This light romantic comedy is set during the November 9th power outage of 1965 that darkened New York and much of the East Coast. Margaret (
Doris Day) is a theater actress who storms out on her architect husband, Peter (
Patrick O'Neal), when a pretty female reporter spends too much time interviewing him for Margaret's liking. Later, Waldo Zane (
Robert Morse), an embezzling business executive, has car trouble while fleeing his company. Margaret's house is nearby, so he sneaks in, and, after taking a drink of her elixir, he falls asleep beside her by mistake. Naturally, her husband soon appears, and comedy ensues in cases of mistaken identity and scheduling mix-ups. Columnist Earl Wilson makes a cameo appearance as does director
Hy Averback.
Steve Allen plays the radio announcer,
Jim Backus a car dealer, and
Pat Paulsen deadpans his usual facade in his role as a train conductor. Though this romantic comedy came out a couple years after the infamous New York City-wide blackout, it is based on French playwright Claude Magnier's production Monsieur Masure, which was written in the '50s. The actual power failure resulted in a population explosion exactly nine months later, and over double the average number of kids started school in 1971 as a direct result of the darkness. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide