February 6, 1962 LOVER COME BACK opens in New York at Radio City Music Hall, reuniting the era’s most popular screen team, Doris Day and Rock Hudson. As a follow-up to their smash hit PILLOW TALK (1959), the two stars play advertising executives at rival firms. As they vie for the same account, Hudson resorts to chicanery both in and out of the bedroom in one of the best comedies of the Sixties. Delbert Mann deftly directs from a witty screenplay by Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning satirizing Madison Avenue.
The fast-paced romantic comedy draws a rave review from Bosley Crowther, the powerful chief film critic of the New York Times, calling it “one of the brightest, most delightful satiric comedies since IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT.” Crowther urges his readers the movie “is one you had better not miss unless you want to be that party misfit who hasn’t seen the funniest picture of the year.”
Originally planned as a 1962 release, the film premiered in Los Angeles on December 20, 1961 when a Beverly Hills theater suddenly became available after the Otto Preminger political drama ADVISE AND CONSENT is unexpectedly postponed. That move makes LOVER COME BACK available for 1961 Academy Award consideration, and it scores an original screenplay nomination. Expanding nationwide in February, the movie dominates the late winter and spring box office, as the public apparently heeds Crowther’s advice. Crowther would remember how much he enjoyed the movie at the end of the year, putting it on his “ten best” list for 1962.
