Send Me No Flowers *** (1964, Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall) – Classic Movie Review 1719

Director Norman Jewison’s perky and profitable 1964 comedy pairs Rock Hudson and Doris Day for the third and last time in their way too-short series of hit romantic comedy movies.

Hudson plays a hypochondriac called George Kimball who thinks he’s dying after a visit to his doctor’s where he mistakes a dying man’s diagnosis for his own and believes he has only two weeks to live. George wants to take care of his wife Judy (played by Day) after he’s gone. So he doesn’t tell her he thinks he’s dying and tries to arranges a replacement husband for her.

When he finally does tell her, Day finds out Hudson isn’t dying after all, but she thinks that he has not told her this in order to cover up an extra-marital affair she imagines he’s having. She decides to leave him.

The stylish stars perform the slightly morbid but reasonably fluffy stuff perfectly, and they are fortunate again to have the support of Tony Randall as their neighbour Arnold Nash, as well as Edward Andrews as the doctor Ralph Morrissey, Paul Lynde as the burial plot seller Mr Akins, Patricia Barry as Linda Bullard and Clint Walker from TV’s Cheyenne (1955–1963) as Day’s former lover Bert Power.

Screenwriter Julius Epstein’s screenplay finds a lot of fresh and fizzy fun in the ancient-style, familiar plot, based on a play by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore, which was a venerable antique even in the mid-Sixties.

Rock Hudson and Doris Day also teamed for Pillow Talk (1959) and Lover Come Back (1961).

Doris Day celebrated her 90th birthday on April 3 2014. Her last movie was With Six You Get Eggroll in 1968.

Clint Walker turned 92 on 30 May 2017. His last movie was as the voice of Nick Nitro in Small Soldiers.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1719

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