That Touch Of Mink

The only reason to watch this by limply formulaic rom-com is to enjoy the early ‘60s fashions and gain some insight into the sexual concerns of the time, not to mention the doldrums into which Hollywood had fallen.

Doris Day plays Cathy Timberlake, a single unemployed computer technician (the computers are the size of an industrial knitting machine) whose accidental encounter with bachelor tycoon Philip Shayne (Cary Grant) sparks a whirlwind  romance.  Well, sort of romance, as the film is primarily concerned with sex as a business transaction, emphasizing this theme by including a sub-plot involving Roger (Gig Young) who has sold-out a promising academic career to be Philip’s very well-paid financial advisor and gopher. This mirrors the dilemma around which the story revolves – should Cathy keep her honour and accept financial insecurity or should she solve her financial problems by acting as a “companion” to a jet-setting playboy.

Whilst this sort of thing worked well in Hollywood of the 1930s and '40s and the premise is potentially interesting against the background of the 1950’s ideal of marital bliss nothing about the film convinces. A too old Grant, plastered with fake tan, dutifully obliges as the supposedly irresistible hunk but his performance is a far cry from his glory days when he would have played the part with brio. An also too old Day (she was thirty-eight years old at the time) in the kind of role Ginger Rogers made her staple twenty years earlier is gratingly coy as his object of desire with, despite the inevitable resolution, there being no evident attraction between their characters (a scene in which Grant nibbles at Day’s shoulder is excruciating). 

The ersatz nature of the film continues in the form of Connie (Audrey Meadows), Cathy’s also too old roommate and their incongruously well-appointed apartment not to mention their perfectly permed hair and stylish wardrobe. These fashion notes give the film some retro appeal (one of the main locations is a presumably then-trendy serve-yourself diner) but what might have passed as comedy at the time now appears direly superficial..

 

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