Toeing the party line

Back in August when Rock Hudson was one of the stars in TCM's Summer Under the Stars, I had the chance to record a movie I hadn't blogged about here before: Pillow Talk. Recently, I finally got around to watching it.

Er, not that Pillow Talk

Doris Day plays Jan Morrow, an interior decorator for wealthy clients who does a lot of work out of her well-appointed Manhattan apartment. One of her clients, Jonathan Forbes (Tony Randall), is romantically interested in her, but he's already been married three times and in psychoanalysis for it, so Jan politely declines his advances and would be perfectly happy remaining friends with him.

However, she's got a problem. As an interior decorator, it would be easy for her to do a fair amount of work from her apartment. Except, she needs to make a whole bunch of phone calls to clients, furniture stores, and her nominal boss, and her line is always busy. That's because she's only able to get a party line, meaning multiple customers sharing one telephone line (with each one getting a different ring pattern to know calls are for them). The other party on her party line is one Brad Allen (Rock Hudson), a composer who also lives in a swanky apartment, and composes one song that he sings to every woman he tries to seduce, which is a whole bunch of them.

As a result, Jan intensely dislikes Brad despite never having seen him, since he's always hogging the line, and making snarky comments to Jan when she complains about it. Jan also comments about it to her maid Alma (Thelma Ritter), but what's Alma going to be able to do about it? Of course, this being a romantic comedy, and Day and Hudson being the two stars, you can probably guess what's going to happen in the rest of the movie.

One of Jan's clients lives out in Westchester County, and at a party to show off Jan's new designs, the lady's drunk son (Nick Adams) offers to drive Jan home. They end up at a nightclub somewhere in Manhattan, and who just happens to be in the next booth but Brad, with the latest of his girlfriends. He's taken by Jan, and wants to rescue her from her bad date. But he also realizes that if he opens his mouth, she's going to recognize the voice. So Brad puts on an incredibly stereotyped Texas accent and persona, calling himself Rex Stetson. As you can probably figure, Jan falls in love with "Rex".

Meanwhile, Brad is supposed to be working on songs for a new show, and who happens to be putting up the money for the show? Jonathan Forbes, who has apparently been Brad's friend for a while. Jonathan doesn't know yet that Brad and Jan have met in person, and certainly doesn't realize that Brad is passing himself off as Rex. But that's going to come and drive the plot. And then Jan is also going to learn the truth about Rex. Can love conquer that?

Well, this being a romantic comedy, you know the answer is going to be yes, the two stars wind up together in the last reel. But the fun in watching a movie like Pillow Talk is seeing how they get there. Pillow Talk is the first of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies, so it's technically more original than the later movies, even though if you've seen one you'll get the generic gist of the others going into them.

Day and Hudson are appealing as a couple, and Randall is as good as always in support. Thelma Ritter has fun as the wise-cracking maid; she has an important scene with Hudson that moves the plot along which involves her drinking Hudson under the table. She also gets a running gag involving the elevator, operated by Allen Jenkins in a small role.

I couldn't help but think of some plot holes, however. I couldn't help but wonder whether Jan would have recognized Brad by voice even with the phony accent. But I also couldn't figure out why they never met in the apartment building, which was implied at the end by suggesting Brad's and Jan's apartment were several blocks apart. This made no sense to me as I would have thought the parties on a party line would have to be in close proximity. Several blocks apart in Manhattan would be separate lines and almost definitely a separate exchange. So they might still be on party lines, but not with each other. That, and I would have expected party lines to be a rural thing or for people of lower socioeconomic class.

But I guess you just have to suspend disbelief, since it's not like any of these late 50s/early 60s sex comedies have any grounding in reality to begin with. In that regard, it's perfectly frothy light comedy that certainly works. It's also lovely to look at.