Doris day and Rock Hudson romantic comedies: Pillow Talk (1959) Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No flowers (1964) were the last bastion of movie innocence before the coming of the flower power and the sexual revolution, and film realism.
Like a film creation of Barbie and Ken, Doris and Rock entertained because we had fairytale dreams and all hoped for a happy ending. However, the doll version of Doris and Rock belied their tragic private lives.
Doris born Doris Von Kapplehoff in 1924, who provided the virgin alternative to Marilyn Monroe, in private life suffered at the hands of two physically abusive husbands, who mismanaged her finances and felt her broke.
Rock Hudson born Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in 1925, became the toothpaste sex symbol that always treated a lady with respect and married her in the end. Off camera he was a closeted homosexual, who until AIDS hits, never contemplated disclosure.
Together Doris and Rock made three films. Pillow Talk a packed sundae of comedy with its luxury suites and nightclubs shot in bright soda-fountain colors.
Jan (Day) is an interior decorator who shares a party line with Brad (Rock) a shallow playboy songwriter who ties up the line for hours lullabying his harem of girlfriends. When Jan complains he accuses her of being a dried-up spinster. He soon realizes his mistake when he sees her shimmying on the dance floor in a white gown and muses, "So that's the other end of my party line..." Realizing that he could not get far if Jan knew his real identity Brad woos her by adopting the persona of Rex Stetson a shy Texan. (Contemporary critics saw Rock's Rex Stetson as a parody of the tall Texan he played in Giant) Even after the charade is revealed both Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back end in matrimony.
In Lover Came Back, Doris plays an advertising whiz whose sense of fair play is offended when she learns that rival (Hudson) is stealing client with, wine, women and song. (Unlike today's film where it is difficult to image Gwyneth Paltrow or Julia Roberts holding a white collar occupations.)
Day's irate propulsion make a splendid match for Hudson's laid-back hedonism, and they coo and fuss with one liners ala Hepburn and Tracy comedies.
Send me No Flowers completes the Doris-Rock trilogy, but it is the least entertaining. Rock and Doris play a married couple living in the suburbs. But having the film Barbie and Ken married and bickering across the breakfast table instead of dating and frolicking made for two wet blankets.
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