Pillow Talk (1959)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) Doris Day may now be known better for her late-career chaste and demure roles, but she was a feminist icon in many of her earlier movies—independent, feisty, with a good job, and not willing to compromise on her choices of romantic partners. Pillow Talk is somewhere between those poles, but closer to the female-empowerment side. Naughty then but almost wholesome now, it’s the story of a Manhattan career girl who falls in love with a fellow user of a telephone party line—an early precursor to the gentle sex comedies of the early 1960s. (If you liked Mad Men, there’s a bit of this in here.) The technological limitations of a party line clearly date this, but the Oscar-winning script remains compelling, with plenty of well-used voiceovers reinforcing the comedy of the plot. Pillow Talk’s biggest assets remain its lead actors, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson sharing the screen for the first of three times (you’ll understand why the fuss after watching the film), and supported by notables such as Thelma Ritter (nominated for an Academy Award) and Tony Randall in a very Tony Randallish role. Perry Blackwell is also a bit of a highlight as a sassy lounge singer. Pillow Talk also works well as a glorious Eastmancolor time capsule through comfortable-class late-1950s Manhattan apartments, with three-way split screens to further enliven things. There’s some uncomfortable irony in having Hudson’s character insinuate (with malice) that someone else is gay. Other than this slip-up, Pillow Talk is quite entertaining and its familiarity with various tropes certainly helps spruce things up. Meanwhile, Day gets a bit of a glow-up over previous roles and makes it work to her advantage.