Pillows Singin’?

Pillow Talk (1959)
Dir. Michael Gordon
Written by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin
Starring: Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Tony Randall, Thelma Ritter

Brad Allen: Look, I don't know what's bothering you, but don't take your bedroom problems out on me.
Jan: I have no bedroom problems. There's nothing in my bedroom that bothers me.
Brad Allen: Oh-h-h-h. That's too bad.

Pillow Talk is the quintessential late 50s and 1960s sex comedy. My parents were very strict about what they let us watch when we were youngsters; but this film slid by because even though it is a sex comedy the sex is absent. The motion picture production code was still being enforced but it was losing power and would soon end in 1968. This film was a definite departure from Doris Day’s former movie persona. She was the blond blue-eyed girl next-door and in this film she was the blond blue-eyed career girl next-door.

It is difficult for me the modern-day movie-viewer, desensitized as I am, to look at this film and find it risqué but I did find a bit of trivia that said Rock Hudson turned down the film a few times because it was too risqué for his image. Sex comedies are definitely connected to SC they deal with many of the same elements in similar ways. Marriage, and the pursuit of it is still a major theme and is the goal of those of the female persuasion. I am surprised that this is still the goal in all romantic comedies whether it is explicit or implicit.

Alma: If there's anything worse than a woman living alone, it's a woman saying she likes it.

“Talk” or dialogue is the mainstay of Pillow Talk; this is definitely a battle of the sexes theme and a lot of the film’s dialogue is a back and forth between the main protagonists Jan (Day) and Brad (Hudson). I noticed that Doris Day’s dialogue about sex is only sung. She sings the title song “Pillow Talk”:

Pillow talk, pillow talk
Another night of hearin' myself talk, talk, talk, talk
Wonder how it would be to have someone to pillow talk with me
I wonder how
I wonder who

Pillow talk, pillow talk
Another night of bein' alone with pillow talk
When it's all said and done, two heads together can be better than one
That's what they say
They always say

All I do is talk to my pillow
Talk to my pillow, talk to my pillow
All I do is talk to my pillow
Talk about the boy I'm gonna marry someday
Somehow, some way, sometime

Pillow talk, pillow talk
Another night of gettin' my fill of pillow talk
You and I both agree there must be a boy, must be a pillow
Must be a pillow-talkin' boy for me
I hope I'm right
I'd better be right…


and then on the road-when Brad and Jan are escaping to the country for a weekend she sings to herself a song titled:

“Possess Me”
Hold me tight, and kiss me right, I’m yours tonight.
My darling, possess me.
Tenderly, and breathlessly, make love to me, my darling, possess me."…

Much scholarship has been done on the image and idea of Doris Day as a virginal figure and thinking back myself on the films I’ve seen of her this is not true. In fact in another pairing of Rock Hudson and Doris Day she has a baby out of wedlock. So, why does this idea still permeate popular culture, it might be because she never explicitly deals with sex. Either she is made a sex object by her potential partner or she modestly sings the songs above and renders them neutral by context or vicinity? Singing these lines instead of saying them turns them into submissive and passive statements. This is one way that Day doesn’t fully fit the bill of a true SC female protagonist. Can you imagine Hildy Johnson singing to Walter Burns in His Girl Friday? It definitely would have changed the flow and dynamics of the screwball genre if they added singing to them.