Calamity Jane (1953)

Having become quite a fan of Doris Day in other movie genres I thought it was about time for me to bite the bullet and attempt one of her musicals. Calamity Jane, made at Warner Brothers in 1953, seemed like as good a place as any to start.

Calamity Jane was an actual historical figure but don’t panic - this movie is not going to bother with anything as tiresome as historical accuracy. And in any case it appears that the real Calamity Jane was not exactly a sticker for accuracy when it came to recounting her adventures.

As the movie opens Calamity is saving a stage coach under attack from a Sioux war party. The stage coach is on its way to Deadwood in the Dakota Territory. Calamity’s account of the attack is embellished a little in the telling but it seems that the people of Deadwood are used to this. Wild Bill Hickok is particularly sceptical, which doesn’t prevent him from being a close and devoted friend to Calamity.

There is trouble brewing in Deadwood. The manager of the town’s only theatre has announced, with much ballyhoo, that he was importing a famous (and glamorous) actress from New York City. Unfortunately there was some confusion on the subject of gender and the actress who arrives is in fact an actor. The townsfolk (almost all of them men and exceptionally starved of female company) are most displeased and are about to trash the theatre when Calamity steps in. She will go to Chicago and bring back a real actress, a major star, the famous Adelaid Adams.

Calamity is not the most feminine of women and she’s a bit of a rough diamond. And her knowledge of the theatre is non-existent. She mistakes the great actress’s maid for the actress herself. The maid, Katie Brown, has always nourished the dream of a career on the stage and now sees her opportunity. She neglects to tell Calamity that she isn’t the great star.

As you might expect, her theatrical debut in Deadwood is somewhat eventful. The audience is initially pleased, Katie being an actual female and a fairly attractive one. When she tries to sing in the style of Adelaid Adams it becomes evident that she is an impostor. Once again Calamity comes to the rescue and when Kate is persuaded to simply be herself she becomes a surprise hit.

Katie and Calamity set up housekeeping together but there are complications. Both women are madly in love with a handsome young lieutenant. Of course you know that somehow or other true love is going to triumph.

Allyn McLerie, an actress I’d never heard of, is extremely good as Katie. Howard Keel is Wild Bill Hickok, and I’m afraid I’m not a fan of either his singing or his acting.

Doris Day on the other hand is a delight. She’s funny, she’s feisty, she’s convincingly butch  as the tomboy Calamity.

The movie has a very very artificial feel to it, which I like. It looks like it was filmed entirely on a sound stage and that gives it a very appealing unreal feeling. You don’t want anything as tedious as realism in a musical. It’s amusing, the sings are a bit uneven but they have their moments, it’s outrageously romantic and it’s just generally fun.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m a convert to 50s Hollywood musicals but I’ve now come across a couple that I’ve liked a good deal. Calamity Jane is recommended.

Send Me No Flowers (1964)

The first of the romantic comedies to pair Doris Day and Rock Hudson, Pillow Talk, was both an absolute delight and a box-office smash. Their second outing, Lover Come Back, repeated the formula and surprisingly was almost as good. Their third and final teaming in Send Me No Flowers proved that lightning might strike twice, but it doesn't strike three times. This one just doesn't quite make it.

That's not to say that it isn't entertaining, but the magic is just somehow lacking.

Hudson is George Kimball, the world’s biggest hypochondriac. On yet another visit to his doctor he overhears a telephone call. The doctor is discussing another patient who has only a few weeks to live, and of course he thinks he’s the one who is about to die.

Once he gets over the shock he decides that his first priority must be to line up a new husband for his wife Judy (Doris Day). The bumbling efforts of George and his best friend Arnold (Tony Randall) to find Judy a suitable new mate have the effect of making her suspect that George is actually having an affair.

The slightness of the plot is no problem. The lead actors are all good enough to produce movie magic out of the flimsiest of comedy plots. The problem isn’t even the script. There are amusing gags and funny situations and again with three comic talents of the stature of Day, Hudson and Randall even a slightly weak script isn’t a fatal flaw.

The real problem is that the characters played by Day and Hudson are already married. The fun of any Doris Day romantic comedy is the sexual tension between her and her leafing man. For all the nonsense that has been written about Day as the eternal virgin her romantic comedies were all sex comedies and they worked because with any halfway decent leading man Day could produce an impressive quantity of sexual chemistry. She and Clark Gable sizzled in Teacher's Pet, and she and Hudson sizzled in Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. The sexual tension was there on both sides, and it provided the fuel that made those movies zing. Casting them as a married couple was a major error of judgment.

There’s another problem, and that’s the character of Judy. In all of Day’s best romantic comedies she plays a smart, strong, independent, opinionated career woman. That’s what she did well. In Send Me No Flowers she has to play a housewife and it just doesn’t suit her style. She doesn’t get to be feisty enough, and she doesn’t get to be sexy enough.

Hudson is OK, but he was always at his best in this type of movie when his leading lady had the opportunity to provide some fireworks and with Day forced to play such a low-key role he has no-one to bounce off. Even Tony Randall is somewhat dull, since there’s no love interest for him and all he has to do is get drunk. There’s just a general lack of sex in this movie.

I also have to say that Doris Day doesn’t look as good in this movie as in most of her other movies. Her hairstyles and her clothes are mostly decidedly on the dowdy side. Which doesn’t suit her.

Send Me No Flowers is a gently amusing and thoroughly harmless time-killer, but compared to the sparkle and the zip and the sexiness of Pillow Talk it’s a considerable disappointment.

That Touch of Mink (1962)

That Touch of Mink was one of Cary Grant’s last films and it’s not one of his most highly regarded. In fact it’s rather fun although it has its problems.

Grant is teamed this time with Doris Day. She apparently felt during the making of the movie that Grant was rather distant and there’s no doubt that they don’t quite generate the necessary chemistry. Given that Cary Grant himself disliked the picture you might expect this one to be a major disappointment but Day’s exuberance is enough to save it.

Day is unemployed computer operator Cathy Timberlake who meets the fabulously wealthy Philip Shayne when his car splashes her with mud. The attraction is immediate and he asks her to go away with him to Bermuda, and then on to Paris. As is usual in these movies the plot mostly revolves around finding ways to prevent the two of them going to bed together until they can be safely married at the end.

It’s the sort of movie that tends to get labelled as hopelessly dated by modern critics accustomed to the crassness and obviousness of modern romantic comedies. And as is usual with modern critics, they miss the point of the movie completely. Cathy isn’t battling doggedly to preserve her virginity. She spends much of the movie desperately trying to lose it. The movie makes it absolutely crystal clear that the little getaway that Philip proposes will involve sex and will not involve marriage (we are shown their hotel room and there is a double bed and we are told that that is the only bed in the suite), and it makes it just as abundantly clear that Cathy knows the score and is perfectly willing to accept the arrangement on that understanding.

Even more surprising perhaps is that Philip spends a great deal of money on her without the slightest mention of love. There is certainly at least the implication that Cathy understands that she is offering to have sex with him in exchange for money, or at least in return for some very expensive presents. So much for Doris Day’s reputation as the squeaky clean perpetual virgin.
So the movie is, as much as anything, gently mocking the sexual mores of its time.

Grant may have been going through the motions to some extent but he was a professional and his performance is still reasonable. Day is terrific. Gig Young provides great support as Grant’s neurotic business advisor.

The biggest problem is Audrey Meadows as Cathy’s best friend. It’s one of the most annoying performances in movie history. And we see way too much of her.

It has some quite funny moments, and a couple of amazingly risque gags. Even if it’s one of the lesser Doris Day sex comedies there’s a sufficient quantity of romance and humour to provide perfectly acceptable entertainment.

Lover Come Back (1961)

Lover Come Back was the second of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day romantic comedies. It follows the same formula that brought them so much success in Pillow Talk. In fact it follows the formula so closely that it’s more or less a repeat of the first film.

The surprising thing is that it doesn’t really matter. The formula works almost as well he second time around.

Once again Doris and Rock are people who have taken an intense dislike to each other without having ever actually met. And once again we have Rock’s character romancing Doris’s without Doris knowing who he is. And once again Rock’s romantic pursuit starts out as a cruel joke but ends up as true love.

Rock is Carol Templeton, a hard-working and brilliant Madison Avenue advertising executive. She’s got to the top through determination and integrity. Rock is Jerry Webster, an equally successful adman from a rival firm. He’s got to the top by using every sneaky underhanded method in the book. When he steals a rich account from Carol she decides to get revenge, and when she tries to do this he then tries to turn the tables on her. He ends up being mistaken by her for an eccentric but brilliant scientist developing a new miracle product that will prove to be a very rich advertising account indeed. You can pretty much figure out the rest of the plot from there.

Tony Randall is in this one as well, playing Jerry’s boss Pete Ramsey. Pete lives under the shadow of his father who built the business in the first place, suffers from indecisiveness and a lack of self-confidence and has been in analysis for pretty much his whole life. He doesn’t really serve much purpose in plot terms but he’s extremely funny so no-one is likely to complain.

The two main stars develop the same chemistry they displayed in Pillow Talk, and they’re both skillful comic actors who make the most of a clever and witty script.

Again, as with Pillow Talk, I found myself surprised at just how risque this movie was for its era. We have Doris taking Rock to a strip club, we have drug references, we have girls who are fairly obviously hookers being used as bribes to win advertising accounts. And we have Doris obviously quite willing to indulge in some unmarried sex with Rock. So much for the image of Doris Day as the perpetual virgin.

There’s romance, there’s sparkling dialogue, there are some great visual gags, and there’s non-stop entertainment.

Teacher's Pet (1958)

OK, I admit it. I was totally wrong about Doris Day. After seeing my second Doris Day movies in the last couple of weeks, I’m seriously hooked. Teacher's Pet, released in 1958, is in its own way every bit as much fun as Pillow Talk.

At first glance pairing Doris Day and an ageing Clark Gable in a romantic comedy might seem a slightly odd decision. But it’s not as if Gable was a stranger to the romantic comedy genre, and his character is supposed to be ageing and a bit weather-beaten. And the chemistry between the two stars works surprisingly well.

Gable is a hard-bitten newspaperman, city editor of The Chronicle. James Gannon is a self-taught self-made man who never finished high school. He has nothing but contempt for all these college types trying to break into the newspaper game. As far as he is concerned being a reporter is something you learn on the job, on the streets, and in the bars. You don’t learn it from a book! So he’s not terribly impressed when he receives an invitation from a university lecturer in journalism to be a guest lecturer at a college. He sends off a scathing letter to the lecturer, informing him that the very idea of college courses in journalism is a waste of time, and he doesn’t intend to waste his time on it!

He expects that to be the end of the matter, but to his dismay he discovers that the publisher of The Chronicle is rather keen on all this college nonsense (especially since the college in question awarded him an honorary degree). So Jim Gannon receives his orders - he’s going to do the guest lecture bit whether he wants to or not. A further disturbing discovery awaits him in the classroom - the Dr Stone who teaches journalism is a rather attractive woman. Being of the old school Gannon disapproves of women college professors even more than he disapproves of male ones, but he has to admit to himself that she is extremely attractive, especially in the amazingly tight skirt she’s wearing. But before he has a chance to introduce himself, she reads his letter to her class, and makes some scathing remarks of her own about anti-intellectual dinosaurs like himself.

Since he never got the chance to introduce himself, he hatches a plan to teach this uppity female a lesson. He pretends to be an aspiring journalism student, and enrols in her class. Of course, this being a romantic comedy, pretty soon he decides that although he still despises all this book-learning stuff, he’s strangely attracted to this woman. In fact, although he takes a while to emit it to himself, he’s seriously smitten. Of course he has a rival, a psychology professor (played by Gig Young) who seems to be good at just about everything.

One of the likeable things about this movie is that although it seems to be a typical Hollywood battle of the sexes movie, it doesn’t follow the all-too-familiar pattern of the career woman being taken down a peg or two. She is in fact taken down a peg or two, but so is he. This battle of the sexes will end in an honourable draw, with both parties realising they’ve been excessively dogmatic and with both parties ending up treating each other as respected equals. It also doesn’t follow the easy path of simply making fun of intellectuals - again the war between the practical hard-headed learn-by-experience type and the education enthusiast ends with both having to admit that they were both wrong.

Gable manages to be bull-headed but still rather likeable. The old charm was still there, even in 1958. Gig Young is a delight. And Doris Day has confounded me once again. Not only is she a strong female character who doesn’t have to accept defeat, she’s also charming and funny. And I have to admit that her sexless perpetual virgin image is somewhat unfair as well. In fact it’s remarkable just how often in this movie the camera focuses in rather lovingly on Miss Day’s posterior! And she plays up the sexy teacher bit quite a bit. Gable’s character certainly doesn’t find her sexless, and she isn’t.

The ending is also pleasantly surprising. It’s not giving away any spoilers to say that the implication is that Gable and Day will end up together. This is a romantic comedy, so you know right from the start that the two leads are going to fall in love and end up together. What’s surprising is that there’s no suggestion that she intends to choose life as a housewife or give up her career, there’s no suggestion that Gable wants her to do this, or that she should do this.

It’s a light-hearted fun romantic comedy in which both the romance and the comedy are equally effective, and it’s great entertainment. Especially if you’re a Doris Day fan, and I now cheerfully admit to membership of that exalted society.

Calamity Jane (1953)

Having become quite a fan of Doris Day in other movie genres I thought it was about time for me to bite the bullet and attempt one of her musicals. Calamity Jane seemed like as good a place as any to start.

Calamity Jane was an actual historical figure but don’t panic - this movie is not going to bother with anything as tiresome as historical accuracy. And in any case it appears that the real Calamity Jane was not exactly a sticker for accuracy when it came to recounting her adventures.

As the movie opens Calamity is saving a stage coach under attack from a Sioux war party. The stage coach is on its way to Deadwood in the Dakota Territory. Calamity’s account of the attack is embellished a little in the telling but it seems that the people of Deadwood are used to this. Wild Bill Hickok is particularly sceptical, which doesn’t prevent him from being a close and devoted friend to Calamity.

There is trouble brewing in Deadwood. The manager of the town’s only theatre has announced, with much ballyhoo, that he was importing a famous (and glamorous) actress from New York City. Unfortunately there was some confusion on the subject of gender and the actress who arrives is in fact an actor. The townsfolk (almost all of them men and exceptionally starved of female company) are most displeased and are about to trash the theatre when Calamity steps in. She will go to Chicago and bring back a real actress, a major star, the famous Adelaid Adams.

Calamity is not the most feminine of women and she’s a bit of a rough diamond. And her knowledge of the theatre is non-existent. She mistakes the great actress’s maid for the actress herself. The maid, Katie Brown, has always nourished the dream of a career on the stage and now sees her opportunity. She neglects to tell Calamity that she isn’t the great star.

As you might expect, her theatrical debut in Deadwood is somewhat eventful. The audience is initially pleased, Katie being an actual female and a fairly attractive one. When she tries to sing in the style of Adelaid Adams it becomes evident that she is an impostor. Once again Calamity comes to the rescue and when Kate is persuaded to simply be herself she becomes a surprise hit.

Katie and Calamity set up housekeeping together but there are complications. Both women are madly in love with a handsome young lieutenant. Of course you know that somehow or other true love is going to triumph.

Allyn McLerie, an actress I’d never heard of, is extremely good as Katie. Howard Keel is Wild Bill Hickok, and I’m afraid I’m not a fan of either his singing or his acting.

Doris Day on the other hand is a delight. She’s funny, she’s feisty, she’s convincingly butch as the tomboy Calamity.

The movie has a very very artificial feel to it, which I like. It looks like it was filmed entirely on a sound stage and that gives it a very appealing unreal feeling. You don’t want anything as tedious as realism in a musical. It’s amusing, the sings are a bit uneven but they have their moments, it’s outrageously romantic and it’s just generally fun.

As for the notorious lesbian subtext in this movie, well it's there if you really look for it although (unlike movies such as Gilda) I'm not entirely convinced it was intended.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m a convert to 50s Hollywood musicals but I’ve now come across a couple that I’ve liked a good deal.

Pillow Talk (1959)

Molly Haskell’s comments on the television documentary From Weepies to Chick Flicks! persuaded me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. To check oit the Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedies of the 50s. I decided that Pillow Talk would be as good a place as any to start.

And I have to admit Haskell is right again. Pillow Talk is absolutely delightful. She described it as pure sex, and that is indeed what it is. Yes it’s the 50s so the movie is careful to stay technically within the bounds of the Production Code. But it is in fact a sex comedy. And it’s surprisingly risque. I thought the British Carry On movies of the 60 had raised the double entendre to the status of an art form, but this movie has more double entendres than an of the Carry On films. It’s non-stop sexual innuendos.

Haskell also claimed that the most amusing way to view the film was by reversing the gender roles - seeing Doris Day as the butch one, and Rock Hudson as the femme one. And she’s right. What’s truly staggering is how much the movie plays on the sexual ambiguity of these two stars. Considering the efforts that Rock Hudson was making at the time to stay in the closet this was really quite a brave film for him to make. It even has him trying to entice Doris to seduce him by making her think he’s gay. And there’s nothing subtle about it - it’s difficult to believe that even the most innocent 1950s audience would have missed the gay jokes.Even more surprising is the fact that Doris Day is actually quite sexy in this movie. The fact that she’s playing on her wholesome as freshly baked white bread image just makes it more sexy. She’s driving off for a weekend in the country with her new boyfriend, and we hear her singing on the soundtrack about, “I’ll be yours tonight, my darling, possess me.” Not exactly subtle.

There’s also a very clever use of the Cinemascope screen. It allows lots of split screen sequences. They’re something I generally don't like, but in this case they're used as a very witty way of getting Rock Hudson and Doris Day into bed together without actually getting them into bed together. They even manage to use the technique to get them into the bathtub together!
Yet another surprise is that this is an extremely funny movie. Both Hudson and Day have exquisite comic timing, and they can deliver potentially very risque dialogue with an incredibly light touch, while still making sure we pick up the sexual references. Tony Randall gives some fine support.

I knew I was going to enjoy the visual style of the movie as soon as I saw the words, “produced by Ross Hunter” in the credits. I’m learning more and more to appreciate the distinctive sumptuous and subtly camp visual style that seems to be a trademark of any movie that Hunter produced in the 50s. And this is no exception. It looks glorious, in a wonderfully excessive 1950s way. Ross Hunter movies have a way of making pastels seem deliriously decadent.Pillow Talk is delightful naughty 1950s fun. It’s like 1950s cheesecake - it’s sexy but in an innocent kind of way that perversely makes it more sexy. It’s funny, it’s romantic, it’s over-the-top and I adored it.

Midnight Lace (1960)

Midnight Lace is a 1960 Doris Day thriller. She’d made thrillers before (such as The Man Who Knew Too Much for Hitchcock) but this one is an odd but fascinating combination.

As has pointed out, it doesn’t really work as a thriller. If you haven’t figured out the solution to the mystery within the first 20 minutes then you’re just not concentrating. But again as has pointed out, the thriller plot isn’t the reason for watching this movie.

What makes Midnight Lace so intriguing is the date it was made. It’s an attempt to do an “adult” thriller. By 1960 the Production Code had relaxed a little, so film-makers could deal with sexual subject matter, but they still had to tread very carefully, so you get this delightful mix of daringness and coyness.

Doris Day is Kit, an American woman living in London with her wealthy businessman husband Tony (Rex Harrison). Only he isn’t really all that rich while she is. She has an encounter with a stranger in the fog, a stranger who threatens to kill her. Then she starts getting phone calls, calls that are both obscene and threatening. Unfortunately no-one else is ever around when he gets the calls, so after a while both Scotland Yard and her husband start to suspect she’s making it up to get attention. Even her beloved Aunt Bea (Myrna Loy) starts to share this suspicion. The fact that Tony is always too busy with his work to spend much time with her adds to the suspicion of attention-seeking behaviour.

But is she really making it up? well in fact the entire explanation is quite obvious, but what’s interesting is the treatment of the plot and the characters, not the plot itself. The movie is quite open about exposing the truth that behind the façade of respectable 1950s middle-class life there lurked a dark underworld of sexual dysfunction, of men who could only get their sexual jollies from either making obscene phone calls to women or from terrorising women, and women who could only gain sexual and emotional satisfaction from fantasies of being stalked by mysterious men. There’s also at least a faint hint that women who make up stories may be motivated by sexual neglect at home. There’s also scene that in 1960 must have been fairly daring, where the police make Kit listen to endless tapes of obscene phone calls in the hope she’ll recognise the voice.

But there’s not just the sexual dysfunction angle. The movie also exposes the fundamental doubts, the fears, the insecurities that the glossy surface of 1950s life tried to cover up. There’s a sense that perfect marriages like that between Tony and Kit are often empty shells, that marriage might not solve all problems. There’s a sense of unease.

All this is contrasted to the incredibly glossy Technicolor surface of the movie. It’s all bright lighting and pastels, lots of pinks and soft blues. Kit’s bedroom is extremely pink. Even her telephone is pink. On the surface everything is cheerful and bright. Much too cheerful and much too bright. It’s interesting that this was a Ross Hunter production, since it has much of the look of the Douglas Sirk movies of the same era, also produced by Hunter. And just as in Sirk’s movies, the brightness is misleading.

Doris Day goes totally overboard with her performance. It’s all suppressed hysteria, except when the hysteria isn’t suppressed at all. But it works perfectly. It’s a suitably camp performance for a rather camp movie. Rex Harrison is much too charming, which again is the right performance for the movie. Myrna Loy seems perpetually amused, which she probably was, and she’s also perfect in her role.

This is another example of just how interesting the period from the mid-50s to the mid-60s was in Hollywood cinema, a period that saw the Production Code gradually lose its teeth, and a period that produced some delightfully outrageous movies, from Baby Doll in 1956 up to Valley of the Dolls in 1967. Midnight Lace is a bit of an oddity, but it’s an exceptionally interesting oddity that is very much worth checking out. Highly recommended.