The year was 1968. Cinema was changing, and it was changing fast. While Easy Rider was just around the corner and the gritty, sweat-soaked realism of the New Hollywood movement was starting to bubble under the surface, a legendary blonde icon was trying to navigate a power failure. Honestly, if you look back at Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out, you aren't just looking at a movie. You’re looking at a time capsule of a Hollywood transition that felt more like a collision.
It’s a weird one.
The film, directed by Hy Averback, was inspired by the real-life Great Northeast Blackout of 1965. You remember that—or at least you’ve heard the stories. New York City plunged into total darkness. Millions of people were stranded in subways, elevators, and bars. Naturally, Hollywood saw a comedy opportunity. But for Doris Day, this project was a pivot point. It was her penultimate film. By the time the credits rolled on this screwball comedy, the era of the "Pillow Talk" queen was effectively flickering out, much like the lights in the script.
Why Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out feels so different today
Most people think of Doris Day and immediately picture Rock Hudson. They think of split-screens, pastel-colored pajamas, and chaste romances that somehow felt both innocent and incredibly suggestive. By 1968, that formula was tired. The audience was younger, angrier, and more interested in Vietnam and civil rights than in a theater actress finding out her husband is a philanderer during a power outage.
In Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out, Day plays Margaret Garrison. She’s a Broadway star (very meta) known as "The Virgin Queen" of the stage. The plot is a classic comedy of errors. Margaret finds her husband, Peter (played by Patrick O'Neal), in a compromising position—or so she thinks—and flees to her Connecticut cottage in a huff. Then, the blackout hits.
Enter Robert Morse.
Morse plays Waldo Zane, a corporate embezzler on the run who stumbles into Margaret’s cottage. Because it’s a 1960s farce, they accidentally ingest sleeping pills. They wake up in the same bed with no memory of the night before.
It sounds like standard Doris Day fare, right? Except the tone is just... off. It's a bit more cynical. It’s a bit more frantic. Critics at the time, like those at The New York Times, weren't exactly kind. They saw it as a relic. But if you watch it now, there's a fascinating desperation to the performance. Day is as professional as ever, but you can see the industry shifting beneath her feet.
🔗 Read more: Blink-182 Mark Hoppus: What Most People Get Wrong About His 2026 Comeback
The 1965 Blackout: Reality vs. Hollywood Farce
To understand the movie, you have to understand the event that sparked it. On November 9, 1965, a single tripped relay at a power station in Ontario triggered a domino effect. Within minutes, 30 million people across 80,000 square miles were in the dark.
The movie plays this for laughs. It uses the blackout as a narrative "get out of jail free" card. In the dark, social norms break down. You can hide things. You can misidentify people. You can accidentally sleep next to a stranger.
Interestingly, the film actually deviates from the popular myth of the blackout. For years, people claimed there was a massive "baby boom" nine months after the 1965 blackout. Statistically, that was debunked by demographers like J. Richard Udry. People didn't go out and make babies; they mostly sat around listening to transistor radios and waiting for the lights to come back on. Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out leans into the myth anyway. It prefers the chaos.
The cast that tried to save the party
Robert Morse was a huge deal back then. Fresh off How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, he brought a manic, rubber-faced energy to the film.
- Doris Day: Playing the "Virgin Queen" archetype she was trying to escape.
- Robert Morse: The embezzler with a conscience (sort of).
- Terry-Thomas: The quintessential British cad. If you needed a guy to look sleazy in a tuxedo, you called Terry-Thomas.
- Patrick O'Neal: The husband who probably should have been more likable for the plot to work.
The chemistry between Morse and Day is actually quite sweet, but it’s a mismatch. Morse is acting in a 1960s satire; Day is acting in a 1950s romance. That friction is exactly why the movie is so interesting to film historians today. It’s a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be because Hollywood didn't know what it wanted to be in 1968.
The Production Woes and the "Virgin" Label
By the time Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out was in production, Day was frustrated. She was tired of the "World's Oldest Virgin" jokes. In her autobiography, Doris Day: Her Own Story, she made it clear that she hated that image. She was a woman who had been married three times and had a son; the public’s insistence on her purity was a cage.
The movie leans into this meta-commentary. By making her character a Broadway star famous for playing a virgin, the writers were poking fun at Day herself.
💡 You might also like: Why Grand Funk’s Bad Time is Secretly the Best Pop Song of the 1970s
It’s a bit meta. A bit cruel.
The filming wasn't a walk in the park either. This was the period where Day's husband and manager, Martin Melcher, was making decisions that would eventually leave her in deep financial trouble. He pushed her into projects she wasn't passionate about. He even signed her up for a television series (The Doris Day Show) without her knowledge—something she only discovered after he died.
You can almost feel that external pressure in her performance here. She’s luminous, as always—the camera loved her—but there’s a hardness around the edges that wasn't there in Calamity Jane or The Man Who Knew Too Much.
How the movie fits into the Doris Day Filmography
If you’re doing a Doris Day marathon, you usually start with the early musicals. You move to the Hitchcock thrillers. You hit the peak of the Hudson-Day-Randall trilogy.
Then you get to the late 60s.
This film sits right next to With Six You Get Eggroll. These are the "transitional" films. They have higher production values in some ways, but less soul. They feel like the studio was trying to figure out how to keep a middle-aged woman relevant in the era of "free love."
The irony? Doris Day was a rebel in her own right. She was a vegetarian and an animal rights activist way before it was cool. She was a powerhouse who ran her own career until Melcher took the reins. But in Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out, she’s forced back into a box of slapstick and misunderstandings.
📖 Related: Why La Mera Mera Radio is Actually Dominating Local Airwaves Right Now
Critical Reception: A Swing and a Miss?
When it hit theaters, the reviews were... lukewarm. Variety noted that the film had "intermittent laughs" but felt dated.
That’s the recurring theme. Dated.
The film grossed about $6 million at the box office. Not a disaster, but not the blockbuster the studio wanted. People were going to see The Graduate. They didn't want to see Doris Day and Robert Morse in a cottage.
But here is where the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) comes in. If you actually look at the cinematography by Leon Shamroy, it’s gorgeous. Shamroy was a legend (he shot Cleopatra and The King and I). He used lighting—or the lack thereof—to create a mood that was actually quite sophisticated for a broad comedy. The way the shadows play in the Connecticut cottage is genuinely top-tier work.
The Actionable Insight for Film Buffs
If you want to truly appreciate this movie, don't watch it as a standalone comedy. Watch it as a historical document.
- Look for the Meta-Humor: Pay attention to how the characters talk about Margaret's "image." It’s a direct reflection of how the press treated Day in 1968.
- Analyze the Gender Dynamics: This film was made right as the feminist movement was gaining steam. The way Margaret is "punished" for leaving her husband—and the way the plot revolves around her presumed "loss of virtue" while unconscious—is a fascinating (and problematic) look at 60s morality.
- Appreciate the Craft: Ignore the script for a second and look at the blocking. Averback was a veteran of TV (he directed episodes of MASH*), and he knew how to move actors through a tight space.
Doris Day Where Were You When the Lights Went Out marks the end of a specific type of Hollywood glamour. Shortly after this, Day moved to television, and the big-screen musical-comedy star became a rare breed.
To get the most out of your viewing, compare this film with Pillow Talk. Notice the difference in Day’s voice—it’s lower, more mature. Notice the sets. In the 50s, the sets looked like dreams. In 1968, they looked like real houses. The fantasy was ending.
If you're looking for where to watch it, it often rotates through Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or is available for digital rental. It’s worth the 90 minutes, if only to see a legend give it her all while the world changed outside her window.
To dive deeper into this era of cinema, your best bet is to pick up a copy of Doris Day: Her Own Story by A.E. Hotchner. It provides the necessary context for what was happening behind the scenes during the filming of her final movies, specifically the financial and personal turmoil that the bright, "sunny" Doris Day was hiding from her fans. Understanding the woman helps you understand the work, especially a misunderstood piece like this one.