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Lover Come Back | |
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Directed by | Delbert Mann |
Written by | Stanley Shapiro Paul Henning |
Produced by | Robert Arthur Martin Melcher Stanley Shapiro |
Starring | Rock Hudson Doris Day Tony Randall |
Cinematography | Arthur E. Arling |
Edited by | Marjorie Fowler |
Music by | Frank De Vol |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 107 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $7.6 million (rentals) [2] |
Lover Come Back is a 1961 American Eastmancolor romantic comedy film released by Universal Pictures and directed by Delbert Mann. It stars Doris Day and Rock Hudson and is their second time working together. The supporting cast includes Tony Randall, Edie Adams, Ann B. Davis, and Donna Douglas.
Day, Hudson and Randall appeared in three movies together, the others being Pillow Talk (1959) and Send Me No Flowers (1964).
The story is similar to that of Pillow Talk in that it includes mistaken identity as a key plot device. Although not as well known as Pillow Talk, the script by Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
In a New York advertising agency, Jerry Webster, a Madison Avenue ad executive, has achieved success not through hard work or intelligence but by wining and dining his clients, even setting them up on dates with attractive girls.
Jerry's equal and sworn enemy at a rival agency is Carol Templeton. Although she has never met him, Carol is disgusted by Jerry's unethical tactics and reports him to the Ad Council. Jerry avoids trouble with his usual aplomb, sending a comely chorus girl, Rebel Davis, to seduce the council members.
In exchange for her cooperation, Jerry promised Rebel a spot in commercials, so he goes ahead and arranges shoots of some featuring her for "VIP", a nonexistent product. He has no intention of allowing them to be shown, but the perplexed company president, Pete Ramsey, orders them broadcast on television.
This means Jerry must come up with a product quickly. So, he bribes a chemist, Dr. Linus Tyler, to create one. When Carol mistakes Jerry for Tyler, he pretends to be the chemist, so that in her attempt to steal the account from Jerry, she is actually wining, dining, golfing, and frolicking at the beach with him as Tyler.
Carol ultimately learns the truth. Appalled, she once more reports him to the Ad Council, this time for promoting a product that does not exist. Jerry, however, arrives at the hearing with VIP, a mint-flavored candy Dr. Tyler has just created. He provides many free samples to everyone there, including Carol.
VIP turns out to be intoxicating, each piece having the same effect as a triple martini. Its extreme effects lead to a one-night stand between Carol (who has a low tolerance for alcohol) and her bitter rival, Jerry, in a motel in Maryland, complete with a marriage license.
Carol has the marriage annulled. Representatives from the liquor industry visit Jerry, saying he will be paid well to pull VIP off the market and destroy the formula. Jerry convinces them to give Carol's firm 25% of its $60 million ($600 million today) annual advertising expenditures, then burns the formula. He leaves New York to work in his company's San Francisco branch—only to be called back nine months later to remarry Carol in a hospital maternity ward, just before she gives birth to their child.
Although not a musical, the film contains two songs sung by Day: "Lover Come Back" during the opening credits, and "Should I Surrender" as she contemplates what to do with her feelings for Jerry.
Slightly in advance of the film's release, as was the custom of the era, a paperback novelization of the screenplay was published by Gold Medal Books. The author was a renowned crime and western novelist Marvin H. Albert, who also made something of a cottage industry out of movie tie-ins. He was the most prolific screenplay novelizer of the late '50s through the '60s and, during that time, the preeminent specialist at light comedy. Albert also wrote the novelizations for one of Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall's other films together Pillow Talk (1959), and another romantic-comedy starring Doris Day, Move Over, Darling (1963).
The film received positive reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film "one of the brightest, most delightful satiric comedies since 'It Happened One Night.'" [3] Variety declared, "This is a funny, most-of-the-time engaging, smartly produced show." [4] Harrison's Reports gave the film a rating of "GOOD", adding: "It's lots of fun most of the time even though the theme of boy fights girl, boy falls in love with girl and vice versa has been done quite often and in similar detail before." [5] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "we can testify to the frequent hilarity with which everybody concerned has infused this familiar farcical mixup, double-entendres and all." [6] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker called the film "extremely funny and therefore not to be missed," [7] and Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post deemed it "funny and worldly from start to finish ... Blond Doris has never been more attractive or spirited and Hudson has become an adept farceur." [8] The Monthly Film Bulletin offered a less enthusiastic review, writing: "Alas, the aquarium scene is the film's high-water mark. After it, the sex comedy is transformed into slushy romance ... Occasionally Tony Randall's satirical zaniness salvages a laugh, but Rock Hudson and a subdued Doris Day, who do well enough with the wisecracks earlier, put little life into the love scenes when these usurp the narrative." [9]
Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
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Academy Awards | Best Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen | Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning | Nominated |
Golden Globe Awards | Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture | Tony Randall | Nominated |
Laurel Awards | Top Comedy | Won | |
Top Male Comedy Performance | Rock Hudson | Nominated | |
Top Female Comedy Performance | Doris Day | Won | |
Top Male Supporting Performance | Tony Randall | Nominated | |
Top Female Supporting Performance | Edie Adams | 5th Place |
Doris Day was an American actress and singer. She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, "Sentimental Journey" and "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time" with Les Brown and His Band of Renown. She left Brown to embark on a solo career and recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a 1957 American satirical comedy film starring Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall, with Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Lili Gentle, and Mickey Hargitay, and with a cameo by Groucho Marx. The film is a satire on popular fan culture, Hollywood hype, and the advertising industry, which was profiting from commercials on the relatively new medium of television. It also takes aim at the reduction television caused to the size of movie theater audiences in the 1950s. The film was known as Oh! For a Man! in the United Kingdom.
Rock Hudson was an American actor. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. He was a prominent figure in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Pillow Talk is a 1959 American romantic comedy film in CinemaScope directed by Michael Gordon and starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The supporting cast features Tony Randall, Thelma Ritter, Nick Adams, Allen Jenkins, Marcel Dalio and Lee Patrick. The film was written by Russell Rouse, Maurice Richlin, Stanley Shapiro, and Clarence Greene.
Anthony Leonard Randall was an American actor of film, television and stage. He is best known for portraying the role of Felix Unger in the 1970-75 television adaptation of the 1965 play The Odd Couple by Neil Simon. In a career spanning six decades, Randall received six Golden Globe Award nominations and six Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning one Emmy.
Down with Love is a 2003 romantic comedy film directed by Peyton Reed. It stars Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor and is a pastiche of the early-1960s American "no-sex sex comedies", such as Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back and the "myriad spawn" of derivative films that followed; Time film critic Richard Corliss wrote that Down with Love "is so clogged with specific references to a half-dozen Rock-and-Doris-type comedies that it serves as definitive distillation of the genre." Randall himself plays a small role in Down with Love, "bestowing his sly, patriarchal blessing" on the film, which also stars David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson, Rachel Dratch, Jeri Ryan, and Jack Plotnick, who spoofs the kind of role Chet Stratton played in Lover Come Back.
Midnight Lace is a 1960 American psychological thriller film directed by David Miller and starring Doris Day, Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy, and Roddy McDowall. The plot centers on a woman threatened by an anonymous stalker and who has a hard time convincing others of what is happening. The screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts was based on the play Matilda Shouted Fire by Janet Green. The new title referred to a lacy dress that Day's character purchases early in the film and wears at the climax.
That Touch of Mink is a 1962 American romantic comedy film directed by Delbert Mann, and starring Cary Grant, Doris Day, Gig Young and Audrey Meadows.
Man's Favorite Sport? is a 1964 American screwball comedy film starring Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss and directed and produced by Howard Hawks. Hawks intended the film to be an homage to his own 1938 screwball classic Bringing Up Baby, with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and unsuccessfully tried to get these stars to reprise their roles.
Ross Hunter was an American film and television producer and actor. He is best known for producing light comedies such as Pillow Talk (1959), and the glamorous melodramas Magnificent Obsession (1954), Imitation of Life (1959), and Back Street (1961).
The 32nd Academy Awards ceremony was held on April 4, 1960, at the RKO Pantages Theatre, to honor the films of 1959.
Come September is a 1961 American romantic comedy film directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin.
The 17th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film for 1959 films, were held on March 10, 1960.
The Last Sunset is a 1961 American Western film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, and Dorothy Malone.
Send Me No Flowers is a 1964 American romantic comedy film directed by Norman Jewison from a screenplay by Julius Epstein, based on the play of the same name by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore, which had a brief run on Broadway in 1960. It stars Rock Hudson, Doris Day, and Tony Randall. Following Pillow Talk (1959) and Lover Come Back (1961), it is the third and final film in which Hudson, Day, and Randall starred together.
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? is a 1968 American comedy film with Doris Day, directed by Hy Averback. Although it is set in New York City during the infamous Northeast blackout of 1965, in which 25 million people scattered throughout seven states in the Northeastern United States lost electricity for several hours, the screenplay by Everett Freeman and Karl Tunberg is based on the earlier 1956 French play Monsieur Masure by Claude Magnier.
American actress Doris Day appeared in 39 feature films released between 1948 and 1968. Day began her career as a band singer and eventually won the female lead in the Warner Bros. film Romance on the High Seas (1948), for which she was selected by Michael Curtiz to replace Betty Hutton. She starred in several minor musicals for Warner Bros., including Tea for Two (1950), Lullaby of Broadway (1951), April in Paris (1952), By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) and the hit musical Calamity Jane, in which she performed the Academy Award-winning song "Secret Love" (1953). She ended her contract with Warner Bros. after filming Young at Heart (1954) with Frank Sinatra.
Rock Hudson was an American actor. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. He was a prominent figure in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Blindfold is a 1966 American romantic comedy film co-written and directed by Philip Dunne that was his last feature film. It starred Rock Hudson in his 50th film and the first for his own film production company, Gibraltar Productions. It co-starred Claudia Cardinale, Jack Warden and Guy Stockwell. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures. It was based on Lucille Fletcher's 1960 novel of the same name. Sequences were filmed in Central Park in New York City and in Silver Springs, Florida.
Lover Come Back may refer to: