"Please Don't Eat the Daisies" (the film)

Cafe Society
1

Well, I finally got around to watching this 1960 Doris Day/David Niven “comedy” for the first time. It was pretty much a waste of time.

I always considered David Niven to be rather hot, and that was the only thing that kept me watching. Sadly, even that wasn’t enough to hold my interest.

I think the word that sums it up is: bland. The plot was bland, the characters were bland, the dialog was bland, and the few songs were embarrassingly worse than bland. Even by comedic standards, there was just an overall lack of substance. And Doris Day achieved the pinnacle of superficial perkiness, so much that I wanted to slap her back to reality. I found myself hoping that Janis Paige would succeed in seducing David Niven, just to add something interesting to the plot. But that, like everything else, just fizzled out. (Janis Paige and the woman who took over the family’s apartment were the film’s only interesting characters.) Even the kids . . . who could have been the source of comedic situations . . . turned out to be as “wholesome” as their parents.

This film had a lot of “star power” (Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, Jack Weston and Spring Byington), and didn’t utilize any of their talents.

2

I don’t think I’ve seen it since it was first on TV in the 60s. I recall it as being a typical Doris Day movie of that era.

3

Did even David Niven’s wife find him “hot”?

4

I am the biggest Doris Day fan on these boards, but I don’t much like Don’t Eat the Daisies. Plus, it’s the worst theme song EVER. Shudder.

5

Oh, I agree. There’s also some kind of song n’ dance rehearsal by DD and another woman on a stage that is so cringingly stupid it can take your breath away. ALL the songs were lame. PDETD was actually a rather cute Erma Bombeck-ish book but it’s Doris Day’s worst movie.

6

No, I am.

Jean Kerr thought she was clever. She was only somewhat clever. What she really was was smug.

7

I recall seeing portions of that film while stationed over in Hanau, Germany. I was on copious amounts of LSD.

The person I was watching it with and I couldn’t stop the perma-grin from eating our faces as we lambasted the movie for its sickly cheeriness.

Later, the house I was in got busted by the Polizei, CID and the MP’s. Talk about a bad trip!

8

Wrong.

The American lyrics to the badly dubbed Swedish movie “Pippi Longstocking” are far, FAR worse.

I am Pippi Longstocking
With a “hup” and a “hey” and a “hup-sha-na”
I am Pippi Longstocking
How I love my funny name\

It doesn’t rhyme, it doesn’t scan, it doesn’t fit the lip movements of the kid playing Pippi and instead of being sung by Doris Day, it’s brayed by a kid who sounds like a donkey…

9

I hated how they took that beautiful Gothic mansion, painted it white, and turned it into just another fashionable 1950’s home.