But evidently the well worn storyline for the movie, taken from the Tennyson poem "Enoch Arden" and already adapted into the 1940 Cary Grant/Irene Dunne comedy 'My Favorite Wife" was too good for Fox to pass up.
Hence, one year later, 'Move Over Darling', remolded from what probably would have been a more sexual romp for Monroe.....but now freshly conceived as a frantic, slapsticky farce for America's favorite girl next door. There's still a swimming pool, but Doris Day keeps her clothes on whenever she's around it.....until the final scene when she jumps in fully clothed.
The plot, which so riveted Fox executives, has Doris marooned on an tropical island for five years after a plane crash, with tall beefy stud Chuck Connors as her only company. Rest easy......this is Doris Day we're talking about......so she managed to survive the five years chaste and un-Chuck'd. We can only assume Chuck remained a gentlemen and politely masturbated himself into a coma. imaging himself as Rock Hudson in 'Pillow Talk'.
Meanwhile, Doris's husband (James Garner) finally has her declared legally dead, freeing him to marry his new fiance (Polly Bergen) an airhead with a psychiatric therapy fixation. Rescued by the Navy, Doris arrives home for a brief poignant gaze at her two young daughters whom she last saw as infants. Then it's off to increasingly wacky confrontations with an amazed, bewildered Garner and an increasingly hysterical Bergen. (Our heart truly goes out to Bergen, playing the most thankless role you can get in any romantic comedy......the Rejected Partner who won't end up with anybody at the end. At several points, the script reduces her to lying face down on a bed, throwing tantrums like a two year old)
We can only speculate how much more sexual innuendo Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse might have generated in this tangled triangle. With Day, Garner and Bergen, it's all about the pratfalls and running in and out of rooms, slamming doors. In their comedies together, Dav and Garner not only shared an easy chemistry, they always prove themselves champion good sports.....in this film, Dav drives an open convertible through an automatic car wash, with the expected results. In their next pairing, 'The Thrill Of It All", Garner drives his car into a swimming pool, with the expected results. Who needs sex when you've got an adorable couple who love big water stunts.
The closest "Move Over Darling" ever gets to "Something's Got To Give" is its jokey flashback to the five year tropical romp between Day and Chuck Connors......Doris quickly prances around in a makeshift bikini as if racing to get it over with........we bet Marilyn would have stretched this sequence out to make it a highlight of any highway billboard ads for the movie. College students and film buffs would decorate their walls with poster-sized frame blow ups of this sequence, daydreaming about life on a deserted island with Marilyn.
And please don't think we're disparaging Doris in these comparisons...... cause the BQ always found her every bit as alluring as any celebrated movie sex goddess. Every so often, right in the middle of one her bubbly, cheerfully Technicolored confections, the camera stops to linger on her Beyonce-worthy rear end. (In "Do Not Disturb" with Rod Taylor, there's a party sequence where Doris's behind is practically a special effect all by itself. ) Of all the Girl Next Doors who came and went in Hollywood, she remains forever our favorite.
We'll never have the chance to rate "Something's Got To Give" but for 'Move Over Darling', we're willing to overlook its status as a standard machine-tooled Doris Day soap bubble and simply wallow in its simpler, sillier innocence. 3 stars (***) We anxiously await the next 'Enoch Arden' remake......how 'bout it, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone??
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