Title: Lover Come Back
Year: 1961
Director: Delbert Mann (Marty)
Writers: Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning
Stars: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall, Edie Adams

The Story: She’s a go-getter ad exec who believes in impressing the client with quality. He’s a Don Draper-ish lothario who gets accounts by getting the client laid. When she finally decides to beat him at his own game, he lets her play right into his hands, but she’s determined to prove him wrong in the end.

Why It’s Great: Both “Mad Men” and Down With Love (which spoofed this series of movies) seem to assume that only now can look back with appropriate horror at the corporate culture and neanderthal male shananigans in the early ’60s, so it’s shocking to see a downright nasty satire like this hitting all the same targets while everything was still going on. When Hudson has to mollify a showgirl, he casts her in a fake ad campaign for a non-existent product called Vip, but then the ad campaign gets released accidentally… The ads don’t say what it is, only that it’ll solve all problems. The public is sold on it right away. “This will be the most convincing demonstration of the power of advertising ever conceived, you have sold a product that doesn’t exist!” At the time, this was outrageous satire, today it’s everyday reality. Steve Jobs based his whole career on this movie.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…