Move Over Darling

Actors:  Doris Day, James Garner, Chuck Conners, Thelma Ritter, Polly Bergen
Rating:  8 out of 10, a true guilty pleasure movie from my youth.  I was wandering through Amazon and happened upon some Doris Day movies from the 1960s and this one brought back some nice memories.  I put it on my wish list and my dutiful daughter promptly rewarded me with it as a birthday present.  It hearkens back to a more innocent time but it stands up well and is still incredibly funny.  Day plays Garner’s wife who reappears from a 5 year spell as a castaway thought dead just in time to thwart Garner’s marriage to Bergen.  Light hearted fun and it even has the Rifleman – Chuck Conners in a small role. I was fascinated with the back story which I was unaware of.  Apparently this script was originally meant for Marilyn Monroe and they actually started filming with her.  She was fired for unprofessionalism and died several months later so this was her last screen work (still hot).  The extras on the DVD are fascinating because they show several of the scenes with Monroe and then compare them to the Doris Day version.  At the same time Fox was shooting the Monroe version they were also pumping ungodly amounts of money into the Liz Taylor Cleopatra movie which was causing all kinds of financial problems for the studio at the same time Monroe was fired.  It offers an intriguing look into the Hollywood of the early 1960s.
MVP:  Doris Day as Ellen Wagstaff Arden proving herself as the once and always queen of rom-coms.