Doris Day’s Fixer-Upper in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies”

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on MAY 9, 2010

Any Doris Day fans out there? I’ve always loved her movies, and one of my favorites is the 1960 family comedy Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. A big reason I enjoy it so much is the sets.

First they have a great apartment in New York City, but their family of six outgrows it and they buy an old, broken-down, haunted-looking house in the suburbs. I think it’s fun watching them fix it up. With a little Movie Magic, it only takes about 3 weeks!

Watching the kids running wild in the apartment made me think of 9 by Design, the addictive new reality show on Bravo. Have you seen it? For a few months, the family of 9 was staying in a 2-bedroom apartment in NYC and the noise was driving their neighbors nuts.

In the movie, the older boys put their baby brother Adam on the windowsill and give him bags filled with water to drop on peoples’ heads as they walk by.

Jack Weston plays Joe, a cabbie who wants to be a playwright. He comes to the door, hoping to give Larry his play to read. Kate is in the bedroom, frantically trying to get ready for the evening, but when her sons answer the door, they invite Joe in, saying, “Mom’s not busy. She’s just getting dressed.”

In this shot we can see the front door to the left and the one to the kitchen on the right:

David Niven plays Doris Day’s husband Larry, an up-and-coming drama critic whose rise to fame is going to his head. I like Niven, but there were a lot of times during this movie when I seriously wanted to smack him.

Poor Baby Adam spends most of his time in this cage. I think it was supposed to be funny, but I found it a little disturbing. No wonder the only words he could say were “Cokey-Cola.”

Kate and Larry’s Apartment Bedroom:

The Apartment Kitchen:

I like this kitchen with the hutches displaying Kate’s dishes and the cheery red and white skirt on the sink.

Deborah Vaughn’s Apartment:

Richard Haydn plays Larry’s friend Alfred. Here he’s visiting the glam apartment of the lead actress in his play, Deborah Vaughn (Janis Paige). This has to be one of the biggest, pinkest bathrooms I’ve ever seen:

Moving to the Country:

The book was based on the true adventures of the Walter and Jean Kerr family.John Kerr, one of their sons, says that his parents had actually planned to look at a house that was for sale across the street. When they couldn’t get in to see it, they bought this one instead.

Everyone thought they were crazy, he says, but they didn’t care. They bought it anyway. And they lived there for the rest of their lives.

The camera slowly pans up so we can see the house they’re looking at:

I’m guessing it was just a matte painting. If anyone knows differently, fill us in!

The Entry Hall:

Walking through the house on moving day and surveying the amount of work that has to be done:

The Living Room as they find it on moving day, complete with suits of armor and spare tires:

Larry’s Study:

During the renovation, you can see they’re halfway through painting the woodwork:

Larry’s Study–Complete With Clown Painting:

In this shot of his study you can see the fireplace:

The Living Room After:

All the woodwork has been painted white, the furniture recovered, red drapes hung on the windows, and a big TV unit added to the corner:

Bedrooms:

A little trivia about the music:

The musical number Kate rehearses for the amateur show (“Any Way The Wind Blows”) had been written for the previous year’s Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk (1959). The song title was, for a while, even the working title of that film. (IMDb)

The Kitchen:

The Movie Was Based on a Bestselling Book by Jean Kerr

Playwright and humorist Jean Kerr was married to Walter Kerr, a well-known New York drama critic. Together they had six children—Christopher, twins Colin and John, Gilbert, Gregory, and Kitty.

Her story about city-dwellers with a big family moving to the suburbs and fixing up an old house was not only adapted for the big screen with Doris Day in 1960, but became a TV show in 1965.

I’m reading the book now and it’s hilarious. It’s out of print, but you can find old copies for sale in places like Amazon.com.

Jean Kerr’s Fixer-Upper in Larchmont, New York:

In 2003, Jean Kerr’s house was on the market and the Larchmont Gazette ran a story about the real house that the story was based on, announcing, “House For Sale: Seven bedroom Spanish-Tudor, six stone angels, three gargoyles, four copper wolf heads, five portholes, three lions, and 27 carillon bells.”

The asking price was $4.9 million.

The house was originally a carriage house for the mansion next door. In this photo of the living room, you can see that the style was similar to the sets in the movie. Not all of the woodwork was painted white in real life, however:

According to the article, “When the Kerrs moved in, they toned down some of the more flamboyant interior features and added spaces to accommodate a family of six active children.”

You can see the Gazette’s slideshow and read more about its history here. Life magazine photographed the house in 1958 with the boys having a snowball fight in front of it, and you can see it here.

Do you have a favorite Doris Day movie? One of mine has to be Pillow Talk (I featured it here).

I’m linking this “Movie Makeover” to Thrifty Decor Chick’s Before & After party.Head over there to see more!

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page to see the others I’ve featured, from Mr. Mom to North by Northwest.

You might also like:

The Money Pit: Tom Hanks & Shelley Long Buy a Fixer Upper

The “Sex and the City” Movie: Real Estate Heaven

The Original “Parent Trap:” Two Sisters, Two Houses

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The Money Pit: Tom Hanks & Shelley Long Buy a Fixer Upper

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on NOVEMBER 14, 2010

The 1986 comedy The Money Pit stars Tom Hanks and Shelley Long as a young couple that impulsively buys a grand Federal-style house that they think is a bargain. As you can probably guess from the title, it’s not. But they don’t figure that out until they move in and the house starts falling down around them–literally.

Here’s how the house looks when they drive up to see it for the first time:

Maureen Stapleton plays the homeowner-slash-con artist Estelle, who gives them a tour of the place and tells them that she has to sell right away. There’s no time to think about it–or to get an inspection or anything like that.

Estelle tells them she’s keeping the lights off because she can’t afford the electric bill. They later find out the wiring is faulty.

The upstairs bedroom:

They buy the big bed with the house. When Anna (Shelley Long) stretches out on the mattress on moving day, she slowly sinks through it…

The fireplace in the bedroom:

Walter checks out the powder room:

The kitchen–before the electrical fire destroys it:

It has an old stove and fridge that look original to the house:

Anna practices her violin in the parlor soon after moving in (before the renovation starts):

When she turns the water on in the master bathroom, a brown sludge oozes out:

Without running water, they’re reduced to filling the tub the old-fashioned way:

But after pouring only two buckets of water go into it, the entire tub falls through the floor and into the room below:

Walter says, “You hear about that guy up in the Bronx, went crazy, thought he was a pigeon? They found him in the park, throwing bread crumbs at himself. And he was only putting in a guest bathroom!”

The staircase fiasco starts with one loose floorboard that Walter innocently tries to fix.

Next thing he knows, the entire thing is falling apart.

A close-up of the front of the house with the old car that came with the house:

When Walter realizes he has locked himself out of the house, he knocks on the door…and the entire thing falls down:

The workers arrive, and they look like a pretty scary bunch, but they’re the only ones who would work for an amount of money Walter could afford.

Anna: “Who are they?”

Walter: “The plumbers.”

Anna: “Are you sure?”

Walter: “Not really, but I don’t care. I’m just thrilled to see somebody actually working!”

~

When Walter returns home from work at the end of the day, the workers are gone and this is what’s left of his house:

In the DVD Special Features, Director Richard Benjamin shows the model of the house that they used when planning stunts. This is the back of the house on the model:

And the back of the actual house:

Working on the entry hall:

And finally, it’s finished:

We get to see the new staircase. The entry hall. A peek into the parlor where Shelley Long is standing:

A peek inside the living room, where Tom Hanks is standing:

And that’s it. We don’t get to see how the kitchen, the bedroom, or the bathroom turned out. Nope. Just a quick view of the main rooms in front, and then it’s over. It makes me mad every time I watch it.

Does that drive anyone else nuts, too, or is it just me? In fact, I found it so irritating that we don’t get to see how all of the rooms turned out, that for a long time I refused to do a post about this movie at all. So many of you requested it, though, that you eventually wore me down. Ha.

The movie ends with Walter and Anna getting married in front of their finally-finished dream house:

The “after” of the house looks identical to the “before” shot at the beginning of the movie. The only change I can see is that window boxes have been added:

Here’s how the house looks today. More windows have been added so that there are three over three on each side of the front door (thanks to Garrison for these photos from the listing!):

I read that it was built in 1898 . . . and that it was built in 1906. Not sure which is correct, but let’s say it was built sometime between the two. It’s known as “Northway House.”

It was on the market last year for $7.9 million. In the movie, Walter and Anna get the house for a steal–$200,000. Here’s a photo of the real staircase, which was shown in the listing:

The Money Pit was a (loose) remake of the Cary Grant-Myrna Loy classic Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, one of my all-time favorites (you can see that house here).

Have you seen both movies? Which is your favorite?

P.S. Coming up on the next Movie Monday: a look at the gorgeous Craftsman from “Zathura.”

Click Here to See More Famous Houses from the Movies!

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Sam’s Houseboat in “Sleepless in Seattle”

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Doris Day’s Fixer-Upper in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies”

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