Doris Day and James Garner: Their Films and Friendship

Doris was everybody's darling and I wish I could have done fifty more pictures with her. 

~ James Garner

Doris Day (whose birthday is April 3rd) and James Garner (whose birthday is April 7th) made only two films together in 1963, but they remained friends until Garner's death in 2014. The films, The Thrill of It All and Move Over, Darling, are not as famous as Day's film pairings with Rock Hudson, but they were extremely successful at the box-office due to the wonderful on-screen chemistry between Day and Garner. This chemistry stemmed from their off-screen friendship and respect for the other's abilities as an actor.

In their autobiographies, both Day and Garner had only nice things to say about each other, despite the fact that Garner (accidently) broke Day's ribs during the filming of Move Over, Darling.

Jim and I worked together only twice, in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All. He's so good at what he does... I felt married. We didn't see each other much over the following years, but we've stayed friends because we talk on the phone regularly. I don't know how, because Jim hates the telephone. I usually have to call him. "Can't you pick up a phone?" I say, but he just grumbles.

We had fun. He's a marvelous actor. He's very real when he talks to you. He's so funny and so nice, I just love him. Even though he broke two of my ribs. Jim, if we don't speak for a while, I forgive you for breaking my ribs. Both of them. Don't give it another thought.

~ Doris Day, The Garner Files. 

 

Doris didn't play sexy, she didn't act sexy, she was sexy. And then she could take a sexy scene and make you laugh. Which is better in the bedroom than a lot of things. And Doris was a joy to work with. Everything she did seemed effortless. She's so sweet and so professional - she made everyone around her look good.

~ James Garner, The Garner Files. 

Garner was also known to say that Doris had the "best tush in Hollywood." In an essay included in Day autobiography, Garner goes on in depth about his love and admiration for her, as well as her "girl next door" image:

I think Doris is a very sexy lady who doesn't know how sexy she is. That's an integral part of her charm... I don't think she could have had the success she's had if she didn't have this sexy whirlpool frothing around underneath her All-American-girl exterior.

I remember the first time I saw her on screen. I was just a regular moviegoer then, hadn't turned to acting yet, and here was this new girl, Doris Day, on a train with Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson [It's a Great Feeling (1949)], singing a song, and I looked at her and said to myself, "Oh, God, ain't that beautiful, and listen to that voice!"

I've had to play love scenes with a lot of screen ladies, but of all the women I've had to be intimate with on the screen, I'd rate two as sexiest by far - Doris and Julie Andrews, both of them notorious girls next door. Playing a love scene with either of them is duck soup because they communicate something sexy which means I also let myself go somewhat and that really makes a love scene work.

One other thing about acting with Doris - she was the Fred Astaire of comedy. You know the way Astaire used to change partners but the dancing was always uniformly spectacular because Astaire just did his thing and anybody who danced with him was swept up by it. Well, same thing about Doris. Whether is was Rock Hudson or Rod Taylor or me or whoever - we all looked good... I used to come to the set with a preconceived notion of how I was going to play a particular scene, but when I saw what Doris was doing in the scene, her tempo, her feel for the scene, 99.9 percent of the time I'd toss my pre-conception away and play it with her. Making a movie with Doris was a piece of cake - a sexy ride on her coattails all the way.

♥ ♥ ♥

The two films that Day made with Garner are very similar to the films she made with Rock Hudson. The main difference is that in both of them they are already married with children at the beginning of the film (Day's character is only married to Hudson's character in their third and final film together, Send Me Know Flowers, made the year after her films with Garner).

In The Thrill of It All (1963), Day plays a normal housewife who is offered a job as the spokesperson of a soap company after she is overheard telling a story about how their soap, Happy Soap, saved her life. Her doctor husband (Garner) is less than thrilled when she signs a one-year contract that keeps her away from the home and her wifely duties. Here's a good synopsis of the film.

In Move Over, Darling (1963), a remake of the 1940 Cary Grant/Irene Dunne classic My Favorite Wife, Day plays a wife who has been lost at sea for five years and been declared legally dead. Upon arriving home, she discovers that her husband, Garner, has remarried just that morning. She heads to the hotel where he is going to be staying with his new wife (which happens to be the same hotel THEY stayed at on THIER honeymoon) to try to stop him before he makes the marriage "official." You can read more about the two films in the post I wrote for my Remakes blogathon.

I highly recommend both films. Not only are they fun to watch but Day and Garner are very convincing as a married couple and evenly matched as comedians.

If Doris Day was the national symbol for the All-American girl, then Jim was her male counterpart - somewhere between a steelworker and a Saturday afternoon football hero.

~  Raymond Strait.

~ Sources ~

Considering Doris Day. Tom Santopietro. 2007.

Doris Day: Her Own Story. Doris Day and A. E. Hotchner. 1975.

The Garner Files: A Memoir. James Garner and Jon Winokur. 2011.
James Garner: A Biography. Raymond Strait. 1985.
 

This post is part of The Doris Day Blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood in honor of Day's birthday on April 3rd. Be sure to read all of the other posts celebrating this icon of Classic Hollywood!

My Favorite Wife (1940) & Move Over, Darling (1963)

Well, here is your blogathon host saving the best for last. Just kidding! All of the entries to the They Remade What?! Blogathon that I have had a chance to read so far have been amazing!!! I am constantly blown away by all of the talented writers I come across. I can't wait to read the rest of them!

For my films I chose My Favorite Wife (1940) starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant and Move Over, Darling (1963) starring Doris Day and James Garner. Now usually when it comes to remakes one stands above the other in my opinion. In the case of these two films it's pretty close.

Pardon me, did you say they remade My Favorite Wife?

My Favorite Wife (1940) is the film that is better known because, let's face it, Cary Grant is in it, not to mention the extremely talented Irene Dunne. Now to big fans of Doris Day maybe it's the other way around, but for me the only version I knew for several years was the original. Recently I signed up for Netflix and discovered Move Over, Darling (1963). When I realized what it was a remake of, and as a fan of James Garner, I put it on my list.

 

Both films are essentially the same with My Favorite Wife having more scenes at the end (Cary Grant dressed up like Santa Claus anyone?).

 

The basic storyline is this: Ellen Arden (Dunne, Day) is lost at sea and after 7 years is officially claimed dead. This gives her husband, Nick Arder (Grant, Garner), the chance to finally remarry. The only problem is, the day he gets married, Ellen shows up - very much alive!

 

    

 

Nick is overjoyed to find out that his wife is still alive. The problem is, how does he explain it to his new bride, who is in a 'honeymoon' mood?

 

 

Ellen can't understand why Nick can't just tell her but she has problems of her own. She can't seem to tell the kids that she is their mother. She also happened to not mention that she wasn't alone all those years. She was with a man who she called 'Adam,' and who called her 'Eve.'

 

                     

 

Ellen hires someone to pretend he's Adam, someone that Nick could never be jealous about, a timid, small man. Unknown to her, however, Nick has already tracked down Adam at the pool: big, strong, handsome, athletic, real good with the ladies - you get the picture.

 

Ellen eventually knows that Nick knows who the real Adam is and ... this is where the two pictures differ. In My Favorite Wife, Dunne and Grant string each other along a little longer. Dunne takes the children up to a cabin in the mountains so that she can tell them she is their mother. Grant makes an excuse so that he has to spend the night too. Dunne makes him sleep in the attic. After he keeps bothering her, she tells him that she will make her decision at Christmas. Enter Cary Grant as Santa Claus. The children have of course already figured out that Dunne is their mother and everything ends happily ever after, with Grant divorcing his second wife, Bianca, and having Dunne declared alive again.

 

 

In Move Over, Darling, Day and Garner go to court, have both marriages dissolved, and go their separate ways, so to speak. Garner goes home with Day following shortly after so she can pack her things. She goes around the back of the house to discover Garner and their kids in the pool. He has already told them who their mother is and they too have a happy ending.

I love both films but I have to say, the supporting cast is better in Move Over, Darling. We get Thelma Ritter as Garner's mother (she's always a plus) and Don Knotts (The Andy Griffith Show) as a nervous shoe salesmen that Day pays to pretend he's 'Adam.' Adam is played by Chuck Conners (The Rifleman). Polly Bergan takes on the role of Bianca. Other television stars, aside from James Garner (Maverick) and the two mentioned above, include Alvy Moore (Mr. Kimbell - Green Acres) as a room service waiter and John Astin (Gomez Addams - The Addams Family) as an insurance man.

In My Favorite Wife we get Randolph Scott as Adam and Gail Patrick as Grant's new wife, Bianca. We also get Asta the dog from The Thin Man series!

 

Even though the films are virtually identical, they each have their own comedic scenes that aren't in the other and as both have wonderful casts they are definitely both worth watching.

Trivia:

• From IMDb: Move Over, Darling was a re-shot version of Something's Got to Give (1962), the never completed film Marilyn Monroe was working on when she died. It co-starred Dean Martin as Nick and Cyd Charisse as Bianca. It was supposed to begin filming on April 23, 1962, but the schedule was reorganized due to Monroe suffering a sinus infection. Production shot around her scenes using the rest of the cast. Soon enough, the shooting fell 10 days behind schedule. Monroe's last day on the set fell on her birthday, June 1, 1962. When Monroe called in sick again the following Monday, June 4, she was fired a few days later on June 8. Dean Martin refused to continue filming without Monroe, and the movie was left unfinished (most of the footage was unseen, until it was restored into a 37-minute short which aired on television on June 1, 2001. You can watch it here and the unedited footage here). The following year, it was recast with James Garner, Doris Day and Polly Bergen, retitled Move Over, Darling and released in December 1963. Many of the same sets were used.

• In the scene where Garner pulls Day off of Bergan, he accidently broke several of her ribs. Day didn't tell him and finished the scene. The next day Garner discovered what had happened when he put his arms around and felt the bandages.

• Leo McCarey was supposed to direct My Favorite Wife, but shortly before the filming began he was injured in an automobile accident, and had to hand over the direction to Garson Kanin. Actress Gail Patrick has stated that the severity of McCarey's injuries had an effect on the film company, and they found it very difficult to enter into the spirit of the comedy with the serious hospital bulletins they were hearing.

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My Favorite Wife airs on Turner Classic Movies November 27 at 10am and again on December 22 at 10pm.
Move Over, Darling is still on Netflix, at the time of this posting (As of April 1st, 2017, it has been taken down and then recently put back up).

Happy Birthday Dean Martin!!!

Today I'm wishing a Happy Birthday to my favorite Italian crooner.

 

He would have been 98 today.

 

LOVE this video clip of Deano on the Bing Crosby Show with James Garner.

 

Bing and Dean singing a medley of Irish and Italian folk songs.

 

"Bella Bimba," one of my favorite songs of his.

36 Hours (1964)

36 Hours is a WWII drama starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, and Rod Taylor. Released on Feb. 19, 1965, it is also it's 50th anniversary year. Here is the description from the DVD case:

It's 1950. Major Jefferson Pike (Garner) is in an allied military hospital under the care of an American doctor. Pike is an amnesiac, and if he could recount the details of D-Day, his last memory, perhaps it would unlock his mind. Only it's really 1944, and Pike is deep in German territory in a faux hospital built just for him. The Nazis have only 36 Hours to pull off their elaborate ruse and get the D-Day plans out of Pike. But if that doesn't work, they will use any means necessary. 

The DVD menu - at no point in the film does Eva Marie Saint dress or pose like that.

The film is described as a "tense cat-and-mouse, twist-filled wartime thriller."

Eva Marie Saint plays a nurse who is also posing as Garner's wife, one he can't remember. Rod Taylor is the German posing as an American doctor and friend of Pikes'.

Rod Taylor and some cool looking maps of the hospital grounds.

The film opens with a newsreel followed by the opening credits. It then moves into a meeting about the location of the D-Day invasion. Pike (Garner) is sent to Lisbon on a routine trip so as not to arouse suspicion that he knows about the invasion. Once in Lisbon however, Pike is knocked out and taken to a fake hospital in Germany.



Making Pike look older



A two-way mirror... sneaky

The 115 minute film was highly engrossing and put together very well. I can't believe I hadn't seen it before! I discovered it when I was writing about the passing of Rod Taylor. Then, recently, I looked up the trailer and, finding it interesting, got the movie through my library.

Fun Facts:

• Was remade in 1989 as a TV Movie starring Corbin Bernson in Garner's role. It was titled Breaking Point.
• The movie was filmed in Lisbon, Portugal and Yosemite National Park. The Wawona Hotel was temporarily made in the "hospital." After filming was completed, they were given 24 hours to remove all traces of the film from the park.

 

 The real hotel

 

 

Travel poster

• Is thought to be based on the book by Road Dahl, "Beware of the Dog," in which a WWII British Flyer is recovering and put into a hospital. He's about to tell everything he knows until he sees a sign, "Beware of the Dog."

My only complaint was the quality of the DVD. Several shots were extremely blurry, as if they put three strips of film on top of each other and then moved them just a tad so that they no longer lined up. It seemed mainly to be on the outdoor shots. Hopefully this film will be restored soon, as it is one that is an essential to anyone who likes watching films set during WWII.

source

And while we're on the subject of James Garner I suggest you also watch Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and his TV show, Maverick (1957-59). Oh, and read his autobiography, The Garner Files :)