THAT TOUCH OF MINK was the most popular comedy of 1962, and the 4th biggest box office hit overall. Other than the drawing power of stars Cary Grant and Doris Day, it’s hard to see why. Mystifying Oscar nominations went to the Screenplay, Art Direction and Sound, and grosses racked $24,300,000. Resolutely forced, the carbon-dated material registers just a few strained smiles. The stale, wink-wink script by Stanley Shapiro (Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back) and Nate Monaster (The Sad Sack, Call Me Bwana) is dead on arrival, Delbert Mann’s once intuitive direction (Marty, The Bachelor Party, The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs) is pancake flat, the stars pose thru 99 minutes with little conviction and zip chemistry.

Manhattan. Rich business exec and field-player ‘Philip Shayne’ (Grant) meets jobless ‘Cathy Timberlake’ (Day), hoping to apologize after his Rolls accidentally splashes her dress while she’s walking from the unemployment office. They immediately spark, then he does a ‘sweep off the feet’ number by whisking her away in his private jet to Bermuda. Nervous over the implicit tryst, Cathy breaks out in a rash, nixing his seduction setup. Later, with the connivance of his finance manager (Gig Young) and her room-mate (Audrey Meadows), Cathy stages a mock rendezvous with another guy to make Philip jealous enough to drop his bed conquest pattern and settle for matrimony.

The will-they-ever-do-it tease is strained; the stars go thru the motions professionally but the frothy sparkle that Day shared three times with Rock Hudson and twice with James Garner is missing in her one-off with Grant (their working relationship was cordial but distant) and with him 57 and her 39 (and nine failed marriages between them) they’re a mite past the blushing stage. Young goes for neutering booze laffs and Meadows grates more than tickles in the sort of wisegal part often done so well by Eve Arden or Thelma Ritter.

Vainly trying to light soggy straw are Alan Hewitt, John Astin (wasted), Dick Sargent, Joey Faye, John Fiedler, Richard Deacon and Laurie Mitchell. Add a fortheheckuvit scene at Yankee Stadium that gives anvil cameos to Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Are pro baseball players worse than football icons at speaking simple lines? Did Mickey make a pass at Doris? For legends sake, let’s hope so.