***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Spring Byington
screenplay by Isobel Lennart, based on the book by Jean Kerr
directed by Charles Walters
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Please Don't Eat the Daisies is not a seismic work of filmic mastery, but instead a rather modest (if well-upholstered) domestic comedy with Doris Day thanklessly holding down the fort as she so often used to. David Niven is her husband, recently hired as one of the "Butchers of Broadway" who decides which shows live or die; he's British enough to be classy, yet Hollywood enough to believe that a play's first mission is "to entertain." And there are the "four little monsters," the children who go through babysitters and hugely inconvenience poor Doris. But as you wait for Please Don't Eat the Daisies to turn condescending or cute, it somehow never does–creeping up and gently holding you until the curtain finally falls. Sometimes we critics thank heaven for small mercies.
Doris is Kate Mackay, and her particulars read as above–though she's no Donna Reed ornament to hubby's personal adventures. In fact, the film is more about the power behind the throne, as Lawrence (that's Niven) gets his foot in the publicity door, has it opened by high society, and loses sight of the humble values he held as an obscure academic. It's wrapped up in how Lawrence becomes disconnected from the things Kate represents–the general minutiae of life men discard to the ministrations of women. While this is not hammered home, or even spelled out, Please Don't Eat the Daisies centres on Kate and her comic flustering in ways that most films now (and plenty then) would never have the guts. Doris Day runs the show, giving dignity to the grimy parts of life that are generally swept under the rug.
Of course, it's done prettily so as not to ruffle too many feathers. Director Charles Walters takes Jean Kerr's memoir/bestseller (and Isobel Lennart's canny adaptation) and turns it over to the designers–who do a fantastic job of making it sing with such colour and texture that you might be distracted from the film's harder-edged implications. You can enjoy it on the level of pure craft (and the fact that they pulled out the stops on a domestic comedy is another reason it looks shiny today), or you can be slightly annoyed that it's overly nice–the double-edged sword of the Doris Day equation. But the fact that Day rules the film softens the blow; she rules it with a velvet glove, perhaps, but sometimes our despots are bound to be enlightened.
Even though Please Don't Eat the Daisies hedges its bets once Kate/Doris takes on too much community work (driving a wedge between her and Larry), Larry can be counted on to get so full of himself that Kate gets the edge. And it commits to the truth that behind the bluster of a man sits the woman filling his stomach and massaging his ego (when she can bear to do the latter). In these days of sad wifey-wife stereotypes, we can look past the plush shock absorbers and wish we had Doris to kick up some dust–and despite a few haphazardly-inserted musical numbers, the trade-off between nice and firm is pleasant dream enough for a recommendation. Laura Mulvey it's not, but given the current alternatives, it's practically made by her acolytes.
THE DVD
Warner's DVD release, available individually or as part of their 8-disc "Doris Day Collection," does Please Don't Eat the Daisies reasonably proud. Although the 2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced image is perhaps a shade faded, with skin tones dipping slightly towards the roast-beef-red, it pulls up before disaster and is otherwise vivid and well-saturated. The Dolby 1.0 mono sound is equally fine, nothing that will knock you out but full and sharp all the same. Also included: the film's trailer.
111 minutes; NR; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
