Pillow Talk (1959)

Directed by Michael Gordon

Starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day

Pillow Talk was a Valentine’s Day suggestion by K. Neither of us had ever seen it. On the one hand, it’s an old-fashioned, feel-good, romantic comedy. On the other hand, it could be the most politically incorrect movie I’ve seen in my life.

The plot is theatrically contrived. Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) and Jan Morrow (Doris Day) share a party line that he’s hogging with non-stop phone conversations with his many girlfriends. She sees him as a despicable ladies’ man and tries to get the phone company to cite him for the scandalous romantic conversations she has to listen to every time she picks up her phone to make a business call.

As  you’d expect, after a series of skirmishes, she ends up falling in love with him. And after seeing what a pure and wholesome beauty she is, he eventually falls for her.

Within that conventional arc and denouement, the action violates every current code of cultural ethics, including sexism, racism, classicism, and homophobia. Date rape is depicted as a form of healthy male wooing.

Brad Allen’s apartment is much more than a bachelor pad. It’s a molestation chamber, complete with a switch that turns down the lights, turns on romantic music, auto-locks the apartment door, and opens the sofa bed. (Roger Ailes and Bill Cosby, eat your hearts out.)

If you can maintain a 1959 cultural mind frame while watching it, you may be able to enjoy it as a light-hearted romp into love and marriage. But even as a nostalgic septuagenarian, I found it difficult to suspend disbelief.

Critical Reviews 

* “A nice, old-fashioned device of the theatre, the telephone party line, serves as a quaint convenience to bring together Rock Hudson and Doris Day in what must be cheerfully acknowledged one of the most lively and up-to-date comedy-romances of the year.” (Bosley Crowther in The New York Times)

* “The premise is dubious, but an attractive cast, headed by Rock Hudson and Doris Day, give the good lines the strength to overcome this deficiency.” (Variety)

* “Pillow Talk is a melange of legs, pillows, slips, gowns and decor and is about as light as it could get without floating away, but it has a smart, glossy texture and that part of the population likely to be entranced at the sight of a well-groomed Rock Hudson being irresistible to a silver-haired Doris Day will probably enjoy it.” (Paul V. Beckley in the New York Herald Tribune)

Interesting Facts

* Pillow Talk won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and snagged several additional nominations, including Best Actress in a Leading Role (Doris Day) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Thelma Ritter).

* The movie grossed an incredible (for the time) $18,750,000, and launched Rock Hudson’s comeback after the failure of A Farewell to Arms in 1957. It still gets a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes.