COME SEPTEMBER (1961)

Wealthy American businessman Rock Hudson has a mistress (Gina Lollobrigida) in Italy with whom he spends every September. This year, however, he gets the urge to go visit in July. He calls Gina to let her know. Unbeknownst to Rock, Gina, tired of her arrangement with Rock, was about to marry a drab Brit (Ronald Howard), but his call revives old feelings so she cancels her wedding and heads off with Rock to his lush villa. But the caretaker of the house (Walter Slezak) is also in for a surprise: without telling Rock, he's been running the house as a small luxury hotel between October and August. Despite trying to hide the evidence (including a front desk and a plaque out front for the Hotel La Dolce Vista), Slezak can't hide the current guests, a group of sightseeing teenage girls and their adult chaperone. Rock blows up when he finds out, at least partly because, since he and Gina aren't married, they can't indulge in any romantic interludes while the guests are present. He tries to get them all to another hotel, but the chaperone falls and hurts herself and they must all stay put for a few more days. In the meantime, a group of somewhat obnoxious American teenage boys end up camping out on the villa's front lawn, and, well, boys and girls do get along--and cocky Bobby Darin and innocent Sandra Dee in particular get along well--so Rock tries his best to stop any canoodling between the groups. Eventually, Gina gets fed up with Rock's moral hypocrisy and decides to go back to her Brit, so Rock makes one last attempt to patch things up permanently.

If you just go with it, this is a cute and colorful romantic/sex comedy. Because coitus interruptus farce can get tired fast, I tried fighting it for a while. Logically, Rock and Gina should have just pretended to be married, but of course, then there'd be no conflict, or not as much conflict. The problem for me is that the plothole seemed so huge, I couldn't get past it. But I eventually quit fighting and enjoyed the light comedy skills of Hudson and Lollobrigida, who work well together, as well as Hudson and Doris Day. Walter Slezak does some nifty scene-stealing as the caretaker who keeps getting fired and rehired. Darin and Dee, who married in real life not long after filming, are so-so, but they pretty much remain secondary characters. A young Joel Gray is one of Darin's buddies. The location shooting in Italy is lovely, as is the villa. This was probably considered sophisticated in 1961 (the fact that Rock and Gina are sleeping together out of wedlock is a given and not punished). Now it's a little threadbare in plotting, but it's nice to see the lead actors have fun with the fizzy comedy. [TCM]