Lover Come Back

So successful was the romantic comedy formula of 1959’s Pillow Talk, that Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall were brought back to do it all over again in 1961’s Lover Come Back - which turned out to be another witty sex comedy of a love/hate relationship based around mistaken identities in a mild satire on the advertising industry.

Hudson and Day are competing advertising executives and each has their own method of securing lucrative contracts from their customers. Doris Day yet again plays the type of character she does best, playing Carol Templeton, an advertising executive whose success is founded on hard work, market research and ethical business practices – she’s also the typical Doris Day uptight spinster who really needs a man in her life. That man is hardly likely to be Jerry Webster (Rock Hudson), the unscrupulous chief advertising executive for her main competitor at Ramsey & Son. Webster’s methods rely on the much more effective practice of bribery, flattery, alcohol, parties and bunny girls. When Webster secures the Miller account through such methods, Templeton is infuriated and decides to report his activities to the advertising council, much to the concern of Webster’s employer, the weak, indecisive and ineffectual Mr Ramsey (Tony Randall). To get himself out of a mess of trouble, Webster invents a campaign for a new product called VIP. When Carol Templeton hears about this mysterious product, she is determined to do everything she can to beat Ramsey & Son and show that a successful campaign can be made through proper business practices. There is only one problem – the product doesn’t exist.

There is nothing at all new about Lover Come Back, which follows the template of Pillow Talk practically to the letter. Day and Hudson again play complete opposites, Day’s prim and proper virgin against Hudson’s low-down, over-sexed trickster. Through a case of mistaken identity (naturally) Day’s character believes Hudson’s character to actually be a socially inadequate scientist (not unlike the innocent country hick of Pillow Talk), the inventor of this mysterious product VIP, and in an effort to secure his confidence she teaches him golf, dancing, swimming and even – Webster taking full advantage of the situation – takes him to a strip show and allows him to stay at her apartment. Both Day and Hudson are the top form here, Day’s eyes almost popping out of her head as she is continually affronted by the sleazy activities of Hudson’s character – she can always get out one more oooooh! in subtly nuanced registers of indignance. Hudson is slightly less persuasively suave and charming in his performance this time around, but ups the ante in terms of delivering the script’s ever more suggestive and risqué lines. Tony Randall is, yet again, reliably ineffectual at reigning in his employee’s scandalous behaviour, providing another welcome foil for the humour.

The DVD
Lover Come Back is presented anamorphically in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The quality is frustratingly variable, some scenes showing lovely colour warmth, sharpness and clarity, others looking rather grainy with white spots of dust and fluctuation of colour. The original mono track is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, unrestored but it has decent tone and clarity with little in the way of background noise. The only extra on the DVD is a Trailer (2:32), which manages to give away all the film’s plot and suggestive lines.