Cathy Timberlake, an out-of-work computer programmer, is on her way to collect her unemployment check when she is splashed with muddy water by a passing limousine carrying millionaire businessman Philip Shayne. Feeling bad about not stopping and helping her, Shayne spies her entering the Automat across the street and sends his financial adviser Roger down with money to compensate her. Cathy tells Roger she'd rather throw the money in Shayne's face, but when she meets him, his suave good looks and charm disarm her, and she's soon off on a whirlwind trip with him to Yankee Stadium, Philadelphia and other places. When Philip offers to take her with him on a pleasure trip to Bermuda, Cathy wrestles with her conscience and finally decides to go. But before the affair can be consummated, her nerves and guilt get the best of her and she breaks out in a rash. Back in New York, she decides to give it another shot, and upon arriving in Bermuda, she starts to drink heavily to overcome her jitters. By the time Philip arrives, she's intoxicated and ends up falling out of his window. After hatching a plan with Roger and her roommate Connie to make Philip jealous, she finally gets him to marry her, but on their honeymoon he breaks out in a rash.
Director: Delbert Mann
Producers: Robert Arthur, Martin Melcher, Stanley Shapiro
Screenplay: Stanley Shapiro, Nate Monaster
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Editing: Ted J. Kent
Art Direction: Robert Clatworthy, Alexander Golitzen
Original Music: George Duning
Cast: Cary Grant (Philip Shayne), Doris Day (Cathy Timberlake), Gig Young (Roger), Audrey Meadows (Connie), Alan Hewitt (Dr. Gruber), John Astin (Everett Beasley).
C-99m.
Why THAT TOUCH OF MINK is Essential
They look dated, silly, even prudish to us today, but back in the late 50s and early 60s, Doris Day starred in a series of comedies built around the question of "will she or won't she have sex with him?" that were the beginnings of a change in the depiction of adult relationships on screen. Granted, these were not revolutionary films, and truth be told, even then they weren't considered particularly racy or shocking. But one thing was new here: the frank acknowledgement that certain adults, particularly those lucky enough to live and dress well in swinging Manhattan, were having sex without benefit of marriage. And this was an occasion not for scandal or tragedy but for slightly risqué humor. Okay, maybe Doris never actually did the deed until a ring was on her finger, but she often came damn close.
It was on the basis of these movies that Day acquired the lasting image of the eternal virgin, holding out against all odds for marriage. Yet that image, like all legends, is not always quite accurate. Many film analysts, including some feminist theorists, have noted that Day's characters were often career women, successful and independent, whose self-determination (whether sexual or financial) posed a challenge to the more devious and undisciplined men with whom they shared a mutual and frequently exasperating attraction. And in her films with Rock Hudson, what stops her as she approaches the bed is not so much a highly principled moral code of her own but the realization that her intended partner has no moral code of any kind at all.
That Touch of Mink, however, probably comes closest to the image of Day as the perpetual virgin. In this one, she's unemployed and easily dazzled by a wealthy older man's attentions and lavish gifts, and when he asks her on a romantic weekend, she immediately thinks he's proposing. Even so, the fight here is not so much with the man as with herself. Doris clearly wants it in this picture, and tries her best to be "that kind of girl." But her id keeps getting bested by her superego until, of course, she can call herself "Mrs."
At 38, Doris was still playing ingénue roles which were more appropriate for younger actresses. And here, instead of Rock Hudson, she's paired with an actor 20 years her senior. Of course it helps that the actor is the epitome of the dashing, romantic leading man. Audiences didn't seem to mind the age issue; this was, after all, Cary Grant, and what 38-year-old virgin wouldn't fall? And they didn't mind that Doris's close-ups were shot through a hint of gauze, especially since she exhibited expert comic timing to match Grant's own legendary skill at urbane comedy. That Touch of Mink became a box office smash, garnered glowing reviews, and even managed to earn several nominations and awards. No, it's not one of the great films of the 20th century, but as an artifact of an era, a style and a social code, That Touch of Mink succeeds on its own terms.
by Rob Nixon
