The two movies are The Quiet Man, a very acclaimed movie that I’m not all that crazy about, but the relationship is good. They are contentious with each other in a way that seems very human, and there’s an awful lot of social context given for the spanking. Which is still nasty, but whatever.

The other movie is McClintock! which I absolutely hated. O’Hara plays a caricature of a shrew, she is always screaming or shrieking or storming off in indignation or being a snob. She doesn’t have a single calm, human moment in the entire film. And the spanking was horrific.

There are two separate John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara movies where he shows he wears the pants in the family. In one I believe there's a public spanking.

I sorta dig a good spanking scene which is why I own Secretary, but that's me.

It would be interesting to see Kitty and Sal at a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, but it would more a sly wink to the audience, then something Sal would have known.

"Poor Doris. She was totally played, in this movie, as she always was. You would think she would have figured it out at some point, but she never did. "

She did figure it out. Why do you think she left Rock Hudson stranded on the beach . . . naked? She also "figured it out" in "Pillow Talk". Rock Hudson always got found out by her.

The Production code is one of my favorite parts of film history because the writers were so clever. ('Just put your lips together and blow' for instance is just one of many great lines these writers had to come up with in To Have and Have Not).

You also have to keep in mind that during this period of film the studio system was just beginning to crumble so Doris didn't have a choice in her roles, it was about money.

Plus you can't beat Thelma Ritter as her maid in Pillow Talk…

Dangerous Men and Complicated Women (both by Mick LaSalle) are great books dealing with pre-code film, my personal fave.

Simone, that sounds so interesting… a friend and I have been discussing this for awhile. He’s been renting a lot of series, and watching a season at a time. They have the luxury of time and space to let things develop. Mad Men is a perfect example of that. No rush. He says now when he sees a movie, it is all too compact and he wants to know what else happens.

Neely, interesting thoughts about that ending.

Brenda, in You’ve Got Mail she was dense at everything. He is the one who taught her how to fight. I really love that movie, it’s just really too long.

And Day’s had the best body, I think, of any Hollywood star ever. Hers was a vavoom figure that also exuded incredible strength and athleticism.

I love, too, how in “Lover Come Back” and “Pillow Talk” she’s so excited about her career. As goofy as the movies are, Day’s characters are tough, determined, and totally passionate about their work. Rare traits in a romantic comedy heroine, even today.

I think the rushed let’s-get-her-married-and-pregnant ending is one “Lover Come Back”’s strengths. By the norms of the genre, at the time Day has to end up domesticated. I almost like how the moviemakers zip through the process. It’s pretty clear that’s not what they’re interested in. I suspect they knew the audience really wanted to see Day as the plucky career gal and Hudson as the conniving cad. The marriage-and-family thing—no one cared about that. I wonder if the filmmakers didn’t purposely make it all as absurd as possible just to have a little laugh at the conventions of the day.

I agree Hudson’s character has little to redeem him. But the part of the movie where Hudson is a gay actor playing a straight man pretending to be a possibly gay man is some good dumb fun. And I’m sure, even in 1961, at least a few people got the joke. (I’m looking at you, Sal.)

And by the same token, I am now accustomed to watching this time period through the Mad Men lens, not through the lens that those people were watching, and making, these films.

Unfortunately, you can't watch a movie like that through the prism of Mad Men. That might induce some sort of apoplectic fit. Cultural standards were different then. That we can even watch a show like Mad Men on TV speaks volumes about the differences. Back then, this show probably would have been "obscene." Likewise, the standards for movies were equally stringent. So, while we can watch these people as they probably actually were in 1960, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to see themselves reflected in the same way.

Poor Doris. She was totally played, in this movie, as she always was. You would think she would have figured it out at some point, but she never did. I suppose she always won in the end, though, because she always got the ring. And isn't that what she was "supposed" to want after all was said and done?