That Touch of Mink
Directed by Delbert Mann
Written by Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster
1962/USA
Granley Company/Arwin Productions/Nob Hill Productions Inc.
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Connie Emerson: [talking to Cathy] For 2000 years we’ve had their children, washed their clothes, cooked their meals and cleaned their houses. And what did they give us in return? The right to smoke in public. We sold out for a cigarette – and you don’t even smoke![/box]
Right before being a 40-year-old virgin was just plain embarrassing, Doris Day was tempting some mighty handsome man to the altar in just that condition. Cary Grant makes a more than adequate stand-in for Rock Hudson.
Cathy Timberlake (Day) is an unemployed career woman with a great wardrobe and apartment. One day, her immaculate attire is doused when fabulously wealthy Phillip Shayne’s (Grant) limo speeds through a large puddle. He sends his minion (Gig Young) out in search for her to make things right. Once he sees Cathy, though, he has more than mercy on his mind. For her it is love at first sight. That’s why she allows him to treat her to a deluxe romantic getaway in Bermuda.
Somehow, our heroine manages to maintain her virtue. The rest of the story follows the wrangling and misunderstandings that usually lead to a happy ending. With Audrey Meadows as Cathy’s friend.
This is up there with the Rock Hudson-Doris Day rom-coms of the period. Grant is always a joy to watch. Nice for a weekday afternoon.
That Touch of Mink was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; and Best Sound.
Trailer
This movie is SO STUPID so much of the time. The first time I saw it, I was kind of enraged at how dumb it was most of the time.
And yet, it’s kind of infectious. I can go on and one about what I think is stupid, and I can also go on and on about the things I like. And sometimes, the dumb jokes are kind of charming, in an naïve, early-1960s way.
Gig Young’s psychiatrist (who never heard of homosexuality) is part of an idiotic joke that’s kind of funny in retrospect, but not in any intentional way. You’re laughing at the screenwriters, not with them.
But the bit with John Feidler, with Cary Grant and Gig Young barging in on his honeymoon (accidentally) and giving the impression that his new wife is having an affair with two men! It’s awful and ridiculous that these two guys feel they owe no explanations of any kind to Fiedler because he’s short and bald and unworthy of their attention. Grant and Young are both total a-holes in that scene.
And there’s lots more jokes of both types in this movie. (I especially hate the scene where Doris Day gets hysterical when she finds out Cary Grant got her a job and she walks out and messes up the computer cards, costing Grant’s company millions of dollars! The hysterical woman doesn’t need a job … or a husband! She needs a strait jacket! Some really bad writing there.)
But the cast is great! In addition to Day, Grant, Young, and Meadows, you also get John Astin as the ultra-creepy government worker handling Day’s unemployment checks. And as themselves – Yogi Berra, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle!
And also Richard Deacon is in it!
The movie I love to hate! I’ve seen it a few times. It’s on the MOVIES! channel a lot, and it’s also available on Netflix streaming. I always yell at the dumb scenes an then I call my mom because she thinks it’s really stupid too.
It was a special treat spotting Astin in this! I can see exactly where you and your mother are coming from.
A childhood favorite which I recently revisited. All that pink sand is still fun!
Ah, the days when everything about this was the height of glamor! I might be just catching up to it now.
It’s fluffy and pretty pointless, but it does allow Cary Grant to be Cary Grant and for Doris Day to look astonishingly fashionable. Sometimes, that’s enough.
At least we weren’t subjected to Day’s collection of astonishingly ugly hats from Lover Come Back.
Sometimes watching Grant being Grant and Day wearing clothes is exactly what one is looking for.
Love Come Back is one I have not seen, but knowing she wears a lot of ugly hats makes me want to see it.
It’s like all the things that make me love The Glass Bottom Boat – Paul Lynde, Dom DeLuise, Doris losing the bottom of her mermaid outfit, Doris having to call her dog several times a day, etc. – despite it being kind of stupid.
I’ll keep my eyes open in 1966. Paul Lynde and Dom DeLuise always make a movie a special kind of stupid/lovable.