Caprice

[suzie]

Yes, LPT , it is true that Doris did not like this movie, but as always she made the best of it. I for one am glad she did, because I like it alot. I love the way that they spoof the Bond 007 movies in caprice . Its good to know that Hollywood can laugh at itself once in awhile isnt it ? About it being shot in California, I tell you Hollywood is so great at making things seem so real arnt they ? They amaze me. I have been to the studios and it ALL seems so real , I would love to work at the studios (behind the scenes ) I think there would never be a dull moment lol. Let me put on my hollywood eye wear ..lol

[Doris Martin]

Yes, LPT , it is true that Doris did not like this movie, but as always she made the best of it. I for one am glad she did, because I like it alot. I love the way that they spoof the Bond 007 movies in caprice . Its good to know that Hollywood can laugh at itself once in awhile isnt it ? About it being shot in California, I tell you Hollywood is so great at making things seem so real arnt they ? They amaze me. I have been to the studios and it ALL seems so real , I would love to work at the studios (behind the scenes ) I think there would never be a dull moment lol. Let me put on my hollywood eye wear ..lol

I agree with you Suzie....I like a lot too...there is nothing she can not do....doris martin

[littlepinetree]

If someone else played Doris' part, I wouldn't have seen the movie. Doris made the movie a good one. Can't say much for the script.

[Doris Martin]

If someone else played Doris' part, I wouldn't have seen the movie. Doris made the movie a good one. Can't say much for the script.

que sera sera...still I am going to watch it tonight doris martin

[Johnny]

Time gives a new perspective to viewing Caprice. It is a smart, fast moving, funny movie. I really liked the commentary on the film which gave me a new appreication for the work in this film. Doris is aways outstanding. As a spy spoof movie it is quire clever. Doris is to be commended for trying something so different from her other films.

I would love to hear commentaries on all her other films. It would be brilliant if Doris would take the time to do commentaries on her films especially her later ones from the mid fifties.

Johnny

[suzie]

I agree with you Johnny , that would be great to have commentaries on all of her films. I liked Caprice and thought that it was a great spoof on the spy movies. It was great to see Doris do something a little different.

[ray]

Caprice is one of my favorites too!! Ralph Mc Knight and I used to rant how good it really was!!! Did the girl that won the Doris Day look alike contest get a small part in Caprice? There was a photo of Doris and the winner and Doris had a Caprice outfit on. It was said the winner would be in an upcoming DD flick which would be Caprice at that time.

[jmichael]

Just by coincidence, I watched the DVD again this morning. I still can't get into Caprice. The plot just doesn't hold together. I didn't believe any of it or any of the characters. I also felt the spy spoof elements were handled much better the year before in Glass Bottom Boat. The sugar cube scene was too similar to the party scene in GBB, where the spies were eavsdropping on Doris and she outsmarted them. Richard Harris was horribly miscast. He and Doris had zero romantic chemistry. I think more sparks flew between her and Michael J. Pollard in the balcony scene.

On the plus side, Doris was very good and nobody does slapstick comedy better. Frank Tashlin must have been a closeted sadist to put her through all of the physical stunts. But Doris was more than up to the challenge. She's a natural when it comes to physical comedy. The other good thing about Caprice were her clothes. I know some people think they were over the top or too young for her, but she pulled it off. That red polka dot number with matching headband is among my top 10 favorites. She looked hot in that dress.

I wish Doris and Marty had avoided Caprice and gone for something more original. She really needed to take her film career in a different direction after the mid 60's. What worked before simply didn't anymore.

Michael H

[puck]

I do love "Capice" .



http://i50.tinypic.com/9bd6p5.jpg

[puck]

http://i48.tinypic.com/2u9279w.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/juye0i.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/2cg09pc.jpg

Find these rare scene - rehearsal picture on ebay.

[webmaster]

Puck, the ones above are from "Where Were You When the Lights Went Out",

[webmaster]

Seems to be some loss of quality on YouTube, you can also watch here on this website:
http://www.dorisday.net/caprice-title-song.html

[webmaster]

Suzie said, "I would love to work at the studios (behind the scenes ) I think there would never be a dull moment lol. Let me put on my hollywood eye wear ..lol."

Suzie. in the next life I think I'd like to have my own film studio and you will definitely have a job there if you want it, What would be your dream job in a film studio?

[melancholy]

I just watched Caprice this evening.A very sad feeling came over me,don't know why.This is not Dorissy at all to me.Eventhough I love the GBB.That is alive and kicking.But Richard Harris of all people.Sure the James-bond feeling would have been there with G.Grant or even Peter Sellers or Rex Harrison.Think of all the costs that got into a movie without a plot.(in my opinion).The clothingline for that time was superb,but Doris,I don't know,something is lacking.
Anyway,next movie is Lucky Me and I am sure I will love it.
Dorine

[webmaster]

For the new film site I'm doing I've been going back to look at the reviews that came out at the time - I'm not doing Caprice but I came across the original New York Times review:

MOVIE REVIEW
Caprice (1967)
'Caprice' Opens: Doris Day Plays a Spy at Several Houses (Cinemas)

By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: June 8, 1967
SOMEWHERE behind the cluttered chichi and comedy claptrap of the new Doris Day film, "Caprice," there flits the shadow of an idea, and I think I know what it is. I think it is to have Miss Day enacting a sort of hard-boiled female James Bond, engaged in spying on and stealing the trade secrets of international cosmetics manufacturers, and have Richard Harris enacting a sort of male Ursula Andress or Honor Blackman, engaged in attempting to foil her and seduce her with coy and sexy wiles.

Otherwise, there is no explanation of why Miss Day appears and acts with such masculine muscularity, and Mr. Harris affects the arts and airs of a very sissy gentleman, even to wearing eye-shadow in a couple of scenes. Nor is there any other reason why Miss Day should be so brittle and tough and Mr. Harris should be so swivelly. I think the sexes are supposed to be reversed.

However, Frank Tashlin, who directed and helped write this fancy color film, which came yesterday to neighborhood theaters in the metropolitan area, has done such a bad job of constructing and clarifying it that this idea is lost in a jumble of wacky and feeble comedy. Ray Walston, Edward Mulhare and Jack Kruschen are various fellows in the cosmetics trade who might be suspected as reversals of the familiar Bond girls. But here again the construction is so flimsy and the presentation so poor that those usually competent performers come through looking like halfwits and dopes.

Miss Day? Well, let's just say of her that she appears to have reached that stage where massive wigs and nutty clothes and acrobatics cannot conceal the fact that she is no longer a boy.

[webmaster]

And this is the one for Glass Bottom Boat - almost as bad - although her finer films are praised and recognised.


MOVIE REVIEW
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
The Screen: 'The Glass Bottom Boat':Comedy at Radio City Stars Doris Day A Chris Marker Film at the New Yorker

By VINCENT CANBY
Published: June 10, 1966
FRANK TASHLIN, one of the few Hollywood directors to pursue the slapstick muse, may some day make a really funny film, full of outrageous sight gags, mistaken identities and lunatic chases. In the meantime, you can chalk up as another frantic failure "The Glass Bottom Boat," the new Doris Day vehicle that chugged into the Music Hall yesterday, and promptly sank.

However, the picture is not without a certain historical interest. Miss Day, who has been ageless for longer than most of us care to remember, seems now to recognize the existence of time. In "The Glass Bottom Boat" she is cast as a sweet widow, for no particular purpose, it seems, except to explain why such a lovely thing would be single in the summertime of her years.

Widow or not, Miss Day continues to project her familiar personality: that of the Little Orphan Annie of slick cinema fiction. She is as cute as a button, and as out of place in Mr. Tashlin's slap stick as a button in a banana cream pie or, more specifically, a banana cream cake, which is one of the messier of the picture's props.

Everett Freeman's screenplay concerns a bouncy little guide (Miss Day) in one of those handsome Southern California electronics plants who is mistaken for a Soviet spy. The suspicions are reinforced by the fact that she spends a lot of time with her boss, a handsome Southern California electronics genius (Rod Taylor), and makes repeated phone calls to her handsome Southern California bungalow to someone named Vladimir.

Vladimir, of course, is her handsome Southern California dog, and the phone calls are designed to give him exercise, since he runs amuck every time the telephone rings.

Unfortunately, Mr. Freeman's screenplay is predictable when it shows any inner logic, and simply absurd when it doesn't.

Although Mr. Taylor is unremarkably immobile during the hectic doings, the cast does include some of Hollywood's best farceurs, among them John McGiver, Paul Lynde and Edward Andrews. The best of the lot, however, is a newcomer, Dom De Luise, as a portly, bird-brained spy.

In fact, the highlight of the film—if it really has any—is a crazy sequence in which Mr. De Luise and Miss Day, for reasons beyond explanation, find themselves each with a foot stuck in the same brass vase. Although it's not exactly inspirational, it's funny in a nice, low-comedy way.

Co-starred in the film, but seen only occasionally, is Arthur Godfrey, Miss Day's genial father who runs a glass-bottom boat around Catalina Island. It hasn't much to do with the plot, but it does provide the picture with a title as well as an excuse for some pretty Metro-color scenery.

The picture's nicest inspiration may be the line, heard early, which explains Miss Day's marital status. Her husband, it's reported, was lost in a diving bell off the Bahamas. Just what he was doing there is left to our speculation. Could he really have been trying to get away from Miss Day? It's almost too terrifying — too anti-American—to contemplate.

[melancholy]

Thank you so much Bryan for this,it is interesting to read.Eventhough it was turning towards the end of Doris's career,she did it,and I now understand more of the range of all her films.
Dorine

[Summersun]

Thank you webmaster, Bryan, for posting the reviews. I had never read them before. I found them quite harsh. I recently saw CAPRICE for the first time, and truthfully, I had prepared my eyes to see something bad. I was surprised, I actually enjoyed it. For what it was, a spy farce, it was good. Some scenes were ridiculously funny.
Christie

[melancholy]

Well,knowing all Doris's talent I thought there was this awful moment in the movie wheras she climbes down from the house.It is below her status.That awful wig and the sunglasses were not necessary to try to make a J.Bond-kind-a-like movie.It is not even classy as a movie,eventhough Doris looks classy.
Dorine

[Summersun]

I agree with you Dorine. Not a classy film, but it had it's moments. I particularly loved the comment about "the freckle remover".

[webmaster]

I read that Doris hated "Caprice" - and who can blame her - one critic said she looked like an ageing drag queen in it and I'm sure Doris must have been hurt by those kind of comments. Especially as it wasn't her fault. In her final film, "With Six You Get Eggrole" she looks beautiful in a very natural way playing a mature woman - without the make-up plastered on and clothes more suited to someone like Twiggy, as was the case in Caprice.

Here's another review from that era - of Love Me or Leave Me - to balance things out - as I said, she had good reviews for her good films, which were the majority.


Love Me or Leave Me (1955)

Screen: Story Ballad of Ruth Etting and The Gimp; Musical 'Love Me or Leave Me' Opens Doris Day and Cagney Play Lead Roles

By BOSLEY CROWTHER Published: May 27, 1955

IN the Thirties it was common knowledge along Broadway that the popular singer Ruth Etting was something of a brow-beaten slave of her husband an ex-Chicago mobster named Martin Snyder, better known as The Gimp. Miss Etting's friends finally helped her to get a divorce, after which The Gimp expressed his sentiments by dispatching a couple of bullets into the man who later married her.

Needless to say, the pretty details of this little show-world idyl found their way into any number of gangster movies. But real names were never used, and finally the story of Miss Etting and The Gimp went out of fashion and out of mind.

Now, in "Love Me or Leave Me," which came to the Music Hall yesterday, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is remembering this none-too-delectable affair. It is doing so, appropriately, with music. And, what's more, it is using real names. But, best of all for everybody, it has Doris Day to play the role of the blonde and bewitching. Miss Etting and it has James Cagney to play The Gimp.

We would say that the latter advantage is by far the most propitious to the film, for it is Mr. Cagney's verve and virtuosity that make the character sufferable. It is his skill at giving the hard-boiled "muscler" a certain vividness and gutter gallantry that make it possible not only to stand him but to like him a little bit for nigh two hours.

To be sure, Daniel Fuchs and Isobel Lennart have painted this lily a mite in writing a script that puts the story into a slightly romantic frame. They have made The Gimp a shakedown merchant who befriends a dance-hall girl whose ambition is as stubborn as her virtue. He apparently receives no quid pro quo until he has brought her up as a singer through night clubs to the "Ziegfeld Follies" and fame. Then, in a fit of passion, he—well, he marries her. This is all highly flattering to the honor and the patience of The Gimp.

The character of the singer is also dusted a bit for Miss Day. Her willingness to abandon a true lover for her ambition is neatly turned. And when it comes to singing at the opening of The Gimp's new night club even after he has plugged her true lover, all for old-time's sweet sake—well, that is just a wee bit sticky, as it is done for the climax of this film.

But one must admit that Mr. Cagney and Miss Day do their jobs extremely well and make an uncommonly interesting and dramatic couple for a musical film. The proof is that, when Mr. Cagney finally slaps Miss Day in the face, the audience reacts to the shameful violence with genuine and audible gasps. It's as real as when the old "Public Enemy" squashed a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face.

And, of course, it is hard to think of anyone better qualified to do the job of singing Miss Etting's old numbers than the lovely and lyrical Miss Day. All of ten or a dozen song numbers, only two of which are new, are neatly and nostalgically delivered. The most effective for our money is "Mean to Me," with "Ten Cents a Dance," "You Made Me Love You" and the title number next in line. Miss Day has the voice and the feeling to do justice to the sentiments in this film.

To say that the Metro production, in color and Cinema-Scope, is expensive and atmospheric of the era of night clubs and booze is simply acknowledging the dependable, and to say that Charles Vidor's directing is perceptive of the values in the story is to note what's expected of him.

Cameron Mitchell as Miss Etting's pianist, who is the stubborn young man she really loves; Robert Keith as an honorable agent, and Harry Bellaver as the flunky of The Gimp lend considerable personality and color to a stinging but entertaining film.

[TCMMovieFan]

Doris has been quoted (from the D. Kaufman book) that she refuses to discuss anything dealing with Caprice.
Also, I read that all those supposedly European locales were actually filmed in various sections of California.

[webmaster]

Also, I read that all those supposedly European locales were actually filmed in various sections of California.

Yes, Bill, (just like "Do Not Disturb") - it was pretty obvious that when Doris went to the French (?) Embassy that it wasn't her - especially if you knew she'd only been to Europe for "The Man Who Knew Too Much" up to that point - the same with "Midnight Lace", although 'England' was more believable in that than in "Do Not Disturb".

Despite all that, Doris' films have always made money - even more so now with DVDs - and the Box Office Gross for "Caprice" in USA cinemas alone was more than $4 million - if you add the money made around the world - with the UK loyally, as usual - turning out in droves for a Doris Day film - not to mention Japan! - that comes to a lot of money - and, no doubt, encouraged Marty Melcher to rush her into a lot of money-making projects.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1267

[Ania]

[ray]

Caprice has the makings of a cult classic! It's mod, odd and self parody is cool. Shows you are ahead of the hecklers. Wig and all it shows a woman on the verge of older age but not letting that freak her out. She can still get a younger man, look dazzaling in zany outfits and watch her own movie in the theatre not concerned of what lies ahead. Wish Ralph Mc knight was still with us. He liked Caprice in spite of the flaws. The only scarey thing about Caprice is that Doris would be gone from the silver screen forever in the next year 1968. Did Doris get trapped in the youth image? Wonder if Ray Walston looked pretty in drag when he dated Doris's father in the film Stay tuned for these pressing issues......