AWARDS & HONORS

That Touch of Mink received Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Sound; and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

It was also a Golden Globe winner for Best Motion Picture Comedy. Cary Grant was also nominated as Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

That Touch of Mink won four Golden Laurel Awards (from motion picture exhibitors) for Top Comedy, Top Female Comedy Performance, Top Male Comedy Performance and Top Male Supporting Performance (Gig Young).

The Writers Guild of America awarded Shapiro and Monaster's screenplay the award for Best Written American Comedy of the year.

THE CRITICS CORNER

That Touch of Mink began its run at Radio City Music Hall (generally reserved for the most prestige pictures) in June 1962 and was an immediate commercial smash, also garnering good reviews. It solidified Doris Day's standing as the number one box office star and gave Cary Grant his biggest hit in years.

Some sources say That Touch of Mink was the number two box office hit of the year, others rank it third, behind Spartacus (1960) and West Side Story (1961) and tied with Day's previous release Lover Come Back (1961), which had premiered in Los Angeles the year before but was in wide release in the first half of 1962.

"[T]he adroit Mr. Shapiro has written a lively, lilting script, this one with Nate Monaster, that has as much glittering verbal wit and almost as much comic business as Pillow Talk [1959] and Lover Come Back [1961]... And Mr. Mann has directed it with that briskly propulsive pace and that pin-point precision in timing sight gags that are the distinction of his bright new comic style. ... Especially nimble is the sub-plot they have worked out with the psychotic aide and his stiff-faced psychiatrist, which could be nasty, if it weren't so ingenuous and droll. Gig Young as the aide and Alan Hewitt as the psychiatrist have at their roles with such glee and such humorous affectation that they add a great deal to the whole."
– Bosley Crowther, New York Times, June 15, 1962.

"The recipe is potent: Cary Grant and Doris Day in the old cat-and-mouse game. The gloss of That Touch of Mink however, doesn't obscure an essentially threadbare lining. In seeming to throw off a sparkle, credit performance and pace as the key virtues. The rest of it is commonplace. ... Although Grant gives his tycoon the advantage of long seasoning at this sort of gamey exercise, he's clearly shaded in the laugh-getting allotment. As written, Day's clowning has the better of it; and she, by the way, certifies herself an adept farceur with this outing. But not surprisingly, the featured bananas make the best comedic score."
– Variety, 1962.

"Jaded sex comedy (or what passed for it in nudge-nudge 1962) enlivened by practised star performances and smart timing."
- Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"Some older movies stand the test of time, becoming true classics; others gain a bit of curiosity value as a window into the filmmaking of years past. Others... well, some movies just don't age very well, and I'm afraid that That Touch of Mink falls squarely into the "too dated" category. That Touch of Mink is a comedy whose humor relies heavily on the viewers sharing certain cultural assumptions that may have been current in 1962 but, fortunately, don't hold true now."
- Holly Ordway, DVD Talk

"..the story's farcical elements are too labored and Grant is unusually unresponsive to his co-star, Doris Day. Day, typically, does a wonderful job responding to Grant, but Grant, while his timing is adept in the comedy sequences, conveys no sense of attraction for Day, and it is one more factor that helps to emphasize the mechanical nature of the film's structure."
- Doug Pratt, www.DVDlaser.com

"Sex comedies from the 1960s tend not to age too well, and while that's true to an extent with That Touch of Mink, it does hold up better than many other similar films from the period. Part of the credit goes to the screenplay, which is structurally quite sound and which features dialogue that actually is witty on occasion and, even when not witty, is at least appropriate. Unfortunately, the main plot itself is bound to give pause to some modern viewers, who will object to a number of things, including the inherent materialism, the sexual "obligation" that Doris Day feels, the age difference between the leads, and the outdated sexual role-playing that permeates the film. However, when suave and charismatic Cary Grant is on hand, and when Day is operating -- as here -- at the top of her form, things are bound to be kept lively and entertaining, and the stars do not disappoint."
- Craig Butler, www.allmovieguide.com

by Rob Nixon