Cinema: Puppet Show

Send Me No Flowers. Well, they’ve finally gone and done it. Five years after they started making Pillow Talk, Rock Hudson and Doris Day have tied the knot. And moved into a mortgage-covered cottage in commuterland. And joined the very best country club. And subsided into exurban sprawl. But not for long. Something inevitably goes wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Right.

With nothing real to worry about, Rock starts worrying about himself. Every time his gums bleed he imagines hemophilia. Every little freckle has a meaning all its own: cancer! One day he feels some minor heartburn, suspects a major heart attack, rushes off to consult his best friend and neighbor (Tony Randall).

“I’ve got bad news,” he announces.

“Nothing that’s going to affect property values, I hope.”

“It’s my ticker—it’s curtains.”

“Holy cow, that’s terrible! I—are you going to tell your wife? You remember how she was when the dog died. This could be worse.”

Rock modestly agrees, and decides not to upset his featherheaded fern. Instead, he thoughtfully attempts to select a successor who can provide for the poor widow. Inspired by his buddy’s “nobility,” Tony dashes off an advance draft of a funeral eulogy: “They needed a good sport in heaven.” But the little woman is confused; she figures that Rock is fixing her up with a slimy oilionaire in order to justify an affair of his own. To set her straight, Rock is forced to confess his condition. To set him straight, Doris produces a memorable wifely weirdie. “Promise me,” she urges him tenderly, “that you’ll never keep anything like that from me again.” Etc.

Displayed to Broadway audiences as a comedy of character (TIME, Dec. 19, 1960), Flowers seemed artificial and soon wilted under critical disesteem. Rearranged for moviegoers as a formula farce, the show still seems artificial but the artifice somehow seems right—in a puppet show, who needs reality? Director Norman Jewison deserves three small cheers for the skillful manipulation of his principal puppets. Actor Randall, who as always looks like an unsolicited testimonial for psychoanalysis, achieves a socko series of belt-stretching belly laughs. Actor Hudson, who is sensitively cast as the half-dead hero, has seldom performed so inoffensively. And Actress Day, who at 40 should maybe stop trying to play Goldilocks, comes off as a cheerful, energetic and wildly overdecorated Mama Bear.