Doris Day's screen image, typified in this picture, has been the subject of much lampooning, both affectionate and savage, with references ranging from a song in the musical Grease (1978) to a skit on the British comedy show French and Saunders ("It could be Rock, it could be Cary; I really don't care who I marry"). Her image, however, as the girl-next-door virgin who refuses to have sex until she's married is a bit at odds with the subtler realities of her screen roles, in which she's usually a working woman, often quite successful, and not entirely averse to sex. In fact, in 1980, two British feminists persuaded the National Film Theater to mount a retrospective season of her movies, arguing that many of them dealt with concerns that later became prominent issues in the women's movement.

Aspects of this story and some of the earlier Day-Hudson pairings were spoofed by Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger in the comedy Down with Love (2003), set in 1962, the year of this film's release.

That Touch of Mink also received a tribute of sorts in the gay-themed film Touch of Pink (2004), a comedy of culture clashes that featured Kyle MacLachlan as the spirit of Cary Grant, offering advice to a young gay man living in London. The young man's Muslim mother, who grew up watching and wanting to emulate the Doris Day movies of the late 50s and early 60s, is finally softened to his "alternative lifestyle" when he buys her a suit "just like the one Doris Day wore in That Touch of Mink."

Like many of the Doris Day comedies of this period, this picture used suggestions of homosexuality as a comic device. In this one, however, it is the most blatant; the psychiatrist treating Gig Young's character hears him incorrectly and thinks Young is confessing to an affair with another man. Ironically, Day's star in her earlier pictures, Rock Hudson, later revealed himself to be gay, while rumors of bisexuality followed Grant throughout his life.

Although the script called for an "Audrey Meadows type" for the role that eventually went to Meadows herself, the part of Connie can be seen as another in a long line of wisecracking, often man-hating best friends most enduringly associated with another redhead, Eve Arden. In melodramas, this redheaded, sharp-tongued friend was often played by Agnes Moorehead.

An anti-Iraq War Internet blog from 2004 used this movie as an analogy for the current political situation. The comparison had something to do with George W. Bush as a seductive Cary Grant and Doris Day as a reluctant France and ended bizarrely with a rape. A very odd and tenuous connection, but one that may show some of the lasting impact of the film in today's culture.

by Rob Nixon

SOURCES:
Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best by Nancy Nelson
Cary Grant: A Biography by Marc Eliot
Doris Day - Her Own Story by A.E. Hotchner
Final Gig: The Man Behind the Murder by George Eells