That Touch of Mink Works on Several Levels

 

THAT TOUCH OF MINK (1962)

Directed by Delbert Mann

Universal Pictures, 99 minutes, Unrated

★★★★

 

 

 

That Touch of Mink is a charming romantic comedy and a slice of 1962 social values. The United States was in the thrall of post-World War II victory culture (to borrow Tom Engelhardt’s term). For those who came through the Great Depression and wartime shortages, materialism held allure. The mink in the film’s title was a marker of wealth, not a perverse desire to slaughter little brown weasels, hence a mink coat was an object of desire for millions of American women.

 

Gender roles were quite different in 1962. Patriarchy reigned, women working was perceived as temporary until marriage, the Baby Boom remained loud and prolific, and women pursuing men was commonplace. That’s the way it was; if you can’t take it, tell it to your therapist and avoid this movie. That Touch of Mink is about a society with prescribed roles. Looming on the horizon were the Port Huron Statement, Vietnam, feminism, and other things that shifted cultural perspectives.

 

You could view That Touch of Mink as the last gasp of a fading value system, or just as a fluffy romp. I recommend the second. It’s a late screwball comedy leavened by the sharp script of Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster; that is, lots of snarky badinage, an attract/repulse/attract romance, and improbable situations that make sense within their manufactured contexts. It’s funny!

 

Cathy Timberlake (Doris Day) is an Ohio-born woman living in New York City and sharing an apartment with Connie Emerson (Audrey Meadows). Connie slips her extra food through the window of the Horn & Hardart automat at which she works, but Cathy needs a job. She is dressed for an interview in full 1962 battle armor: a dress, hose, evening gloves, and coiffed hair. As she walks down the street, a chauffeured Rolls drenches her with dirty water. She is mortified by her condition and that the car didn’t stop. (Hey, she’s from Ohio!)

 

Actually, the car’s owner, Philip Shayne (Cary Grant) ordered the driver to circle the block but Cathy was gone. Later, he gazes out the window of his high-rise office and sees her going into the automat. He’s a busy executive and has an upcoming meeting, so he sends his assistant Roger (Gig Young) across the street to pay for cleaning her clothing. Mistaken identity occurs, Connie offers bad advice, and Cathy is outraged by Payne’s poor manners.

 

When she bursts into Shayne’s office to throw the money in his face, though, she is instantly smitten by his good looks and charm. It’s the start of an off-and-on courtship that rockets between giddiness to misunderstanding and back again. Cathy will get a mink and then some. Everything always works out in a screwball comedy, but first obstacles must be overcome, not the least of which is Cathy’s fear that Shayne is trying to bed her.

 

Screwball comedies without topnotch actors seldom work. No worries. Cary Grant was arguably the best screwball actor of all time. Who could wine, dine, beguile, and be silly better than he? Doris Day is also terrific. She walks a tightrope between naiveté and self-confidence, all the while swaying this way and that with superb comic timing. It’s the kind of role Marilyn Monroe might have taken, but Day was a superior talent.

 

The secondary roles are equally sharp. Gig Young is hysterical as the self-flagellating Roger, who left Princeton to work for the “evil” Shayne who tortures him with raises, a pension, and benefits! He’s so “miserable” that he sees a distracted therapist (Alan Hewitt) who pumps him for stock tips, mishears, and thinks Roger is gay.* Young gets some of the best lines in the film and he makes the most of them. Audrey Meadows shed her Honeymooners role as a doughty housewife, but retained her tart tongue. There is also a chewy role for John Astin–who later attained fame in The Addams Family­–as a sleazy suitor for Cathy’s affections. Even Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, and umpire Art Passarella got into the act in a cameo diversion with Cathy and Payne sitting beside them in a Yankee Stadium dugout.

 

In all, That Touch of Mink is pure gold. Gold was $35.35 an ounce in 1962, about $328 in 2021 dollars. Great deal! Buy it! Gold now sells for nearly $1,760 and you can get a really nice coat for that.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Yes, humor was wrung from gayness in 1962. But that was a good thing, as movies subtly helped change perceptions. They helped in the evolution from being an illegal “perversity” to a humorous condition, and (eventually) acceptance.