Pillow Talk (1959)

This movie was actually pretty good and held up surprisingly well.
Jan Morrow (Doris Day) starts her day as she normally does, listening to music but then she picks up her phone to make a phone call and she can't. Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) is talking and crooning to one of his many girlfriends. This is made possible by the fact that the two shared a party line-more than one household would have the same phone line, with different sorts of rings for each household. However, I would have a problem with this, but will get to that later.
Jan is furious that Brad keeps hogging up the line because she has calls to make that are more important. She is an interior decorator and needs to make business calls. She is disgusted with him as he woos more than one woman at a time, plus in his apartment, he has a switch that locks the door, turns off the lights and turns on the record player while the other unfolds the sofa into a bed. Yikes. She complains to the phone company and they send a woman out to investigate, Jan, as I would, expresses her disgust about the whole thing. Of course, a woman will find no fault with Brad.
Brad and Jan have never met but they get the chance after Jan is driven home from a client party with a horny college student (Nick Adams, looking much older than a college student) who nearly rapes her in his tiny car. Then they go to get drinks which is the only way he would leave her alone. He falls over, drunk and Brad is there, on a date of his own. He and his date are seated right next to Jan and the idiot so he overhears who she is. But he opts to disguise himself and adds a heavy Texas accent and tells her a fake name. She is smitten. Brad becomes Tex and a total gentleman. When he takes her up to his hotel room, it really is only to get his coat. She soon falls in love with him and he with her, though it is all doomed.
Jonathan (Tony Randall) stands in the way. He has hired Jan to decorate his office and has a crush on her, despite her being completely uninterested and has three failed marriages behind him. He is only Brad's boss. He is disgusted when Jan breaks a date with him so he hires a detective to learn what has been going on and immediately discovers the truth and forces Brad to go elsewhere for the weekend but Jan goes with him. However, though Jonathan follows her, she discovers Brad's song (he's a songwriter) that she had heard him sing to several others over the phone. She is furious and then Jonathan comes. Jonathan takes her home, Jan cries the whole way, for sixty miles. Jonathan is punched at a diner by others, thinking that he took advantage of her.
Brad misses Jan and decides that he must get her back. He talks to her maid (Thelma Ritter, also Oscar-nominated) who can drink him under the table but at least her idea works. Alma (the maid) tells him to redecorate his apartment. Jan takes on the job, despite her better judgment. She exacts her revenge and redecorates, but the result is horrible, an eyesore if there ever was one. Brad is not pleased and knocks down her door, pulls her out of bed and carries her to his apartment. But he still manages to win her over, by telling her that he broke it off with all the other girls and hired her solely to get back together with her. It works.
There is also a hilarious subplot. When Brad is trying to hide from Jan, he walks into an OBG-YN office but doesn't realize it. The doctor thinks it's a miracle that a man is pregnant and is furious that his nurse let Brad just get away. At the end, Brad goes to announce the news that Jan is pregnant by saying he's going to have a baby and the doctor carts him away. What an interesting ending.
I do have some problems with the film. I did know what party lines were going into the film (they briefly mention it also which works for the modern viewer) but I always thought that the two parties lived near to each other, but that is not the case as Brad lived several blocks away from Jan. I also hated that he was mad at here and just carried her away. Still, it is much easier to disgust than the awkward Bus Stop, where the main character is horrible and controlling over women and doesn't even realize that he's in the wrong. I will watch it again.
Day, Oscar-nominated here (not fully deserved), is great as is Hudson (though it is awkward seeing him slightly hint that Rex might be a Mama's boy or homosexual when he was truly homosexual). Ritter is great in her small role as the alcoholic housekeeper, whose days are brightened by overhearing Brad's songs and conversations over the line. However, she did not deserve a nomination, sorry. The songs are also great and I liked that the screen would be split to show what Jan and Brad would be doing at the same time, a technique that is seldom used today which is the main tragedy. I would recommend this film to many. Grade: A-