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. 

     

Cementimental Journey

In a recent post about Joan Rivers, I digressed just a bit to harp on celebrity endorsements, the idea that we should all run out and buy a product simply because a famous person is paid X amount of dollars to tell us we should buy a product. Well, what follows may very well be the most ridiculous celebrity endorsement of all time: 

Now, I happen to think Doris Day is a very talented individual whose girl-next-door image is occasionally and unfairly held against her in these porn-star-with-silicone-breasts-online times. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should really get past With Six You Get Eggroll already and give her a Lifetime Achievement Oscar before she dies. Day was a fine comic actress and a very good singer, though her lushly orchestrated songs of the 1940s and '50s might sound a bit jarring when contrasted to the more lustily synthesized dance tracks of today. Still, if Lady Gaga can put out an album with Tony Bennett, can't Day maybe do a duet with Usher? Que se-owowowo se-owowowo.

OK, I've established to my satisfaction if not necessarily yours that Day is talented, but does that talent really extend to highway construction? When I first saw the above ad and then blew it up as large as possible to read the small print, I actually wondered if it wasn't a Mad magazine parody or something by Bruce McCall. But, no, as far as I can tell, it's a real ad that appeared in the August 1949 issue of Asphalt and Macadam Monthly. Judging by that magazine's title, it's apparently possible to come up with something novel to say about asphalt and macadam 12 times a year. I suppose it's also possible that state and municipalities all over the country purchased International Harvester Series 56 Diesel Road Rollers for their road crews 65 years ago based solely on Doris Day's say-so.

Still, it's not a good idea to a pave a highway in the hot sun. I hear it can give you freckles.