Please Don’t Eat the Daisies movie storyline. University drama professor Laurence Mackay and his wife Kate Mackay prefer the quiet of home life – however quiet theirs can be living in a New York City apartment with four rambunctious adolescent and/or infant sons and a sheepdog – than the high life often associated with the New York theater. That is why they plan to move to the country whenever they can find a suitable house.
Their lives have the potential to change when Larry becomes a theater critic for one of the big New York City newspapers, meaning that he, along with his six colleagues at the other big New York papers, control what stays and what goes on Broadway by their critiques. Things do not start off well for Larry in this new job when the first play he is to review is that of his and Kate’s best friend, Alfred North, who is the godfather to their children. Larry, who had always been seen as a fair man, hates the play, and gives it a bad review.
Kate begins to believe that Larry is changing because of his new job, seeming now to enjoy the socialite parties he used to abhor, and almost wanting to be able to write a bad review as they contain more quotable witticisms than good reviews and wield more power in terms of fear from producers. He also seems no longer to want to move to the country. They are, out of circumstances, forced to move regardless.
In their run down country home in Hooton, New York, Kate tries to carve out a new life for their family. But her participation in a local charity theater production for which she asks Alfred for a new play to mount threatens not only the Mackay’s friendship with Alfred, but the Mackay’s marriage altogether.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is a 1960 Metrocolor comedy film in CinemaScope starring Doris Day and David Niven,[3] made by Euterpe Inc., and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The movie was directed by Charles Walters and produced by Joe Pasternak, with Martin Melcher (Day’s husband) as associate producer.[3]
The screenplay, partly inspired by the 1957 book of the same name by Jean Kerr, a collection of humorous essays, was by Isobel Lennart. The film also features Janis Paige, Spring Byington, Richard Haydn, Patsy Kelly, and Jack Weston. Spring Byington made her final film appearance in this film, but appeared in TV shows later. A television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller premiered five years later and ran for 58 episodes.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)
Directed by: Charles Walters
Starring: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, Spring Byington, Patsy Kelly, Jack Weston, Margaret Lindsay, Carmen Phillips, Stanley Livingston, Mary Patton
Screenplay by: Isobel Lennart
Cinematography by: Robert J. Bronner
Film Editing by: John McSweeney Jr.
Costume Design by: Morton Haack
Set Decoration by: Henry Grace, Jerry Wunderlich
Art Direction by: George W. Davis, Hans Peters
Music by: David Rose
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: March 31, 1960
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