his potential clients, taking them to strip clubs and similar.

Carol works hard on a contract she hopes to acquire, spending many hours on a portfolio and coming up with some excellent ideas. She finally goes to see the client, only to discover him rather drunk after a party with lots of drink and scantily clad girls. And he tells her he has given the contract to Jerry. Carol is furious and determined to take Jerry to a tribunal, accused of unethical behaviour. But her witness is persuaded not to testify against him, after yet more unethical bribery on is part….

Jerry really is a most unpleasant character with superficial charm, but no positive qualities. Rock Hudson was a good actor, and he feels quite believable. I really hoped he wouldn’t end up (as was inevitable from the start…) with Carol. 

There’s a serious misunderstanding when Carol mistakenly assumes that Jerry (whom she has never met) is someone else. He goes along with the deception, behaving as if he were rather naive, and allowing her to pay for his accommodation and meals. And then he steals an advertising idea…

The action is fast, and the acting good in an early 1960s style.  There’s some humour, particularly when Jerry pretends he has a new product which doesn’t exist, and others start battling to advertise it. There were a couple of places where we laughed aloud, and for most of it, I felt quite drawn into the story, rooting for Carol and annoyed by Jerry. 

I can see why the rating is PG and no higher. There’s no nudity shown, and no bad language as far as I recall. There’s no violence, and the drinking and cigarette use are appropriate for the era and the story. But there’s a lot implied in Jerry’s life, and one incident showing a ‘morning after’ with a sheet covering a couple who have evidently spent the night together. There are also shows with very scantily clad women; the stripping is not shown (it’s more amusing watching the audience, anyway) but clearly there.  

However it’s not the kind of thing that would appeal to most children or even teens; it’s inevitably somewhat dated, and the story relates to adult life. 

But overall, we thought it a well-made and nicely produced film, with just the right balance of humour and action. The ending is somewhat far-fetched, but then so are many of the incidents in the film - at least, I hope so!

Recommended, on the whole, if you like this era and style of films.

Review copyright 2025 Sue's DVD Reviews

Young at heart (Doris Day)

(Amazon UK link)

Another Tuesday evening, another opportunity to watch a film with my husband. We had quite liked ‘Pillow talk’, with Doris Day, when we watched it in September. So we decided to watch another film with the same star, which we were given by a friend who was downsizing earlier in the year. 

Doris Day plays a young woman called Laurie in this film. She lives with her father, her father’s sister Aunt Jessie (wonderfully portrayed by Ethel Barrymore), and her two older sisters in a large mansion. Her father Greg (Robert Keith) is a musician, and all three girls have learned to play instruments so they often play together in an ensemble. Fran (Dorothy Malone ), the oldest of the girls, arrives back from a date with Bob (Alan Hale Jr) and announces that they are engaged.

Laurie and her middle sister Amy (Elisabeth Fraser) talk about having a double wedding, or staying old maids together. Laurie has no young man in mind, although it’s clear that their plumber Ernie (Lonny Chapman) is very keen on Amy. Into their lives - via a litter of puppies at their neighbour’s - comes a competent, confident young man called Alex (Gig Young). He composes musicals, rather to Greg’‘s disgust, but he’s full of charm and very persuasive. He not only has dinner with the family, making it clear that he’s very attracted to Laurie, but becomes a house guest.

All three of the girls like Alex very much, despite him being somewhat overbearing at times, but he has eyes only for Laurie. We see them at the beach, and there are some light-hearted moments - it’s not a comedy, exactly, but there were places where I smiled. There might have been amusing comments that I missed since the dialogue was quite fast and strongly accented, so I realised that I missed quite a bit. 

We knew that Frank Sinatra was billed as Doris Day’s co-star but he doesn’t appear until quite a way into the film. He plays Barney, a cynical, rather depressed musician who plays in restaurants, and who does the arranging of Alex’s music. Barney is convinced that life is against him, that he will never have a ‘hit’, and that if anything good happens, he’ll soon be brought down. 

Laurie, who is cheerful and upbeat, can't believe that anyone can be quite as cynical as Barney. She does her best to persuade him to smile, and to be more positive, not realising that he is starting to fall for her. She and Alex seem made for each other...

The acting, 1950s style, is over-played, and we didn’t think there was much chemistry between any of the characters, let alone the ones who ended up getting married. There’s a fair bit of singing - not ‘musical’ style, but in appropriate situations; mostly in the house, as part of a family get-together, or elsewhere, trying out a new song. Both Doris Day and Frank Sinatra sing very well, of course, and I liked the music sections of the film. 

It’s quite a complex story, too. It includes some traumatic scenes, with a jilting at the altar, almost literally, and a marriage that is very one-sided. There's also a dangerous drive through a snowstorm, with increasingly ominous background music… and more. It’s perhaps a bit slow-paced by today’s standards, and some of  the direction and filming seemed a bit crude. But the story is well-told, the ending quite satisfactory.  

I doubt if we’ll watch it again, but it was worth seeing once. The rating is U, although I’d have thought PG would be more appropriate, given the tense nature of some of the incidents. But there’s no bad language, no nudity or even innuendoes.  There’s a lot of cigarette smoking, but that’s not unusual for this era.  It’s not the kind of film likely to appeal to anyone under the age of about 12 anyway. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Pillow Talk (Doris Day, Rock Hudson)

(Amazon UK link)

A few months ago we were offered first refusal on a large number of DVDs belonging to a friend, who was downsizing. Most of them were classics. We accepted about twenty, thinking they would be interesting to watch even though we had never heard of most of them. The one we decided to watch last night was ‘Pillow Talk’, a film from 1959 although it was in colour. 

Doris Day stars as Jan, an independent young woman who works as an interior designer in New York. She lives in an apartment where she’s quite comfortable. Except for one problem... Her telephone is on a ‘party line’ with a man called Brad Allen, who is a serial womaniser. A tad ironic, perhaps, that Brad is played by Rock Hudson, whom I had not heard of until the 1980s when he died.

Jan needs her phone for business calls, but every time she picks it up, she hears Brad flirting with another woman. He works as a songwriter, and tells each woman that she is his inspiration. Jan becomes more and more annoyed, even going to the phone company to see if they can do something about it.

What she doesn’t know is that Brad is close friends with Jonathan (Tony Randall), one of her clients. Jonathan is very keen on Jan, and keeps trying to persuade her that she should marry him. He really doesn’t want Brad to meet Jan due to his reputation for attracting every personable woman around…

When Brad spots Jan with Jonathan, he is very drawn to her. So when he meets her again he adopts a completely different persona, that of a country hick from Texas who always behaves like a gentleman. Rock Hudson does this switch extremely well, and there’s plenty of humour in the way he gently woos Jan…

Of course there’s the inevitable discovery of his treachery, and an eventual happy (if rather rapid) conclusion after she has taken unusual revenge. But it’s a good story, light-hearted and somewhat ridiculous but the ‘comedy of errors’ situation is well done. There are even extra amusing scenes when Brad takes refuge in places where he shouldn’t have been. And there are also humorous incidents involving Jan’s maid Alma (Thelma Ritter) who is outspoken, and has a drinking problem. We didn’t laugh aloud, but we both smiled several times. 

As a light-hearted evening’s viewing, it worked well. The acting is, of course, American 1950s style, rather caricatured and unrealistic. But that didn’t matter. We didn’t have any trouble with the accents, as I sometimes do with American films, but then the New York accent is quite mild. 

There are several songs in the film, but it’s not a musical. Nobody stops the action to break out into singing and dancing. Instead some of the songs are those written by Brad, and some are sung in a bar or elsewhere. They add to the film in a positive way, I thought. 

I was a little surprised that the rating for this film is PG. Although there’s no nudity or anything overt, there are a lot of innuendoes and implications. The main story, after all, involves Brad attempting to get Jan into bed without her knowing who he is. There’s also an unpleasant scene where a young man tries repeatedly to assault her in a car, and another where, due to a misunderstanding, another character is punched in the face. 

It’s not something I would want to show to children or teens, but then I can’t imagine that this would be of the slightest interest to anyone under the age of at least fifteen or sixteen. 

Recommended if you like rather risqué lightweight1950s American comedies.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews