I think the first time I saw “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” was in 1958 or ’59 at a drive-in theater. My family would go to drive-ins frequently when two or three films played. I made my first acquaintance with some of the best movies I never saw all the way through on a big screen at “the drive-in.” I usually managed to watch at least one film all the way through, but I usually fell asleep by the time the second movie started.
What I remember about PDETD was the screaming kids, the dog, the big old house, and the glamorous vamp trying to steal David Niven away from Doris Day. I remember the two songs, too….the main title, and that staged number that still doesn’t make any sense to me, lyrically, but is fun to watch. I’ve seen it on TV maybe twice in the past 25 years, and I’m sure I enjoyed it.
This weekend, I watched it on DVD. It was nice having an old friend in front of me in its original aspect ratio (I assume), but some odd things were happening. It became a rather ugly story of a man with an unchecked ego and a woman who constantly deferred/apologized to him. When his ego consumed him, they would argue, and he would storm off/out, like the infant he truly was. Even Spring Byington, as Doris’ mother, gives her some TERRIBLE advice about forgiving her husband and apologizing for something for which no apology should ever have been considered.
It’s a sad reflection of the 1950s, IMO, that such a sordid bit of male chauvinism and female subjugation masqueraded as grade A vehicle for Doris Day. I think it’s unrepentantly ugly in tone, but it has winsome elements that make it fun, too.
It’s a well-made film with a shameful message…and Niven and Day delivered it with depressingly chipper sincerity.
