DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING

US, 1966, 94 minutes, Colour.
Sandra Dee, George Hamilton, Celeste Holm, Bill Bixby, Dwayne Hickman, Dick Kallman, Mort Sahl, Allen Jenkins.
Directed by Peter Tewkesbury.

Doctor, You’ve Got to be Kidding is a lightweight comedy with the songs from the mid-1960s, the kind of fluffy film for a teenage audience in the vein of Where The Boys Are, Looking for Love…

It is a star vehicle for Sandra Dee, in her mid-20s but having been on screen for almost a decade, appearing in some substantial films as well as being Gidget and Tammy. She became very popular in such films as A Summer Place, and was married to Bobby Darrin for some years. Ironically, for the plot of this film, she had a very determined and show business mother who wanted her daughter to succeed.

The film is also a vehicle for George Hamilton, appearing as a businessman with a very high IQ, photographic memory, attention span on several issues at once or, as Sandra Dee refers to him, a stuffed shirt.

The screenplay of the film reflects the change in moral attitudes at the period. The film opens with a pregnant Sandra Dee going to the hospital accompanied by three potential fathers (a theme later used in Mamma Mia). The film goes into flashback, Heather as a little girl, being forced to sing for agents by her elevator-driving mother, Celeste Holm, and then finally growing up and still being forced, against her will, to a musical career.

However, she goes to College (four wasted years according to her mother) and gets a job as a secretary, very efficient, to George Hamilton. She asks his opinion about her voice and after listening to two or three words, he condemns it. Which makes her more determined, her mother getting a loan for $5000 to pay for lessons, clothes, and organises her into a club. But she fails to turn up because she has fallen in love with the boss and spends the night with him – leading to the pregnancy.

The film spends a lot of time on her three suitors, Hank (Dwayne Hickman), a shoe salesman and would-be actor who specialises in death scenes, Dick Kallman as her singing teacher and Bill Bixby (before The Incredible Hulk) as the next door neighbour.

Celeste Holm, an Oscar for the Best Supporting Actress in Gentleman’s Agreement in 1947, often a wise-cracking associate, in High Society, 1957, enjoys herself as the archetypal show business and pressurising mother. But the best and funny lines come from comedian, Mort Sahl, as the owner of the club who dislikes modern music and is not afraid to express himself, quite sardonically, about the contemporary trends.

While Heather begins the film as a Sandra Dee type, she has some moments of rebellion as well as moving into 1960s costumes and singing and dancing (and gyrating) style – which looks like an imitation of Ann- Margret in her films of that period.

Absolute fluff, popular in its time, probably seeming dated to younger audiences, but an indication of this kind of film in the 1960s.