Doris Day & Rock Hudson

Doris Day & Rock Hudson

Battle of the Sexes

Though they only made three films together, Doris Day and Rock Hudson remain one of Hollywood’s most famous on-screen pairings. The pastel-coloured, perpetually fizzy romantic comedies Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers were turning points in the careers of both stars. Hudson had, up until that point, been playing dramatic roles, while Day had been a singer and actress with a rather wholesome image. In these saucy – for the time! – romcoms, in which innuendo played a big role, Day made a slightly more risqué choice of material, while Hudson showed off his comedic timing and physical-comedy smarts.

The fact that the first feature of the trilogy won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and another scored a writing nomination also tells you that the films were extremely well-written. At the tail end of the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the writers could play with male and female roles in relationships and how these were evolving at the time, with the two actors pitched against one another in ‘battle of the sexes’-style scenarios.

Especially in the first two films, Day plays independent women with their own careers, trying to take down a male adversary while also falling in love. Further complications arise due to the characters played by rubber-faced actor Tony Randall, who appears in all three titles. He often functions as the third point of a Day-Hudson-Randall triangle and, in his scenes with Hudson, also allows the writers to get in some wink-wink material towards especially queer audiences. Even though some aspects are now not quite as progressive as they were some 60-odd years ago, these bubbly romantic comedies offer fascinating insights into the time’s changing social mores while making sure you leave the theatre with a wide grin on your face.