In Memoriam: Doris Day 1922-2019

 

Doris Day got her start as vocalist during the Big Band Era. One of those big bands she performed vocal duties for was the popular Les Brown and his Orchestra, which in the waning months of World War II led to the hit single "Sentimental Journey". Several more hits followed, and Doris got the call from Hollywood. She had no acting experience but could sing and was good-looking so what difference did it make? It made quite a bit of difference once it became clear that she took to acting as naturally as she took to singing, eventually securing her fame. She occasionally appeared in dramas (1950's highly acclaimed Young Man with a Horn, and Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much) but was unsurprisingly usually cast in musicals, 16 altogether. It's not necessarily her best musical but my personal favorite is 1953's Calamity Jane, in which she played the genderbending Wild West legend. But that was an atypical role for her. She usually played girl-next-door types, and that in itself is a testament to her skills as an actress. If off-screen she had a rather messy personal life--she was married four times--onscreen she epitomized for a lot of folks in the 1950s what they assumed a girl next door must be like: uncomplicated, wholesome, virginal.

By 1959, the movie musical had pretty much run its course. If Doris was to remain a star of the silver screen, she would have to find some other film genre. And boy, oh, boy, did she: the sex comedy.

Now, though you might have expected otherwise, this didn't involve a change of image for Doris. She didn't suddenly start playing sluts. Au contraire! I don't know who came up with the idea. It may have been her manager, a studio head, maybe even Doris herself, but it occurred to somebody that the more closely-guarded the virginity, the funnier the virgin. Starting with Pillow Talk in '59, and continuing through to 1968's Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (where the whole concept basically gets sent up), about 10 films in all, Doris comically defends her virtue against the likes of such sex-crazed Lotharios as James Garner, Cary Grant, Rod Taylor, and, most famously, Rock Hudson, as they, without much luck until the final scene of the final reel, try to convince her that she can be just as wholesome with her clothes off as with her clothes on. Not that you actually ever see her with her clothes off. The movie censor's days may have been numbered at that point, but that person still had the power to make sure the picture faded to black before any wardrobe was discarded. I also should point out that Doris didn't always play a virgin in these films. In a few of them she was a married woman whose husband was simply trying to reconcile with her after some misunderstanding, but the effect was just the same. After all, such a reconciliation isn't going to take place on the front lawn for all the neighbors to see.

These sex comedies don't always hold up. That an unmarried, 30-something career woman was really an old maid in utero is a notion that died from exhaustion about the time Mary Richards arrived in Minneapolis and Gloria Steinem tried on her first miniskirt. And even if Doris did finally fall in love with them by the time the final credits rolled, the behavior, the tactics, of her leading men often bordered on what we would today call sexual harassment. Yet, if you can get by all that, the movies are still worth seeing for Doris herself. She was a superb comic actress who just never starred in a superb comedy. Though she could have starred in a superb comedy. She was Mike Nichols first choice to play Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, but turned it down. When it came to deflowering virgins, Doris Day preferred to be on the receiving end.