PILLOW TALK: Blu-ray re-issue (Universal-International, 1959) Universal Home Video

The fresh-faced, ultra-chic romantic comedy, a main staple in Hollywood since the early 1930’s, reached its level of risqué naughtiness with Michael Gordon’s Pillow Talk (1959), a deceptively slender narrative, tattooed onto a deeper sophistication. Romantic comedies up until Pillow Talk were wholesome, if, even more frankly, antiseptic in their approach to boy meets girl.  The fellow bellowed and the girl guffawed until some mutual understanding was reached via the necessary reconciliation to make all their mishaps gone before it seem palpably inadequate to the grand amour to follow, if, with an allergy-inducing bower of sickeningly sweet hearts and flowers to buoy them onto their happily ever after. But by 1959, coy could no longer be counted upon to sell tickets. And although, at first, Pillow Talk appears to fall right into line with all of the aforementioned clichés of the traditional rom/com, playing as just another puff piece from that all too familiar postwar generation, at the time of its release, the situations depicted in Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin’s screenplay did anything but play it safe. In retrospect, the decision to cast Doris Day and Rock Hudson as the feuding couple who ultimately find happiness by the final reel was a wise hedging for box office pay dirt. Day was at the top of her game as a megastar and Hudson’s star had steadily ascended since proving his mettle as a legitimate ‘leading man’ in Giant (1956).

Yet, it is important to note that by 1959, Day’s virgin-esque innocence had all but run its course with movie audiences while Hudson’ all-American hunk was regarded as the serious type who could only play it straight. Pillow Talk forever altered audience perceptions of each star, propelling both onto a decade’s worth of like-minded fare. Time, and the mid-eighties’ revelation that superstar he-man, Rock Hudson was gay, alas, have lent a more picaresque tone to Hudson’s performance as the butch Texan herein who feigns an effete subtext – more into cooking recipes and decorating tips – merely to throw Day’s interior designer, Jan Morrow off the scent of his genuine sexual attraction to her in this movie; also, because his playboy/composer, Brad Allen, has already established himself in Jan’s sphere as the annoying neighbor, chronically abusing their ‘party line’. For those unaware, a bit of explanation is in order. Party-line telephone service, once the norm, was the practice of allowing two or more phone service subscribers to share an outside line. The system, instituted at the dawn of telephone service, but reaching its zenith during WWII, was fraught with pitfalls and flaws, as the central office could not detect or address the needs of its subscribers if the ringers were disconnected. Also, when a party line was already in use, if any of its other subscribers picked up the phone, they could easily eavesdrop on the conversation.

Pillow Talk is one of those charming and effective rom/coms that appear featherweight on the surface, but actually carries a weightier message about ‘then’ modern love – now, in the internet age, considered as somewhat quaint to marginally archaic. I mean, does anyone actually fall in love over the telephone anymore, as is depicted in the sexy split screens, either showing Hudson and Day in their respective bedrooms, engaged in some playful badinage, or illustrating a presumably naked Hudson and Day in separate bathtubs, their more tangible assets concealed by the bubbles; Day’s Jan extending her supple leg from the froth, Hudson’s Brad, a decidedly more muscular one, each perfectly pressed against the tiled wall depicted in center screen, and thus to create the illusion of a sensual shared ‘touch’. Pillow Talk’s frankly adult take on sexual attraction, as yet constrained by the edicts of Hollywood’s self-governing production code, generates the kind of erotic spank and tickle one gets from letting the imagination run wild with anticipation for the penultimate ‘cute meet’ between these otherwise warring parties. The entire second act of the picture is, in fact, fifties’ foreplay, building in sexual tension to the sublime moment when Day’s Jan, momentarily consumed by her attraction to Brad, fantasizes in her head the sublime Joe Lubin/I.J. Roth romantic ballad, ‘Possess Me’. Day coos with amatory exaltation here, a moment so entirely front-loaded with adult longing to be taken by her suitor, one can as much imagine Hudson’s stud du jour – who has no way of knowing her thoughts at this point in the movie – doing his level best, not to compose another feckless verse of ‘Inspiration’ – the syrupy song he exploits repeatedly to woo various sexual conquests to his bed, simply by adding a different woman’s name to the end of the first and third line of each verse.  

Our story begins in earnest with Day’s flashy interior designer, Jan Morrow; smart, sassy and in control of her career. Jan is at the top of her game and seems to effortlessly scale New York’s concrete jungle without needing the help or even advice of any man. After redecorating millionaire Broadway producer, Jonathan Forbes (Tony Randall) fashionable penthouse, Jonathan becomes smitten with Jan. She, however, does not return the sentiment. The real fly in the ointment for Jan is playboy composer, Brad Allen. He is chronically tying up her party line with grand amours to dulcet and intoxicated arm charms. Brad treats all his women like eye-candy, or perhaps, ‘furniture’ is a better descriptor. Indeed, his crude overtures to these silly and sex kittens is an anathema to the kind of upstanding man Jan would prefer for her own, even as she professes to her beloved housekeeper, Alma (Thelma Ritter) not to be actively looking for love. Brad’s brashness and his ego irritate Jan immensely. Despite never having met socially, Jan knows Brad’s type of guy intimately and is determined never to fall into his love trap. In the meantime, Jonathan fawns over Jan and incessantly brags to Brad about her wit, charm, grace and beauty. Brad is intrigued, even more so when he discovers that the object of his best friend’s desire is none other than his own cantankerous time-sharing phone buddy. Brad vows to get to know Jan better. However, his attempts at seduction over the telephone fall flat. This failure, in true Hollywood screwball fashion, only makes Brad want Jan more.

After attending the inaugural of another successful interior design project, Jan is driven home by the grateful benefactress’s son, Tony Walters (Nick Adams); a Harvard graduate and a real octopus who cannot keep his tentacles off of her for a moment. Agreeing to join Tony for one drink and one dance at a nightclub before going home, Jan is incensed when the enterprising college puke passes out on the floor, creating quite a scene. Brad, who inadvertently is also at the same club with a date, gallantly comes to Jan’s rescue. Only now, he has reinvented himself as the bigger-than-life Texan, Rex Stetson – complete with a clichéd homespun drawl and an ‘aw shucks!’ persona that Jan finds rather wholesome and appealing. Preying upon this misdirection and Jan’s refreshing naiveté, Brad endeavors to get to know Jan better while allowing her to think he is somebody else. To maintain this façade, Rex’s allure for Jan is strictly platonic. Nevertheless, Alma – an old trooper where love is concerned – can see where all of this is headed and promotes her more earthy approach to love. She encourages Jan to take the real plunge and become sexually involved with Rex. On this advice, Rex and Jan begin an affair, one quickly to blossom into love for Jan.  But Brad is not so easily moved to abandon his bachelorhood. Jan confesses to Jonathan that she loves Rex. Not knowing Rex is Brad, and realizing that his own diminutive physical stature pales in comparison to Jan’s description of Rex as a paragon of masculinity, Jonathan bitterly resists pursuing Jan. Instead, he hires Mr. Graham (Robert Williams), a private investigator to tail Jan to her next rendezvous with the mysterious Texan. When the photos come back and Jonathan realizes Brad is the real snake in the grass, Jonathan decides to wreck their affair. He confronts Brad in a bar and tells him he will have to complete the rest of the songs for their new Broadway show at a country house in Connecticut.

Brad agrees, then double crosses Jonathan by inviting Jan to spend the weekend with him at the out-of-the-way estate. Learning of this deception, Jonathan hightails it to Connecticut, but is too late. Having discovered a piece of music among his compositions, one heard over her party line telephone sung by Brad, Jan has put two and two together for herself and come up with the fraud. Jonathan offers to drive Jan back to New York, but she bawls all the way. Back in Manhattan, Brad tries everything to win Jan back. But she is cold and cruel in her rejections. Realizing Jan will never love him, Jonathan suggests to Brad that he might work out an angle to put them both in closer proximity by having Jan redecorate his bachelor pad. Jan agrees, then turns the relatively posh and swinging penthouse into a garish and tacky nightmare of oddities and knickknacks. Returning to show off his apartment to Jonathan, Brad becomes infuriated by the travesty he sees. He goes over to Jan’s fashionable address, kicks down her door and forcibly removes the wily decorator from her bed.  Slinging Jan over his shoulder in the best tradition of the he-man/caveman, Brad carries her off in her pajamas through the streets of New York, drawing curious and offensive glares from onlookers. And although Jan fakes a terrible rage for this humiliation, it really is no use. She loves Brad dearly, and he realizes, at long last, she is the only woman for him. Predictably, the film ends on this happily ever after.

From start to finish, Pillow Talk is a delight. Legendary producer, Ross Hunter envelopes the production in Richard H. Riedel’s mid-century American ultra-glamour. The sets evoke the mythology – rather than the reality – of uptown Manhattan; a spirited, sparkly razzle-dazzle playground where the elite can meet and fall haphazardly in love. The Shapiro/Richlin screenplay serves up saucy dialogue and mostly believable situations that make every scenario seem stylishly plausible. Yet, the screenplay is also quite daring – particularly in the sexually repressed ‘frosty fifties’ in American movies where not even married couples could share a single bed. Who can forget the telephone conversation between Jan and Rex while the two are in bathtubs in their respective apartments; their bare, and soapy wet feet, cleverly pressed against the wall that separates their dishonorable intentions, caressing the split screen as they coo sweet nothings to one another? Without question, there is an inimitable chemistry between Rock Hudson and Doris Day that crackles with a genuinely playful, and mildly wicked double entendre. In 1959, Hudson was still the manly guy’s guy, his closeted homosexuality kept under lock and key by cleverly timed studio PR; also, the more discrete nature of the times.

In retrospect, there is a decidedly antiseptic brittleness to Doris Day’s pre-Pillow Talk film career. Apart from Love Me or Leave Me (1955) – a daring musical in which she played troubled torch singer, Ruth Etting. Prior to this, Day’s persona had been largely relegated to sweet wholesome purity, prompting Groucho Marx to quip, “I’ve been in Hollywood so long I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin!”  Pillow Talk matures this iconic impression of Day’s squeaky-clean screen image well beyond its narrowly constructed scope. Day’s Jan Morrow is no shrinking violet. Nor is she a hopeful romantic, pining for true love to come her way without a little sex thrown in for good measure.  Furthermore, she is an enterprising business woman who does not need a man for ‘security’. No, Jan can do just fine on her own - and has - up until now. That Jan comes to worship the man who once made her blood boil is hardly what anyone would call ‘blind surrender’.  In fact, Hudson’s Brad is the one who must change to accommodate Jan’s needs – not the other way around. This may sound unremarkable by today’s standards, put forth by the go-getter woman both on and off the screen. But in 1959, Jan Morrow was damn near progressive to say the least, and frankly, more thought-provoking than audiences and critics expected. Viewing Pillow Talk today, it is at once timely and timeless – eschewing the mid-fifties’ stereotypical sexual politics and notions of a woman’s ‘place’ in society, all of it under the disguise of being just another fun and frothy romantic comedy. In hindsight however, Pillow Talk represents a good deal more, and, in many ways, points onward to a decade’s worth of more aggressively, and, progressively-minded women on the movie screen.

Pillow Talk gets reissued on Blu-ray via Universal Home Video. We lose the snazzy digibook packaging, but it’s the same disc as before, culled from the sparkling restoration efforts conducted in 2012 to mark the studio’s 100^th Anniversary. Were that Uni had kept up such stellar efforts before releasing more of their vintage catalog to hi-def with thoroughly appalling lack of effort or even due diligence applied. Pillow Talk was a very problematic and costly restoration for the studio; the original elements, fraught with virtually every challenge known to film preservation: severe color fading, dupe negatives, grain-riddled optical process shots, and a ton of age-related wear and tear. But in 2012, Uni put its money where it ought, with a meticulous clean-up. This 1080p remastering from original 35mm negatives, is the real deal and delivers a palette of startling bold colors. Going the extra mile to recombine the original elements shot, thus improving upon the dated opticals and split screens with today’s technology, overall image clarity is superb. Flesh tones are accurate and colors pop as they should. I cannot imagine Pillow Talk looking any better, even on its opening night in 1959. There are one or two minor hints of edge enhancement, and DNR compression has obviously been employed to manage film grain. Bravo and kudos to whoever is responsible for this remastering effort. It glows! Universal has resisted the urge to go all out with a new 5.1 DTS audio. We get the original 2.0 mono instead, remastered for optimal clarity. Extras are imports from Uni’s previously issued DVD: 2 brief featurettes, one on the making of the film, the other, on Hudson and Day. Bottom line: very highly recommended if you don’t already own the 100^th Anniversary Edition.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

2.5