THAT TOUCH OF MINK

Doris Day and Cary Grant

THAT TOUCH OF MINK (1962). Director: Delbert Mann.

"When a man donates $200,000, he's entitled to use the facilities."

Wealthy entrepreneur Philip Shayne (Cary Grant) is in his limousine when it splashes mud on out-of-work Cathy Timberlake (Doris Day.) Philip sends his associate, Roger (Gig Young of Hunt the Man Down) to apologize for him, but Cathy insists Philip do it himself. When she meets him, however, she is so instantly smitten that she apologizes to him. Thus begins a difficult romance in which Cathy does her best to maintain her virtue even as Philip flies her off to exotic places and wines and dines her par excellance. A series of comical misunderstandings may or may not lead to the altar ...

A date from Hell: Doris Day and John Astin

That Touch of Mink is a funny movie, greatly abetted by the performances of the two leads. One could quibble that both of them, especially Grant, are a bit too old to be dancing around this whole sex-or-no-sex business, but they make the skirmishes amusing in spite of it. John Astin is also notable as a sleazy man in the unemployment office who has a hankering for Cathy and winds up wishing that he didn't.

Although there's nothing necessarily wrong with Audrey Meadows' performance, I was somehow disappointed by it. Meadows certainly knew how to slap down a line on The Honeymooners, but maybe this part should have been essayed by Eve Arden. Laurie Mitchell, the Queen of Outer Space herself, has a bit part as a showgirl, and John Fiedler is amusing as a confused bridegroom who gets the wrong idea about his wife. That Touch of Mink is typical of many sixties comedies in that it milks some humor out of a misunderstanding over a character's sexual orientation -- in this case Roger's shrink (Alan Hewitt, who is also very good) thinks he is gay. It does lead up to a silly but nevertheless hilarious final sequence.

Verdict: Despite its dated qualities (on so many levels), this is a consistently amusing picture with extremely adept leads. ***.