Review of Doris Day (Box Set)

Introduction

Okay, I`ll admit it. I`m a closet Doris Day fan. Born Doris Kappelhoff in 1924, Doris Day became one of the most popular movie stars of the 1950s and early 1960s. Her wholesome movie image famously elicited the Groucho Marx quip "I`ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin". Marvin Kitman once memorably said "My doctor won`t let me watch Doris Day. I have a family history of diabetes."

Throughout the 1950s, she made a succession of popular musicals (available elsewhere) before reinventing herself for the audiences of the 1960s as a talented comedienne.

This Universal collection includes typical Doris Day musical vehicle Young At Heart where Doris finds herself torn between composers Gig Young and Frank Sinatra. The movie includes songs by Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin. The largest group of movies in the collection, however, are the pictures she made during the early 1960s with her then husband and manager Martin Melcher. These include the trilogy of pictures that co-starred Rock Hudson and Tony Randall - Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. In their time, these pictures were sophisticated sex comedies (when the term didn`t mean anything remotely explicit, they simply explored the new-style relationships emerging from the post-war era), and charmed a whole generation of cinemagoers.

What came as a surprise to me, having not seen the Rock Hudson pictures in quite a while, was how unsympathetic his character had become to modern sensibilities. In Pillow Talk, he plays a womanising songwriter who shares a party phone line with Doris, who is an interior decorator. When he finds out she is the apple of his best pal`s (Randall) eye, he sets out to woo her by taking on the persona of a gauche Texan. In Lover Come Back, they play advertising executives for competing firms. He uses low tactics to secure accounts, and when in his machinations he "invents" a non-existent new product he takes on the guise of the product`s inventor to lead her a merry dance as she tries to acquire the advertising account. In Send Me No Flowers, the odd one out of the set, Doris and Rock are a married couple. He is a hopeless hypochondriac who convinces himself he has only months to live, so he sets out to find Doris a second husband.

In all three films, what came across at the time as boyish charm now has a really seedy edge of cynicism about it. What used to appear a roguish smile is more a smug smirk. Hudson`s character is smilingly two-faced, out for his own selfish interests and he will stoop to anything to achieve his aim. Although his character is redeemed in the first and third pictures, the second ends on a note that I`m sure would have feminists throwing bricks at the screen.

Doris`s character is almost inevitably that of happy career woman, the ideal forced down our throats throughout the 1980s and 90s as the way modern women were supposed to act and think. In these movies, she is always the dupe in spite of the strengths of her characters and inevitably melts into the arms of Rock in the last reel.

Now, having made these distinctly negative points above, I still think these movies are fun. Viewing Lover Come Back, you realise what a clever pastiche of the era Down With Love, the 2003 Ewan McGregor - Renee Zellweger vehicle was. Doris is always sympathetic as the heroine of these pictures. Rock Hudson (whose private life really makes a mockery of his roles) is roguishly charming if sometimes a little sleazy. Tony Randall is always eminently watchable as the perpetual fussbudget.

Also in the set, but not included in the review package is the Cary Grant co-starring vehicle That Touch Of Mink, so I can`t very well comment on that.

Video

The movies have all suffered from the passage of time, and Universal hasn`t pushed the boat out getting these movies cleaned up. They are, however, perfectly acceptable transfers with the exclusion of the most recent picture The Thrill Of It All, which is a non-anamorphic letterbox transfer at 1.85:1. Young At Heart is presented at 4:3, its original aspect ratio, although the main titles are presented with a black border on all four sides. Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers are all presented in their original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.

Audio

All the movies come with their originally Mono soundtracks reproduced in Dolby 2.0.

Features

All the movie come fully subtitled and with their original theatrical trailers.

Conclusion

The movies are all great fun, especially the later comedies which have a barmy style all of their own. The high points of the collection are Pillow Talk, A Touch Of Mink and The Thrill Of It All. Within three years of completing these pictures, Doris was thoroughly disenchanted with movie making, and the death of Martin Melcher was the last straw. After a couple of years making her own television show, Doris dropped out of the public eye and took up her personal crusade for animal protection.