November 18, 2025: AmericanStudying Rock (Hudson): The Doris Day Films

[On November 17^th, 1925, Roy Harold Scherer Jr.—better known as Rock Hudson—was born. His iconic career and complex life open up a lot of American histories, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post on other 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.]

One interesting AmericanStudies layer to each of the three romantic comedies Hudson made with his friend Doris Day.

1)      Pillow Talk (1959): The premise of Hudson and Day’s first film together, which became one of the biggest box office hits of the decade, is itself an interesting window into a fascinating American history: Hudson’s Brad Allen and Day’s Jan Morrow don’t know each other but share a party line, a telephone line shared by multiple customers who have to wait for the line to be free to make calls. But the more enduring AmericanStudies context for Pillow Talk is that its director, Michael Gordon, had spent years on the blacklist due to his membership in the Depression-era Group Theatre, and this was his first Hollywood film after getting the chance to return to the industry (thanks to an invite from influential producer Ross Hunter). Gordon likely sympathized with Hudson’s character’s desire to be someone else, a central facet of the romantic comedy’s hijinks.

2)      Lover Come Back (1961): The success of Pillow Talk almost ensured that there would be a follow-up film, and Hudson and Day (who both served as producers on Lover) made doubly sure of it. Not surprisingly, the plot of Lover Come Back is strikingly similar to that of Pillow Talk, right down to Hudson’s Jerry Webster pretending to be someone else in his initial interactions with Day’s Carol Templeton. But what I do find very interesting is the profession of both those main characters—they are two high-powered advertising executives at a pair of rival Madison Avenue agencies. I’m far from the first commentator to note that Lover is set in the exact historical moment on which Mad Men would focus decades later, making for a compelling comparison between Hudson’s womanizing ad exec and Don Draper and colleagues. Even more intriguing is that in the 1961 film Day’s character could be a high-powered exec, while the same role took Mad Men’s Peggy Olson many seasons to achieve.

3)      Send Me No Flowers (1964): The third Hudson-Day film was also the last, perhaps because it was the least well-received and successful (there was talk of a 1980s sequel to Pillow Talk, but unfortunately it didn’t happen before Hudson’s illness and passing). Based on Norman Basarch and Carroll Moore’s 1960 play of the same name, Send Me No Flowers has a pretty odd premise for a romantic comedy: Hudson’s George Kimball is married to Day’s Judy, is a hypochondriac who wrongly believes he has a terminal illness, and tries to set her up with various other men (with hijinks ensuing, natch). But what’s more interesting to this AmericanStudier is that the film was directed by Norman Jewison, the great social issues filmmaker who just three years later would make the groundbreaking In the Heat of the Night (1967). Directors worked a lot in this era—Jewison made 9 films in the 1960s, for example—so it’s not necessarily surprising that their output would be quite varied. But I do wonder if revisiting Send Me No Flowers with an eye for Jewison’s trademark social commentary might yield something new.

Next Rock Hudson post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Rock Hudson memories or connections you’d share?