When moms everywhere think of Rock Hudson, they tend to think of this phase of his career- his sex farce romantic comedies, primarily with the ineffably funny Doris Day. Hudson's career hit some box office and critical slumps when Universal made him put on his big boy dramatic lead pants, but by leaning into his comedic instincts and (trend alert) pairing Hudson with the right female counterpart, his career was renewed in the early 60s thanks to a string of box office hits, beginning with one of Hudson's biggest hits, Pillow Talk (dir. Michael Gordon, 1959). Hudson plays a playboy songwriter stringing along a sequence of women and Day plays his neighbor, an interior decorator who shares a party line with him (we had to look that up too). What follows is a farce of hidden identity, sex, and plenty of gay jokes. While it's easy to look back on these films as subversive for casting a gay actor in these Lothario roles in movies that lay on the gay subtext, that really may not have been their intent! Join Jake and Kevin this week as we gaze respectfully at Hudson in Pillow Talk and five other rom-coms of this phase of his career: Come September (1961), Lover Come Back (1961), Send Me No Flowers (1964), Strange Bedfellows (1965), and A Very Special Favor (1965). How did these movies find so much critical success? Have studios always recreated successful stories to crank out box office hits with little to no substance or cultural staying power? How many layers of deception are too many for one comedy? This and more on this week's Cinema Very Gay!