Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?

this movie was next to the very last movie that miss day made....it has been criticized as being a terrible movie....i disagree....this movie has some very funny moments, mostly because of miss day but the cast is not bad.....most of miss day`s movies around this time were being laughed off with doris being wrongfully accused of trying to hold on to her virginity which was groundless because really if they were to examine miss day`s films, she actually was married in most of her films including this movie " where were you when the lights went out?" so really all those tired jokes about her playing a virgin all the time were and are, erroneous...while this movie is not the best movie she ever made, she still gives it her all and it is indeed worth watching and so interesting to see miss day take a movie such as this and milk it into a pleasing comedy, which, is a tribute to her talent and professionalism...have a great day with doris day!!

Stagy adaptation of Claude Magnier's 1956 French play of the same name incorporates the New York City blackout of 1965 into a stagnant roundelay involving an actress, her husband, an agent plus a young embezzler. Dim comedy doesn't even utilize the central calamity for pointed jokes about life in the Big Apple, instead becoming a strained sitcom plunked down in suburbia. Doris Day never lets a bad script get the best of her; even under the most trying of circumstances, the star gives 100% and usually comes out unscathed. Spoofing her own goody-two-shoes image, Doris gets some laughs later in the picture when she's meant to be (comically) sedated; however, Day's male co-stars (Patrick O'Neal, Robert Morse and Terry-Thomas) are not well-suited to her, and neither is the shapeless hairdo she's sporting. For her part, Doris was quick to dismiss the film as "an alleged comedy", noting it was one of several pictures her husband-manager signed her to without her consent. *1/2 from ****

Although Where Were You When The Lights Went Out is based on a French sex farce I doubt the original play was anything like this film. Especially since there is no French equivalent for Doris Day, no such thing as a virgin, an all French version on their big screen.

I well remember the 1965 blackout on the East Coast, just settling down to dinner with my parents and everything electric went out. But we didn't have half the adventures this cast had.

Doris plays herself essentially, an actress with an All American virgin image locked into a long running play with neurotic director Terry-Thomas at the helm and married to Patrick O'Neal an architect. When the blackout strikes there's no evening performance and Doris returns home to find O'Neal with magazine writer Lola Albright who had been doing a feature interview with them before she left for the theater.

In the meantime a jealous Robert Morse being passed over for promotion by his boss Robert Emhardt's idiot son steals two million in cash, something he had been planning for a while. The blackout puts a real crimp into his getaway plan.

All the principle players manage to wind up at Doris and Pat's Connecticut home and the bedroom comedy begins.

It wasn't the Code that put a damper on this film, it was rather Doris Day and the studio's attempt to remain true to the virginal image that her public expected. This was one of those films toward the end of her career that her husband Marty Melcher put her in to recoup monies he had made bad investments with, her money.

Where Were You When The Lights Went Out has not worn well over the years. Doris was carrying a heavy load here.

Only the most ardent DORIS DAY fan could find this one even bearable to watch. When one thinks of the wealth of material available for a story about New York City's most famous blackout, a film that could have dealt with numerous real-life stories of what people had to cope with, this scrapes the bottom of the barrel for lack of story-telling originality.

Once again Doris is indignant because she suspects she may have been compromised on the night of the blackout when she returned to her Connecticut lodgings, took a sleeping potion and woke up in the morning with a man who had done the same, wandering into the house by mistake.

Nobody is able to salvage this mess--not Doris, not ROBERT MORSE, TERRY-THOMAS, PATRICK O'NEAL or LOLA ALBRIGHT. As directed by Hy Averback, it's the weakest vehicle Day found herself in, committed to do the film because of her husband's machinations and unable to get out of it. Too bad.

Doris Day and Patrick O'Neal are husband and wife in this permissive comedy based on a stage play with Terry-Thomas as a stinker, playing a Hungarian but apparently with received pronunciation.

A young man is passed over for promotion by the bosses stupid son so he hatches a plan to steal the companies dividends. When there is a black out in New York, he has difficulty escaping and ends up sleeping with Doris Day.

Its a jolly and pretty well made film and I'm don't really understand all the negative comments. Perhaps because it's a foreign script, or because it's not dripping in gee-schucks All-American schmaltz like the other Doris Day films ?

Product placements - Kodak, The New York Times and Pan- Am. The Kaiser Group (Checker) provided the vehicles, an S series Valiant breaking down.