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Directed by Michael Gordon, Pillow Talk (1959) tells the story of Jan Morrow (Doris Day), a successful and self-sufficient interior decorator who, much to her annoyance, shares a party line on her home phone with a philandering Broadway composer named Brad Allen (Rock Hudson). Even though they have never actually met face to face, they soon develop a feud over the use of the party line: Brad is constantly using the phone to chat with one woman after the other, while Jan needs to use it for business. One of Jan's clients is millionaire Jonathan Forbes (Tony Randall), who repeatedly throws himself at her to no avail. Unbeknownst to Jan, Jonathan is actually Brad's old college buddy and current Broadway benefactor. Rock Hudson and Doris Day as Brad Allen and Jan Morrow in Pillow Talk . One evening in a nightclub, Brad finally sees Jan and learns who she is. Attracted to her, he decides to fake a Southern accent and invent a new persona: Rex Stetson, a wealthy Texas rancher. He su...

In honor of Rock Hudson's 91st birthday, which was yesterday, this week on «Film Friday» I bring you one of the very first film I saw with him. Directed by Douglas Sirk, All That Heaven Allows (1955) tells the story of Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), a wealthy widow living in a small New England town. With her two children, Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds), away at college, Cary becomes increasingly aware of her loneliness. While everyone expects her to marry staid bachelor Harvey (Conrad Nagel), Cary instead finds herself attracted to Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), a significantly younger gardener who rejects social artifices. When Ron invites her to a dinner party at the home of his friends, former suburbanites Alida (Virginia Grey) and Mick Anderson (Charles Drake), Cary realizes how much she admires his down-to-earth lifestyle and the two soon begin a passionate romance.   Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman as Cary Scott and Ron Kirby in All That Heaven Allows .   Although she ...

Directed by Charles Vidor, The Swan (1956) begins in 1910 in a Ruritanian kingdom in Central Europe, where Princess Beatrix (Jessie Royce Landis) is eager to make a match between her daughter, Princess Alexandra (Grace Kelly), and a distant cousin, Crown Prince Albert (Alec Guinness), in order to regain the throne that Napoleon took from her family. When the prince arrives with his imperious mother, Queen Maria Dominika (Agnes Moorehead), for a four-day visit with Beatrix and her family — which includes her aunt Symphorosa (Estelle Winwood), her brother Father Carl Hyacinth (Brian Aherne), and her two younger sons, George (Van Dyke Sparks) and Arsene (Christopher Cook) — he prefers sports and shooting activities to time with Alexandra. In a measure of desperation, Beatrix forces Alexandra to show interest in Dr. Nicholas Agi (Louis Jourdan), the family's handsome young tutor, to make Albert jealous and stimulate a proposal for him. Nicholas, who has been secretly in love with Ale...