The script is well done. The premise amusing: A hard-boiled editor faces off with a journalism teacher.
The gender politics haven't aged well: Today, the Doris Day character would surely be an editor herself. In those days, though, being a nurse or teacher were what bright women did. And Day is a professor here (albeit in a night school.) She and Clark Gable, playing the newsman, don't exactly have chemistry. But they're not supposed to like or trust each other at first. They are both major movie stars in a system that was dying out.
Speaking of dying, this was near the end of Gable's career -- only a few films before more famously ill-fated "The Misfits." And two of the major supporting players were to die at their own hands: Gig Young plays a brilliant psychologist Gable sees as a rival for Day's affections. (The scenes in which he's drunk are where it began, for me, to lose its charms a bit. They're slightly mean.)
Nick Adams, too, died of unnatural causes. He plays a promising up-and-comer at the paper.
Day is stuck with a very unbecoming hairstyle. It sort of bridges the gap between her days singing with big bands and her greatest (popular, if not critical) glory days in the movies with Rock Hudson. She gives a sturdy, likable performance.
Mamie Van Doren is a nightclub singer of Gable's acquaintance. She too has a terrible haircut. (Please note: I generally don't notice actresses' hair but these two are notably unflattering.) The nightclub scenes recall "The Awdul Truth." And if, as she sings, she invented rock and roll, the song she sings in the club certainly shows no sign of that.
The movie is long for a comedy. It could have been shorter and could have been better. Still, it's pure pleasure most of the way through.
The gender politics haven't aged well: Today, the Doris Day character would surely be an editor herself. In those days, though, being a nurse or teacher were what bright women did. And Day is a professor here (albeit in a night school.) She and Clark Gable, playing the newsman, don't exactly have chemistry. But they're not supposed to like or trust each other at first. They are both major movie stars in a system that was dying out.
Speaking of dying, this was near the end of Gable's career -- only a few films before more famously ill-fated "The Misfits." And two of the major supporting players were to die at their own hands: Gig Young plays a brilliant psychologist Gable sees as a rival for Day's affections. (The scenes in which he's drunk are where it began, for me, to lose its charms a bit. They're slightly mean.)
Nick Adams, too, died of unnatural causes. He plays a promising up-and-comer at the paper.
Day is stuck with a very unbecoming hairstyle. It sort of bridges the gap between her days singing with big bands and her greatest (popular, if not critical) glory days in the movies with Rock Hudson. She gives a sturdy, likable performance.
Mamie Van Doren is a nightclub singer of Gable's acquaintance. She too has a terrible haircut. (Please note: I generally don't notice actresses' hair but these two are notably unflattering.) The nightclub scenes recall "The Awdul Truth." And if, as she sings, she invented rock and roll, the song she sings in the club certainly shows no sign of that.
The movie is long for a comedy. It could have been shorter and could have been better. Still, it's pure pleasure most of the way through.