Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

Film: Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)

Stars: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, Spring Byington

Director: Charles Walters

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Spring Byington: click here to learn more about Ms. Byington (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Jumping from 1948 to 1960 is a big gap in Spring Byington's career, and a large part of that jump happens because during that time, Byington found the sort of leading lady stardom that had alluded her in her career in movies.  In 1952, Byington had started to work on the CBS radio program December Bride, where she plays a woman who has been widowed, but is intent on finding a new husband (hence, becoming a "December Bride").  Desilu Productions thought that this would make a good companion to I Love Lucy, and brought the radio show to television, putting it on immediately after I Love Lucy, which meant it was a Top 10 hit for the first four seasons it was on.  This allowed Byington, now in her seventies, to be the lead in one of the most-watched shows in America.  Byington even got two Emmy nominations for the series (losing both to Jane Wyatt on Father Knows Best), but when the series moved out of the comfy slot behind I Love Lucy, it tanked and was quickly cancelled.  Byington would only briefly return to one last movie after that, today's film Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Kay Mackay (Day) a housewife with four sons who is living in a cramped New York apartment with her drama critic husband Larry (Niven).  The two find out that they're being evicted, and rather than stay in the city, they move to a dilapidated old house in the middle of the country, with Kay's mother Suzie (Byington) in tow.  This causes friction in their marriage, with Larry leaving the city frequently, and letting his newfound fame as a viper-tongued critic go to his head.  This is particularly a problem when an actress he lambasted, Deborah Vaughn (Paige) initially makes a scene, slapping him at a restaurant, and then realizing the publicity this could get both she & Larry, starts to coordinate moments for more publicity, trying to start an affair with him.  Suzie eventually convinces Kay that she needs to fight for her husband, and she does, with the two of them making up, now happily settled into their country domesticity.

Your mileage with this film will largely depend on your thoughts on Doris Day as a leading woman.  Few actresses enjoyed the kind of sustained success that Day did from the early 1950's to the late 1960's, and Please Don't Eat the Daisies was no exception (it was a huge hit for MGM), but I get that her movies tend to be a bit repetitive and somewhat reductive (that the onus on fixing her husband's wandering eye falls to Day's wife rather than Niven's character is not lost on me).  But I generally like Doris Day's movies, and this is cute.  Janis Paige is fun (as always) as a vamp, and I think it's always enjoyable.  There should've been more antics from the sons (particularly the adorable baby obsessed with Coca-Cola), and more singing from Day (she only does the film's bizarrely-monikered title song), but this is enjoyable.

It's also a fitting sendoff for Byington, playing yet another charming mother character.  Though she'd live until 1971, dying from cancer at the age of 84, she'd never make another movie, working in television instead on programs as varied as The Tab Hunter Show, Dennis the Menace, Mister Ed, The Flying Nun, and in a recurring role on the western Laramie.  Next month, we're going to switch gears a little bit as we focus on an actress who, unlike Byington, was not only a leading lady, but throughout the 1930's & 40's was a big star...but whom modern audiences, if they remember her at all, recall her for her immaculately-bedecked television show in the 1950's.