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April 3, 1924 – She is a favorite at my house. All of us, my husband, the terriers, & I… we all think that Doris Day has been shamefully shrugged off as a star & a singer.
One of Hollywood’s most versatile & talented performers ever, Day moves easily between comedy, drama, musicals & suspense, working with master director Alfred Hitchcock on The Man Who Knew Too Much, featuring that song that would be her trademark, Que Sera, Sera.
She is very pretty & with a terrific figure, plus a warm, confident singing voice as good as Judy Garland, yet without that self-pitying vibrato.
Unlucky in marriage, when she was 17 years old Day married a trombone-player, who beat her, & demanded that she have an abortion. She left that marriage, but kept the baby, her only child, a son. Next, she married another big band musician. She had a big hit record, Sentimental Journey, with Les Brown, & that led to a contract with Warner Bros. The studio changed her name to Doris Day. That Husband begrudged her success, & split, leaving her nothing but his Christian Science faith.
In the late 1940s & early 1950s, Warner Bros. paired her with rather bland leading men in films with bolstering titles: My Dream Is Yours (1948), I’ll See You In My Dreams (1951), Lucky Me (1954). These interchangeable, uncomplicated musicals always featured a friendship that eventually blossomed into love. She sang the songs with talent & verve, & she held her own with Gordon McCrae, Dennis Morgan, or Jack Carson. There were tougher films also: Young Man With A Horn (1950), where she was the long-suffering girlfriend of jazz trumpeter Kirk Douglas, & Storm Warning (1951), where her husband turns out to be a member of the KKK. In life & in the movies, Day excelled at being the sweetheart with the jerk of a husband.
Day was hugely popular at the box office, but her material was old-fashioned, even for the era. Warner Bros. knew a good thing & started to find better projects for Day. She did 3 films that used her considerable talents to best advantage. Calamity Jane (1953) is a musical about Wild Bill Hickock & his tomboy sidekick, with the song Secret Love, a huge hit record & the basis of her status as a Gay Icon. Young At Heart (1954) is a noir with songs where she marries a menacing, failed songwriter, played by Frank Sinatra. Day & Sinatra had true chemistry. In Love Me Or Leave Me (1955), Day plays the real life torch singer Ruth Etting, whose husband-manager, played by James Cagney, treats her like dirt & knocks her around. Cagney & Day really click, & they worked well together. This is one of her very best films, with a sexy Day singing Ten Cents A Dance & I’ll Never Stop Loving You, while trading wisecracks & slaps with Cagney.
The 1950s were all about the blondes: Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, & Day blazed even brighter. She perfected the role of the smart career women who acts all coy to get ahead in a series of breezy comedies: Teacher’s Pet (1958), Pillow Talk (1959), & That Touch Of Mink (1962). She played opposite the biggest male stars: Clark Gable, Cary Grant & Rock Hudson. The films were hugely successful.
In 1968, Day’s third husband & manager- Marty Melcher dropped dead. Everyone said “I told you so” when it was revealed that he had spent or embezzled $20 million of her own money. Day never faltered. She did the TV series, The Doris Day Show, that Melcher had signed her to without her knowledge, & then she sued Melcher’s lawyers for the money.
Then, seemingly all at once, she was gone. But, Day did become a Gay Icon. Secret Love became an anthem in gay bars. I must note that in her last films she had played opposite Cary Grant & Rock Hudson. She spoke out in support of Hudson when he became the first big celebrity known to have AIDS.
She wrote a rather good memoir, Doris Day: Her Own Story (1976), John Updike penned the introduction admitting affection without ever having met her. When she gave a rare interview, Day has refused to discuss her films. She claims that they were all dreadful. She had a fourth marriage that lasted a short time when her husband claimed that she loved the dogs more than him.
When I listen to her recordings or catch her films on TCM, I am left to wonder why Day is so cool & unreachable in her later life.
I love Doris Day so much & even more because of her devoted work in defense of animals through her Doris Day Animal Foundation.
Doris turns an astonishing 91 years old today (according to some records, no one knows for sure).
The post #BornThisDay: Doris Day appeared first on World of Wonder.
Luis Camacho
Bill Coleman
