...It's What Goes On When The Lights Go Off!
1959-10-07
$1.6M
102 min
Playboy songwriter Brad Allen's succession of romances annoys his neighbor, interior designer Jan Morrow, who shares a telephone party line with him and hears all his breezy routines. After Jan unsuccessfully lodges a complaint against him, Brad sets about to seduce her in the guise of a sincere and upstanding Texas rancher. When mutual friend Jonathan discovers that his best friend is moving in on the girl he desires, however, sparks fly.
"Jan" (Doris Day) is a bit fed up with sharing her telephone's party line with lothario "Brad" (Rock Hudson) whose constant chatting to his various girlfriends means she can never place a private call! They eventually arrive at a sort of truce, agree times each can have access and hopefully that's that. Except, well he has taken a little bit of a shine to her and decides to try and orchestrate a meeting. She obviously want's nothing to do with him, so he invents the persona of "Rex Stetson" - a visiting Texican and sets about charming her. She's an interior designer and another of her clients is a bit enamoured of her. "Jonathan" (Tony Randall) even tried to buy her a car, but sadly his love is unrequited - a fact that he tells his best friend. Guess who? Yep...! When "Jan" starts to tell him of her new beau, he gets suspicious and hires a private eye to find out more about him - and that's the cue for truths to come out and for things to get a bit messy. All of this is taking place under the dipso nose of her maid "Alma" (Thelma Ritter) and makes for quite an entertaining, if entirely predictable, comedy caper. There's oodles of chemistry between Day and Hudson, Randall delivers charismatically as the foil to their increasingly daft shenanigans and Ritter, well she just has to show up to raise a smile with her sagely wise-cracking. Aside from the title song, there's only the one musical number - maybe not the best called "Roly Poly" but it gives the pair and chanteuse Perry Blackwell a chance to keep things simmering along engagingly with some charm. The writing gives just about everyone a chance at the limelight and though it's a little formulaic, it's still good fun.
