Pillow Talk (1959) Queer Film (B)

Pillow Talk
DIRECTOR: Michael Gordon
BOTTOM LINE: Directed by Michael Gordon, “Pillow Talk” was the first of three romantic comedies in which Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall starred together, the other two being “Lover Come Back” (1961) and “Send Me No Flowers” (1964). An enormous success, it was the biggest BO hit of 1959.

Hudson plays Brad Allen, a (supposedly straight) Broadway composer and playboy who shares a party line with Miss Day’s Jan Morrow, a successful interior decorator (and a supposed virgin) in late1950s New York City. He’s always on the phone, talking to his latest conquests, while she cannot make a single call.

Of course, it’s love, although not strictly at first sight. Hudson’s character has a gay alter ego, a Texan named “Rex.” “Rex” then mercilessly teases Jan by showing an interest in effeminate things, thereby implying “Rex’s” homosexuality.

So, we have a gay actor playing a straight man pretending to be gay!

Tony Randall’s Jonathan Forbes is the quintessential late‑’50s “confirmed bachelor”—wealthy, fussy, impeccably dressed, socially polished, and utterly uninterested in women despite claiming to pursue Jan. The film never says he’s gay (it couldn’t), but everything about him fits the era’s coded shorthand: refined, unmarried, romantically inert, and the polar opposite of Hudson’s hyper‑hetero persona. Randall leaned into this archetype throughout his career; in Pillow Talk, it’s practically the point.
Gay actor Nick Adams, as Jan’s suitor Tony Walters, brings a different kind of coding. His scenes with Day have a “best friend” warmth rather than romantic heat. He’s adoring but not sexually assertive—an intentional contrast to Hudson’s swaggering Brad Allen.
Thelma Ritter appears in the fifth of her six Oscar‑nominated performances as Jan’s wisecracking housekeeper, adding her usual comic brilliance.
The Oscar‑winning original screenplay is credited to Russell Rouse, Maurice Richlin, Stanley Shapiro, and Clarence Greene.
This was Miss Day’s only Oscar-nominated performance.
Cinematography: Arthur E. Arling
Universal

STREAMING: Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Apple TV

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