Please Don't Eat the Daisies: A Review (Review #2194)

PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES

This review is for the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Doris Day.

Wholesome. That was Doris Day's persona in both her professional and personal life. People tended to forget her strong dramatic work in films like Midnight Lace and The Man Who Knew Too Much. They would forget her four marriages, the first two with abusive men. Perpetually perceived as sunny as the brightest day, Doris Day never ventured far from her persona by her own choice. Please Don't Eat the Daisies is a small, episodic but pleasant enough film that keeps to Day's sunny cinematic disposition.

Lawrence "Larry" Mackay (David Niven) is a former literature professor now theater critic. His first review happens to be for Mlle. Fantan, a musical produced by his friend Alfred North (Richard Haydn). Mlle. Fantan stars theater vixen Deborah Vaughn (Janet Paige). Alfred had insisted that Larry tell it like he saw it. Unfortunately, Larry and his wife Kate (Doris Day) saw Mlle. Fantan as awful. Despite Larry's best efforts to couch his negative review in the best possible light, Alfred and Deborah are incensed by Larry's panning.

Things grow worse when, as part of a publicity stunt, Deborah publicly slaps Larry at Sardi's, with photographers present to capture the moment. She even does it twice to get the best shot. It is then Larry who gets his shot in his newest column. Larry takes a swipe at Deborah's fanny, saying that even that does not justify her being on a stage. This theatrical brouhaha is of little interest to Kate. She has four outrageously rambunctious boys to look over. She also has tried, with no success, to get Larry to help her find a new place in the country. Both Larry and Kate find their small New York apartment too small for their family.

Eventually, Larry and Deborah call a truce to their feud, even poking fun at it at parties. Kate is growing displeased at how Larry's jibes are containing more venom. Alfred, for his part, is still determined to, as he put it, "even up the score" despite all the publicity increasing Mlle. Fantan's box office. Owing to them not renewing their lease, the Mackays must vacate their apartment, forcing them to finally go to the country. The house that they find in the suburb of Hooton, according to one of the Mackay boys, "Looks like something out of Ivanhoe".

Nevertheless, Kate sets about redecorating and remodeling the fixer upper. Larry, overwhelmed by the construction chaos, agrees to stay in a New York hotel to finish his book. Kate has been corralled by the local community theater group to help with their benefit production. Larry will not help the Hooton Holler Players find a new play for their production. Kate turns to Alfred for help. He just so happens to have a very old and very bad play for them. Seeing his chance for revenge, Alfred hoodwinks Kate into taking the play supposedly titled Ghostly Music by a certain Irving O'Reilly. In reality, the play Kate is given is one called So Passion Dies, written by a Lawrence Mackay when he was a young man starting out. 

Deborah Vaughn attempts to seduce Larry but no dice. Larry, for his part, sees that he is becoming difficult to deal with. He, however, is horrified when he attends Kate's rehearsal and realizes that Alfred has duped her into being part of his public humiliation. As the author, he threatens to refuse the Hooton Holler Players permission to perform So Passion Dies/Ghostly Music. He reluctantly relents but knows that all those Broadway people he's taken swipes at are chomping at the bit to laugh at him. Larry has a few cards up his sleeve to blunt the potential humiliation, but will it cost him his marriage? Will Larry grow into the Terror of the Great White Way to where he will lose what matters most?

I fear that I have made Please Don't Eat the Daisies far more dramatic and tense than it actually is. The film, loosely based on Jean Kerr's book of humorous essays adapted by Isobel Lennart, is charming and lighthearted. A lot of the comedy comes from the four Mackay boys: George (Flip Mark), David (Charles Herbert), Gabriel (Stanley Livingston) and baby Adam (Baby Gellert). The Mackay boys tear through things right from the get-go. Please Don't Eat the Daisies starts with the three oldest using baby Adam to drop water bombs on unsuspecting pedestrians. At one point, the Mackays loyal maid Maggie (Patsy Kelly) tells them that one of the boys has literally eaten the daisies the local theater group gave them as a welcome gift. The film is a bit of a domestic family sitcom. To be fair, I have not seen the television series based on the film. However, the setup is there, and one can see how the film brought about a television sitcom.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies is, I think, aware that at its heart, it is a lighthearted affair. The situations are relatively small (slap notwithstanding). At its heart, the film uses the push-and-pull of work and home for a pleasant look at how families cope. You have a theater critic and housewife with four kids, Kate's at times loving, at times disapproving mother (Spring Byington) and the various friends and frenemies they make along the way. One does not need to have this domestic setup to see that husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, can love each other while driving each other crazy.

A major plus in Please Don't Eat the Daisies is in the various performances. David Niven plays a good blend of charming and exasperated. He has a posh, patrician air but can be flustered and befuddled with equal ease. He has a great rapport with all his costars. He and Doris Day made a great match. She is charming and pleasant as Kate. Day can give good dramatic moments, such as when she tearfully confronts Larry about his refusal to let them use So Passion Dies for their benefit. She understands that he has the legal right to forbid use of his work. She even understands that the whole thing was a setup by Alfred to get even for Larry's bad review. However, she, unlike Larry, knows that he is putting his own reputation ahead of her and everyone else's hard work.

Day's two songs are also quite charming. She sings Please Don't Eat the Daisies to a group of schoolchildren in a gentle, endearing manner. It is a bit surprising that Please Don't Eat the Daisies is not used as a nice children's song today. Her other song, Anyway the Wind Blows, is performed as part of the Ghostly Light production. It is well-sung and overall, quite a nice, jolly number. She even manages to sneak in a bit of her signature song, Que Sera, Sera, into things when she and Larry are having an intimate dinner. 

There's even a bit of an in-joke to Doris Day's most famous male lead. Larry, in a rage, storms out of their new house after having waited for hours for anyone to show up. Once the family does come home, he berates Kate for not being there when he got there. As he storms out, she sputters at him, "I was having a rendezvous with Rock Hudson!", adding that everyone in the household was at said rendezvous. 

Janet Paige was strong as the vampish Deborah Vaughn. She had a bit of comedy when reading Larry's takedown of her fanny. "Why that lying slob!" she thunders while in a bubble bath, Alfred's reading glasses still on her face. "I'll match my fanny against any fanny in America!". A bit later, she confronts Larry at a party. Rather than be threatening, she tells him that she's there in peace, giving him not a slap but a peck on the cheek. Larry, amused, tells her, "I insist on turning the other cheek", to the delight of everyone except Kate. Deborah then suggests that Larry might have been hasty about one part of their feud. At that point, she sashays slowly for everyone to see and then turns to him. With mock sheepishness, Larry says, "I was wrong", to which she coos, "Thank you" before leaving. 

Paige even shows a nice dramatic side when she and Larry go to a coffeehouse. Deborah talks about how, despite her outwardly gay appearance, she is rather lonely. After a surprisingly effective monologue, Larry calls her out on her efforts to be pensive. She is slightly miffed that her "lonely lady" act didn't take him in. However, she adds that she almost had him. Richard Haydn did a good job as the bitter Alfred North. He was appropriately petty and spiteful but with a bit of faux charm. I found him a bit bitchy in his dealings with Larry, up to his efforts at a comeuppance which backfired on him. However, his warning to Kate about how Larry was starting to mistake wit with venom was true and well delivered.

Other actors like Byington as Kate's at times sweetly nasty mother Suzie and Jack Weston as aspiring playwright and current taxi driver Joe Positano added to the positive and charming production. Credit should be given to director Charles Walters in keeping things going. Weston, Byington and Paige all have a nice moment when the three of them find themselves in Larry's hotel suite. "I didn't get here first. Joe did," Deborah tells Larry's mother-in-law. Looking her up and down, Suzie replies, "As long as you don't leave last".

A surprising element in Please Don't Eat the Daisies is in a curious exchange between George and one of the Hooton Holler Players. "Excuse me, are you a lady or a man?", George asks the mannish-looking Dr. Sprouk (an uncredited Geraldine Wall). "I'm a veterinarian, sonny," Dr. Sprouk replies. "It's somewhere in-between". I was astonished that this vague suggestion of bisexuality or androgyny or even, horror of horrors, lesbianism, managed to sneak into what I figure was a family comedy.  

Please Don't Eat the Daisies is sweet, simple, simplistic fun. It is not deep but does involve somewhat relatable issues of balancing work and family. The film is cute without being irritating, with some charming songs and good performances from the cast. Please Don't Eat the Daisies is a film that I think families can enjoy together. 

DECISION: B-