I had originally intended to tackle the work of Doris Day in an Unboxed entry. You know, going through the various box sets collecting some of the best-known and little-seen films revolving around a genre, subject matter, or film star. But here is the funny thing, Day’s film work, 39 films between 1948 and 1968, is easily available in some massive collections. So, we are going to do a deep dive into the film work of Doris Day. (Sorry folks, I will not be talking about her work in television in any meaningful way other than to acknowledge that is where she spent the remainder of her show biz career.)
You think you know Doris Day, America’s virgin-next-door? Well, you would be surprised not only at her range as an actress but the glimmer of grit and steel beneath that scrubbed fresh exterior. She made bedroom comedies and stylized romances look easy, but one look at the various attempts to recreate that tone and performance style shows the amount of hard work it took to pull it off. Am I about to defend Doris Day as an actress beyond the squeaky clean, wholesome persona that ultimately boxed her in? You are goddamn right I am.
Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff dreamed of becoming a dancer until a car accident in 1937 curtailed that opportunity. While recovering, she started singing along to the radio and discovered a heretofore unknown talent. Her mother heard her one day and immediately signed her up for lessons. What followed was like something out of one her movies: big time jazz musician (Barney Rapp) heard her on the local radio and offers her a job. Said musician rechristens the plucky songbird with a memorable stage name, and a star was born.
She scored her first big hit with “Sentimental Journey,” something of an anthem for returning troops during World War II, appeared on Bob Hope’s radio show, and scored further hit singles with the likes of “My Dreams Are Getting Bigger All the Time.” It was inevitable that Hollywood would come courting as the post-war years were a boom time for musicals, and Day was wholesomely attractive and a talented vocalist. The universe seemed prime to launch her into the stratosphere.
It was ultimately her performance of “Embraceable You” that garnered attention from Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. Impressed with her take on the popular standard, they recommended her to Michael Curtiz and Warner Brothers for Romance on the High Seas. Years later Curtiz would claim that she was the proudest discovery of his career. Shocked to be offered a movie role with no acting experience, Curtiz allegedly told her that he liked her honesty and her All-American appearance. (To be specific, he supposedly said: “This is it. This is the most everything dame I have ever seen.”) And it is here that we begin our discussion of Doris Day, movie star.
1948’s Romance on the High Seas finds Day emerging on the screen as a fully formed persona. All the ingredients of her better-known future classics are right there – she’s a working girl with a steel core and sunny exterior, she sings and dances, engages in some romance and comedy, possess a scrubbed fresh “can do” optimism that feels endemic to American culture post-World War II. The plot of the whole thing is a convoluted mess that features mistaken identities and musical numbers in equal measure.
Don DeFore and Janis Page play a married couple convinced that the other is cheating. What do they do instead of just talk out their issues? Well, she hires a lounge singer (Day) to pretend to be her while she stays home to catch her husband in the act while he hires a private eye (Jack Carson) to follow her on the cruise. The plot is overwrought but also a perfectly serviceable excuse to get the characters into oddball scenarios and Day to sing. What more do you really need than an excuse for the plot to get from point A to B and a number or two along the way in a musical comedy?
Day is not quite ‘there’ as an actress, but she does possess a naturalism in front of the camera that serves her well. Some of her line readings in the earliest scenes are a little clunky, but Curtiz was right to tell her “If you learn how to act, you’ll ruin everything.” Still her musical gifts demonstrate themselves in scenes where she puts on an upper-class accent that recalls the likes of Verna Felton’s society ladies. She also looks positively lovely in her series of sophisticated gowns and smart casual attire.
The press dubbed her an instant charmer and a screen personality to watch. Of course, after this there would a series of films released in quick succession throughout the 50s that did not ask for much deviation from the form or stretch her abilities as an actress. Day would soon come to symbolize a kind of All-American, milk drinking, virginal girl-next-door. In fact, her co-star in this, Oscar Levant, would eventually go on to wittily proclaim, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin!”
You want to know what a meteoric rise looks like? Look no
further than the billing in My Dream Is Yours, Day’s second film. She
went from fourth to second in the span of a year. Sure, the plot is barebones,
but it is a solid excuse to get that creamy voice of hers wrapped around a
variety of songs, Eve Arden to deliver acidic zingers, and Jack Carson doing
his comedic scheming. That is more than enough entertainment value for a puffy,
featherlight musical comedy.
My Dream Is Yours features more than a little autobiography. While she was off in Hollywood trying to see where this film career would go, Day left her son with her mother. Once the career took off, Day paid for the two of them to move out west and setup roots for her family. These flashes of hard scrabble determination are what help anchor these lightweight comedies as something worth investing in. Day’s goodbye and reunion with her son are filled with a depth of emotion that the rest of the film cannot reach by virtue of being on the happy-smiley end of the spectrum, but they add an oomph and texture.
The plot concerns Carson as the dumped manager of a popular singer (Lee Bowman) determined to find a new singing sensation to replace him on a coveted radio spot. Enter Day’s jukebox factory worker with a young son and modest dreams of success. Carson goes about trying to make her a star, Arden is on deck as a sour foil, and love triangles abound. There is also an animated dream sequence involving Bugs Bunny, Tweetie, Day and Carson (dressed as rabbits) performing “Freddie, Get Ready.” Sure, it does not match the artistry of Anchors Aweigh, but it’s still an adorable interlude told from the perspective of the young son, Freddie (Duncan Richardson).
It’s a Great Feeling is a forgettable piece of fluff. A cutesy behind-the-scenes glimpse at the process of making movies with Carson and Dennis Morgan playing fictionalized versions of themselves with Day as a commissary waitress with dreams of movie stardom. The whole thing asks Day to lean a little too hard into kewpie doll shtick, like an unfunny reoccurring bit where she flutters her eyelashes while an annoying chirp plays in the background. The only memorable bit, involving Day anyway, is where they have her pretend to be a French star making her grand entrance into American movies. The cameo bits from the likes of Joan Crawford, Edward G. Robinson, Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Eleanor Parker, Raoul Walsh, and Michael Curtiz are much better, but they are not one of the top billed stars.
Young Man with a Horn is a cautionary tale about a horn player (Kirk Douglas) who in his pursuit of greatness gets waylaid by addiction, a bad girl (Lauren Bacall), and depression. Day is very much a supporting player in this, her first straight dramatic role. She is also overshadowed by the likes of Bacall and Douglas. Not only because Day is sacked with the “good girl” role, but because Douglas and Bacall just get more to do – they emotionally manipulate each other, they drink too much, she’s a lesbian, and he's a hothead. The three of them are absolutely playing to their types and strengths, but the script is feeble, too moralizing to mark it as a classic in any of their bodies of work. But the smoky atmosphere and great music make it something worth watching for the curious.
The second of her three 1950 films, Tea for Two is a reworking of No, No, Nanette. Tea for Two is also the first of several markers for Day’s career: her first star billing, her first film with Gordon McRae, and the first time we watch her dance on film. The whole thing is serviceable enough entertainment and nothing more. It bares little resemblance to its Broadway origins, as it was common practice at the time to essentially take a well-known property and excavate it for parts and is more often an excuse to watch Day be perky, S. Z. Sakall be cuddly, Eve Arden be spiky, and McRae be handsome and sing. As that it excels swimmingly, but Day is an awkward fit for a socialite. She projects a hard-working chorine more than a member of polite society, and her character is far more believable as someone who dreams of performing on Broadway than the indulged monied debutante. She is more akin to a Ginger Rogers or Lucille Ball than she was an angular sophisticate like Lauren Bacall or an untouchable glamourpuss like Grace Kelly.
The West Point Story features Day in a supporting role, and it is certainly not the third-billed one. She plays a major star who helps James Cagney’s Broadway choreographer beef up a West Point show. Of course, she winds up falling for Gordon McRae as a cadet with a glorious singing voice. The whole thing is a bit of a whiff, as quick to leave the memory as a leaf blowing in the wind, but it is nice to see Cagney and Day have fun with each other. The film just needed more of that.
Day kicked off 1951 with Storm Warning, a noirish thriller about Ginger Rogers taking on the KKK. The script is an absolute mess and Day’s part is thankless, clearly the studio powers trying her out in a straight dramatic role with no singing in a smaller supporting role and seeing how the public responds. That lessens the pressure on Day to carry the film, which Rogers does decisively, but it also leaves her with a role that boils down to “concerned sister/imperiled wife” and nothing more. (It is also deeply humorous to watch Ronald Reagan, of all people, take on the KKK given, you know, his political career of racist dog whistles and policies.)
After dipping her toes into something serious, WB spent the rest of 1951 shuffling Day from one minor musical after another. No less than four of them consecutively with Lullaby of Broadway being the first of the bunch. There is a breezy, fluffy piece of candy buried somewhere in here, but then they add in an entire subplot about an absentee alcoholic mother and the tone goes sideways. Day was quite capable of doing straight dramatic work later in her career, but she was still learning and growing here. And clearly not helped by the script handed to her.
Still, there are plenty of charms to be found in Lullaby of Broadway – S. Z. Sakall doing his befuddled and cuddly thing, Gene Nelson and Day have genuine chemistry and are a lot of fun together (check that flirtatious tap routine), and there are several pleasant and memorable songs. A tighter, better script would have been quite nice, but as these things go, Lullaby of Broadway is a nice way to spend about 93 minutes. Her skills are clearly developing, and the studio is finetuning what parts work to her advantage. Like her next one, On Moonlight Bay.
On Moonlight Bay is allegedly based upon Booth Tarkington’s Penrod stories, but its most obvious inspiration is MGM’s 1944 classic, Meet Me in St. Louis. Not just in the broad strokes, but in various scenes and the warmly nostalgic color palette that breathes life into its vintage view of Americana. There is the precocious younger sibling (Billy Gray), handsome boy-next-door (Gordon MacRae), wisecracking housekeeper (Mary Wickes), and, of course, the wholesome girl that’s a bit of a square peg in a world of round holes (Day).
While there is nothing terribly original about this, it does provide another archetype of Day’s career: the tomboy who learns how to be feminine. It is no shock that Day listed this as one of her favorite roles as there was clearly some kind of kinship between this rough and tumble girl and the presence lurking just beneath Day’s squeaky-clean persona. On Moonlight Bay gives us a small glimpse into the real Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff, one that would flower in later films like Calamity Jane.
MacRae’s anticapitalistic idealist makes for a strong sparring partner. Their fun sequences together, like her hurling a snowball at him leading to him giving her a big bear hug, provide a believable flirtation that powers through when the story sags. One could easily remove the musical numbers from this and be left with a better, shorter film as so many of them do not feel organic to the story as it unfolds. It plays far more like the studio mandated musical sequences for their newly appointed premiere star and they retrofitted them into the story here and there.
I’ll See You in My Dreams is a heavily sentimental biopic about Gus Kahn (Danny Thomas) and is remarkably like the myriad of other films about famous lyricists and composers of the era. Thomas is not quite the dramatic actor that Day was developing into and much of the film’s thematic and heavy work is held aloft by her. Reuniting with Michael Curtiz always brought out the best in Day. She manages to forsake the cutesy pluck that other directors had her resting on and digs into that survivalist core that Hollywood never quite knew what to do with.
It would too easily and reductively label Day’s part as “the wife” as Grace LeBoy Kahn is a real mover and shaker as depicted here. Not only believing in her future-husband’s talent and helping foster it but knowing when subsequent collaborators would further his career and when to step behind-the-scenes to grab opportunities. In short, Grace as portrayed by Day is the great woman behind the great artist. That alone makes I’ll See You in My Dreams worth a cursory watch. (Et tu, Doris Day? I’ll See You in My Dreams features the actress in a quick blackface sequence.)
Her final film in 1951, Starlift, is the undeniable nadir of her career. Unable for some inexplicable reason to say Korean War, Starlift is a morale booster essentially confused about why it is doing so in the first place. These cameo-fueled vehicles are only as decent as the music and comedy sequences they splice into the threadbare plot and this one feels like the castoffs of similar titles like Hollywood Canteen or Thank Your Lucky Stars. All in all, a forgettable exercise best left for Day completists who only want to see her sing a few songs.
She kicked off 1952 with The Winning Team, a Ronald Reagan vehicle in which Day occupies the type of role that Kevin Jacobsen smartly dubbed “what if there was a wife” on his podcast, And the Runner-Up Is. Bette Davis’ acidic quip about Reagan’s abilities as a thespian spring to mind trying to watch this: “I used to think of him as ‘little Ronnie Reagan….’ The ‘little’ was for his acting talent.” Anyway, this true sports story finds Day sacked with the supportive, long-suffering wife trope and little else of note. Oh, but she does get to sing a Christmas song at one point. That was nice.
April in Paris is a case study in how “types” in casting can make or break even the most mediocre of works. Day can play “spunky” but the showgirl part in this film needed someone who could project a toughness and uncouth quality that is beyond her ability. Not that Betty Hutton, for instance, would have made April in Paris a minor classic or anything but it would have been better. Even worse is her absolute lack of chemistry with Ray Bolger. There are some minor qualities to enjoy here, including Day letting some sarcastic putdowns out and fun dance sequences like Bolger dancing with himself dressed as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but the whole thing sinks under its miscast leads and minor material.
By the Light of the Silvery Moon picks up a few years after On Moonlight Bay with MacRae’s love interest returning home from WWI and engaged to Day’s hyperactive tomboy. The whole story involves another “year in the life” and numerous misunderstandings to keep the two lovers apart. It is just as wholesome and sweet as the first film but lacking a certain quality that made that one just a tiny bit better.
Perhaps it was that Day and MacRae were in their early 30s and clearly too old for these parts by this time. The hard knocks and weariness of life was starting to show in their faces and playing the kids next door in a smalltown is approaching territory that is laughable. They perform well enough and give it their all, but a recalibration of their screen personas was due. The most fruitful and memorable period of Day’s career was just around the corner. These souffle-light musical-comedies were cute, but she had much more to offer as an actress and the peeks and glimpses here and there proved more frustrating than anything as a viewer.
1953’s Calamity Jane is the exact change of pace that Day’s career needed. Sure, this is another musical comedy, but this time Day gets to demonstrate that athletic tomboyish quality that only peeped out in her various lounge singer or showgirl roles. She leaps, tumbles, charges ahead, and changes her entire body language and vocal delivery here.
Her makeup is skewed towards dirt and sun kissed rather than glamorous and her freckles poke through. She radiates a butch energy here that is shocking but makes sense in a strange way. Her later teaming with Rock Hudson was so fruitful and iconic because his feminine qualities, often disguised or poked fun at, where balanced out by her more masculine ones that other films buried or outright ignored. Calamity Jane is the first true fruition of that masculine, hard-edged subterranean quality in Day’s personality.
In fact, so much of Calamity Jane emerges as one of Day’s best films because of its queerness. Calamity engages in a song with Katie Brown (Allyn Ann McLerie) called “A Woman’s Touch” where they go about domesticating Calamity’s log cabin. It is a butch/femme lesbian relationship given life in a film from 1953. If you think I’m reading too much into the subtext, then please notice that they paint “Calam and Katie” in a heart on the front door. While this would arguably be the first openly queer film with Day in the lead, it would not be the last.
The eventual jealousy over a man’s attention being given to Katie is alternately the era’s conservativism rearing its head and a further, bolder underline to the inherent queerness of their relationship. Granted, everything goes heterosexual by the end with Calamity marrying Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel, so handsome and strapping) and Katie marrying Daniel Gilmartin (Philip Casey, blandly masculine). But before heteronormative roles are restored, Calamity gets territorial over Katie and shoots at one of her admirers and vice versa.
And all of this is before we even tap into “Secret Love,” the Oscar winning song and one of Day’s standards. After spending the better part of the film brandishing a pistol (yeah, it’s a giant phallic metaphor to the nth degree here), Calamity finds a quiet moment of reflection to describe how her “secret love became impatient to be free.” They might as well have had a character hold up a sign proclaiming “they’re lesbians.” All of this is without even mentioning the character of Frances who performs in drag after being mistaken for a woman based on their name. Calamity Jane threw the first brick at Stonewall.
Anyway, Calamity Jane is a fascinating film and one that underscores something we do not discuss enough when it comes to Day: her queer friendly actions. She would go on to take cracks at the public perception of AIDS patients by openly embracing Rock Hudson in the final years of his life, but first came performances and works like this. Day often mentioned that this was one of her favorite roles and films she made during her career. It is a fascinating, essential one and one that clearly displays her having a ball being rough and tumble and singing some truly lovely songs. Some of her greatest film work was still ahead of her, too. Shame the Academy didn’t take notice.
Her next two films, Lucky Me and Young at Heart, were returns to comforting formulas and tropes of her career. Lucky Me finds her playing a neophyte actress who pairs up with a long-running troop on the fringe of stardom who falls in love with an up-and-coming composer. Day’s leading man, Robert Montgomery, is best utilized by Alfred Hitchcock and a bit of a bore everywhere else, and he has a noticeable lack of chemistry with her. She is better in her scenes with Phil Silvers, Nancy Walker, and Eddie Foy Jr. who bring out her sense of fun.
It was around the time of Lucky Me that Day began experiencing panic attacks and a general malaise around fame and performing. In her autobiography she cited a lack of interest to make this film based on its inferior script, which is evident, and only completed the film to close out her contractual obligations to Warner Brothers. In hindsight, knowing this piece of information, her eventual life as a reclusive pop icon who ignored her film stardom is less surprising.
Young at Heart is a musical remake of Four Daughters, which feels at odds with itself. Its origins as a 1930s melodrama are evident and already dated in the post-war social discontent and anxieties of the 1950s. Perhaps even more egregious is that the musical numbers are simply retrofitted into random parts of the narrative without any reasoning behind them such as developing characters, moving the plot along, or expositing interior feelings/thoughts. Sure, we get “Young at Heart,” “One for My Baby,” and “Just One of Those Things,” but Day and Frank Sinatra are not given enough to do. In fact, this cast is way too stacked with talent (Dorothy Malone, Gig Young, Ethel Barrymore) who manage to add weight and gravitas when and where the script fails them, which is persistent. There is still something enjoyable about watching Day’s perkiness interacting with Sinatra at the height of his cynical screen persona.
1955’s Love Me or Leave Me contains what is quite possibly Day’s greatest performance. The film itself is a fascinating hybrid: part backstage musical melodrama, part ferocious gangster film, and largely a portrait of a hellish relationship that somehow works. Maybe it is in the ways that Love Me or Leave Me taps into just enough true detail about Ruth Etting’s life that makes Day’s performance from nobody to famous singer/actress a sisterhood connection across generations.
There is more than a little bit of Etting in Day and Day in Etting. The story of a show biz trooper with a husband that is more hinderance than help to her career, Love Me or Leave Me is an unintentionally reflexive piece of work from Day. Granted, I do not believe that her marriage to Martin Melcher was quite the personal hell presented here, but numerous stories abound of his squandering her money, her talents in lesser vehicles, and generally bullying the moneymakers behind-the-scenes.
Love Me or Leave Me features one of her greatest leading men in James Cagney. In numerous films, Cagney comes alive acting opposite a unique woman. Think of Joan Blondell or Olivia de Havilland, and here he proves a generous sparring partner with Day. They form a partnership of collective pain as they go through the cycles of domestic abuse in order to further their goals: stardom and sexual conquest. This is probably the closest that Day ever came to playing a sex worker on screen as she performs favors in order to get better opportunities.
Day’s stoicism and latent sensuality fold neatly into the performance here. What could be dour becomes an understandable glimpse of the personal negotiation involved to sustain it. She is all aflame in her dozen musical numbers and nearly unrecognizable underneath the harsh makeup and boozy mannerisms as the film moves along. This is the closest she ever got to transformative character work, and it is shocking to see her as such a strumpet.
It is a tall order for anyone to hold their own against Cagney, and Day manages it with aplomb. Their chemistry empowers a lot of the cynical, overly long passages that render Love Me or Leave Me an almost classic. The two big movie stars generate a black presence at the heart of the film that makes it a near antidote to some of the antiseptic entries in her canon. This is Cagney’s turf, and it is a marvel how well Day acclimates.
If the Academy didn’t have a huge bias against musical comedy stars, even then, she may have gotten her first nomination for her work here. Certainly, Love Me or Leave Me is a prime example of two performances that feed off each other in order to work. Cagney got nominated, deservedly, but Day’s exclusion for the likes of Jennifer Jones in yellowface is quite the headscratcher. (And grossly racist.)
Taking a page from one of his Hollywood contemporaries, Leo McCarey, Alfred Hitchcock decided to remake one of his own 1930s films, The Man Who Knew Too Much. This time around, he would fill in the plot with beats that manage to string along its bravura sequences into a coherent whole. The original is all peaks and valleys, with some of the best and sloppiest filmmaking of Hitchcock’s career up to that point. The 1956 redo is a much better experience.
Having said that, I would not rank it among the master’s masterpieces of his finest era. It is a stunning breather before the likes of The Wrong Man, Vertigo, and North by Northwest in quick succession. Having said that, it does render the original film nearly moot, except for Peter Lorre’s performance. Still, Hitchcock points his camera at Day’s sunny charisma and gets fascinating results.
She makes a believable wife to James Stewart, the two of them looking and sounding like a typical midwestern and upper-middle class family from the 50s. While the first half of the film rests on Stewart’s ability to play the everyman in distress, something Hitchcock played up for different moods in their various films together and this is probably the least perverse of them, the second half depends largely on Day’s ability to retain her grace under pressure.
And what a performance he gets from her! There is one scene here that is potentially the finest work of her career. After having discovered that their son has been kidnapped, Stewart slips Day a sedative before telling her. Her slow dawning realization of not only the danger of the situation but what has been done to her is simply stunning. The sweet, nearly antiseptic Day of her musicals is long gone. In her place is a recognizably real woman fighting the inevitable and exploding with a volatile mixture of reactions. What registers most forcefully is Day’s face in various states of anxiety, panic, fear, and stoically trying to keep it all together. If the Academy had been paying attention, maybe she would’ve been a multiple nominee by this point.
Oh, and her singing the theme song.
Of course, this film is essential to her legacy simply for the fact that it introduced her signature song, “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” The song, introduced as a lullaby she sings to her son early in the film, becomes something of a leitmotif and eventually a maternal call for her offspring. The song would eventually reappear in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and The Glass Bottom Boat while also functioning as the theme song of The Doris Day Show.
Day had just demonstrated her ability to effectively play “damsel in peril” in her prior film, so Julie is shocking for all the ways that it underserves her talents. Day and Louis Jourdan are both overwrought in a film that straps one unbelievable segment to another, including Day’s stewardess piloting an airplane after an incident in the cabin. What is most noticeable about Julie is how it gives Day a more recognizably ‘real world’ career and how casually she slips into it. She makes sense in this context even if the script for Julie, including some clunky voiceover narration and unintentionally hilarious plot twists, routinely lets both major stars down. I guess this could be considered an object of camp affection, but not for me.
1957’s The Pajama Game is a fascinating experiment for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is the artistic conflict between Stanley Donen’s studio-era vibrant color palette and staging and Bob Fosse’s angular, proto-vogue choreography. Not to mention a plot that is actually (gasp!) pro-union! A rarity for this period given how much history there was in the studios trying to bust up unions or circumvent their creation.
Anyway, Day plays the leader of the employee union who engages in political and romantic combat with John Raitt as the representative of the company’s bottom line. Day sports a pompadour in this that highlights something plenty of her other films neglected: there was something hard and masculine about her.
Not only does she demonstrate her pleasant vocal range, including songs that ask her to get playful with her vocal delivery instead of just pretty sounds, but she equips herself well to Fosse’s athletic choreography when given the chance. “There Once Was a Man” has her throwing her body around and leaping in and out of a car while doing Fosse’s patented ‘put it in neutral and rev’ body contortions. Day’s sexuality, something other films either treated as a neutral object by making her a mom or a hysterical virgin, is given a chance to shine here. Not only is it clear that she spent the night with Raitt, but the film ends with him revealing a beefy, muscular barrel chest and her showing off her lovely bare legs.
The Pajama Game is not just a great showcase for Day, allowing her to display what she is famous for as well as allowing her to be a sensual woman on screen, but one of the best films of her career. Carol Hanley’s Gladys practically steals the film right out from the major players during “Steam Heat” and “Once-a-Year-Day.” Donen gives the entire film a candy-colored color scheme that makes it visually appealing, and he knows when to let the camera stay put to drink in the large scale of dancers doing ornate choreography and when to move it around to give it energy.
If there is any knock against this, it is probably John Raitt. A terrific singer and I am sure a fine stage actor, but the camera does not capture him as it should. But I would not say he is a major hinderance to the overall performance or enjoyment of the film, but a noticeable skewing element. I want to watch this one again in the future as there is a treasure trove of material here. I just keep thinking about how the players move in slow-motion then speed themselves up on the factory floor and marvel at the precision and control of their bodily movements.
Teacher’s Pet had the potential to be so much better, but they had to give the main role to Clark Gable, seemingly unevolved since his Pre-Code era persona and at odds with not only the post-war years but Day’s progressive working girl image. His tough-talk and aggressive machismo was better matched with an actress like Joan Crawford or Jean Harlow, ones who outwardly exhibited a certain toughness and rough carnality. Day’s too self-aware and enlightened next to him, and only Gig Young walks away with anything truly memorable (and got an Oscar nomination for his VIP work). Gable is better partnered with Mamie Van Doren, a cartoonish sexpot with the outsized sexuality to match his. Shame they had to make this a romance between Day and Gable.
Things would somewhat improve with The Tunnel of Love in which Day is married to Richard Widmark and prepping their home for the eventual adoption of a child. Day and Widmark are game as the leads and present a couple with an active, healthy sex-life and frank talk, for 1958, about fertility issues. They are clearly trying, but the script just limps along with too many diversions in the midsection that leave it flabby.
The first section and the last are the best, but oof that middle. Full of jokes about Gig Young’s philandering, borderline alcoholic husband, and his doormat wife (Elizabeth Fraser), Tunnel of Love gets a little ugly and unlikeable in that muddled middle. Not to mention Gia Scala’s thankless and unnecessary role that exists solely to cause further drama in the happily married life of Day and Widmark through a big misunderstanding. The cast is clearly game, especially Day and Widmark, and Day is doing better at picking roles that highlight different aspects of her talents and persona, but it is in search of a better script.
It Happened to Jane finds Day in a Capraesque piece of populist, folksy “little working stiff takes on the big system” movies. Once more, it is a bit of a dud, and even more egregious for sticking Day, Jack Lemmon, and Ernie Kovacks in something so amiable yet mediocre. Still, Day as a working single mother who teams up with her lawyer (Lemmon) to take on The Man (Kovacks) feels exactly like the kind of part she should be doing.
Yes, it should have been funnier, and more fleet-footed, but there is still some charm to be found. Day and Lemmon make for a credible romantic pairing and have believable chemistry as a blended family unit. And some of its many detours and diversions land a chuckle even as they distract from the core of the story. No matter, Day was finally figuring out how to upgrade her screen persona for the ensuing decade and what types of roles worked best for her. She was about to embark a nice little run with her best-known co-star very soon.
1959’s Pillow Talk is the quintessential Doris
Day movie. Not only because it was somehow the only movie in her career to get
her an Oscar nomination (yes, you read that correctly), but because it provided
the coalescence of her star image and her two most beloved co-stars. Strange to
think that Day had to nearly strongarm Rock Hudson into making the thing.
Pillow Talk builds from the screwball formula, not so much the comedy of remarriage as the comedy of mistaken identities and warring lovers and adds a dash of the sexual permissiveness that was creeping up in the culture. Tony Randall and Thelma Ritter provide colorful supporting players that provide the sourest laughs and balance the leads in interesting ways. The whole thing is a fascinating prism for the subtlety queer and unorthodoxy of some screen romances.
Much like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Holiday or Bringing Up Baby before them, Day and Hudson bring out the bisexuality in each other. Not merely as sexual screen personae, but in their performances and quiet critiques of gender. Day and Hudson share a phoneline and she thinks he’s a womanizing sleaze while he thinks she’s an undersexed ice queen. He winds up seducing her by portraying a gentlemanly Texan with strange sexual hang-ups that render Day as the cause of his sexual instruction.
There is also the way that they present themselves here that brings out something that was always there in their screen presences but now seems more vibrant. Day’s steel wrapped in silk body language only heightens as Hudson pretends to be a naively heterosexual romantic partner. Hudson, meanwhile, reveals his underutilized comedic chops and the feminine calmly swirling below that surface of his brawny, hunky exterior. Throw in Randall as the queerest heterosexual and Ritter as a blousy example of older womanhood, and Pillow Talk is practically a Pride parade.
But let us go back to Day’s performance, which is why we are here. She is truly magnificent here. Nearly giddy with the prospect of bedding Hudson (who wouldn’t be?) while fending off Randall’s advances or finding gender solidarity with Ritter’s drunken housekeeper, Day has found the working girl archetype that best exemplifies her charms and thrills as a movie star. As TCM said about her “trademark chic feisty career-woman…[took] the romantic sex comedy to penthouse heights.”
The only knock I have against this movie is that it was her lone Oscar nomination instead one of a handful, which is more of a gripe with the Academy and their eternal condescension towards comedic actors. From this point forward, Day would not stray too far from either playing a career-woman or a wife getting into some kind of caper, but she was finally operating in films and roles that allowed some of her hard-knock off-camera life to inform her work in refreshing ways.
Her follow-up to that return to form, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, is a bit of stepdown, but still is a generally enjoyable piece of fluff. Largely a family comedy with some playful jabs thrown at Broadway along the way, Day and David Niven play a married couple who relocate to the country to set down roots for their four sons and havoc ensues along the way. Niven and Day are finely tuned to the rhythms of the script and deliver performances that perfectly capture the tone of the script, one that engages in far too many distractions like an extraneous musical number with Day and a pack of schoolchildren. Still, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is genial and funny enough to warrant a cursory watch.
Midnight Lace is another entry in her “imperiled movie star” films, and probably the second-best of the lot. Look, nothing compares to Hitchcock riding the middle of his creative zenith, but Midnight Lace borrows liberally from his themes and modes. I wonder how different the film would have been under his direction, but the end results probably wouldn’t have been significantly different. Day may have better modulated her performance, which is very good with numerous scenes that display her dramatic gifts, but does have a tendency at some points to get a little too gasp-y.
Even better is the chemistry she exhibits with the likes of Rex Harrison and Myrna Loy as her husband and supportive aunt, respectively. Harrison is fully in his element of oily, suspicious husband. In fact, he steadily builds his performance up better than the likes of Charles Boyer in Gaslight, who delivered a similar role in a similar film but was perhaps a bit too clearly villainous from the beginning. While Loy demonstrates that she was just always so good as the urbane, charming socialite type that we never catch her acting.
Director David Miller manages to make numerous sequences build the proper amount of tension with Day or Loy’s bewildered and disturbed reactions to phone calls being the only source for what is being said on the other end of the phone. Miller also manages to get some great mileage out of his climatic sequences like Day fretfully climbing down the scaffolding of a construction site near her apartment with a helpful John Gavin. Where the script goes ridiculous or implausible, the cast is there to keep it grounded and your interest secured. You needed a lead like Day, one with built-in good will and audience engagement, to make this whole thing work.
There is also a quite lovely color scheme that recalls the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento in its near violently bright reds and purples. Day’s muted wardrobe, lots of blacks, creams, and grays, makes these bursts of color grab the eye even more. Midnight Lace may not rank above the likes of Gaslight, Dial M for Murder, or Sorry, Wrong Number, but it does feel of a companion with them with a more than respectable pedigree to make it worth viewing.
Lover Come Back does not quite reach the penthouse heights of Pillow Talk, but it is a highly entertaining reunion of the three primary leads essentially doing the same thing a second time around. They would do it a third time, but spending time and watching Day, Hudson, and Randall bounce off each other is a promising proposition. Sure enough, Lover Come Back is a fun romp through mistaken identities, the battle of the sexes, and that uniquely queer brand of chemistry between the three leads once more.
This time around they play rival ad executives with Hudson creating a campaign for a fictional product that Day tries to pouch out from under him. Hudson pretends to be the inventor of the heretofore fictional product, chaos ensues, and Randall is hovering around the periphery to play the befuddled sidekick (and president of the company) to them both. Naturally, Hudson’s womanizer disguises himself as a sexually inept nerd and taps into the feminine energy that was always just below the surface. (Honestly, Hudson sporting a beard and flannel touched some specific attraction in my brain that I wasn’t aware I had before seeing it.)
Day, for her part, gets to take potshots at the sexually frigid, if not outright neurotic, persona that had been fostered on her. She acts as love guru and instructor to Hudson’s naïve façade by tapping into an alternately maternal and silken toughness. We actually believe the two of them as romantic and professional rivals even before they get drunkenly married. The climax, of course, reveals just why the title of the film is what it is, and I won’t spoil it, but it is a little obvious once you reach a certain point.
Day and Hudson’s pairings are things that look deceptively simple but numerous efforts to repeat the formula proved that theory wrong. Just because these two made the banter and sexy double-talk look like the stuff of simple winks and smiles, doesn’t mean it didn’t take real actorly effort to make it zip and sing. Case in point, her next film with one of the all-time great leading men of romantic comedy who made it all look so slick, effortless, and incredibly charming.
That Touch of Mink reunites Day with Delbert Mann, director of Lover Come Back, and the entire thing is plagued with a sense of over-familiarity. We have seen Day’s “world’s oldest virgin” routine a lot by this point, and not even the considerable talents of Day and Cary Grant can enliven this thing. There is something entirely too smarmy about the completed film, and the likes of Gig Young (playing neurotic) and Audrey Meadows (playing sarcastic) quietly steal the film and prove more interesting as characters.
Dick Sargent appears as a newlywed that tells Grant how much he is dreading his upcoming life as a married man, and this sense of marriage as a tomb pervades. How are we supposed to root for the two leads to get together when the film is obsessed with letting us know that marriage is a small death of the soul? The sexual obligation that Day’s character experiences give That Touch of Mink a bitter aftertaste. There are a few funny jokes to mine from the material, like Day’s crisis of conscience putting her and Grant on a bed in various locations. Even better is the dressing down that Meadows delivers when she exclaims that the female species sold itself out for the right to smoke indoors, and Day does not even smoke. To be fair, there are minor charms here, and nothing with Day and Grant is totally without merit. It’s just that between them, they’ve blessed the world with plenty of classic romantic comedies and this is so personality-free and unmemorable that it feels worse than it is.
Billy Rose’s Jumbo is an entertaining musical about the circus with two major problems: its leading man (Stephen Boyd) is not equipped to the idioms of a musical comedy and the score is not good enough to justify its existence as a musical. So how is it entertaining you ask? Well, Martha Raye and Jimmy Durante are no slouches in this department, with Durante repeating his Broadway role from 30 years prior. Day is his daughter and together they are trying to keep their struggling circus afloat.
Day is at the height of her acting prowess so even in less than stellar material like this she manages to shine by knowing how to make the most of it. She is a movie star in the fullest bloom of her appeal and popularity. Strange to think that in just a few short years it would all be over. It is also weird watching renowned animal lover Day appear in a movie about the circus whose title comes from the star elephant when circuses are not known for their fair/humane treatment of animals.
Final thought about Jumbo: strange how the circus seems like the prime location for an engaging and visually splendid movie, but they always wind up feeling too bloated or dull. There is a better movie, and a shorter one, that removes the musical numbers and keeps the circus stunts.
The Thrill of It All, her first pairing with James Garner, starts off quite promising then loses its energy as it goes on. By the final thirty minutes or so, the plot is limping along and grossly reenforcing gender norms that it had hitherto poked fun at. The plot concerns Day’s housewife becoming an unconventional spokesmodel and the chaos it causes her homelife, especially with her husband. Scene after scene of her leaning into her awkwardness and rambling in front of the camera or rolling her eyes at photoshoots are a joy.
Garner and Day have a pleasing chemistry and play off each other beautifully. Day is already in her element as an ace screen comedienne and gets plenty of solid bits and reactions to play, but her chemistry is Garner is the true shock. It seems like Garner could generate chemistry with just about every single one of his leading ladies, but his playful scoundrel act offsets Day’s remoteness in the best of ways. (Similar to how he was one of Julie Andrews’ best co-stars simply because he brought her untouchable lady persona down to earth.) Even if the film lets them down, and by Garner’s own admission much of it only works thanks to Day, they are reason enough to spend time with The Thrill of It All.
Move Over, Darling’s production history is a fraught thing that didn’t original star Day, Garner, or Polly Bergen. In its original incarnation it was called Something’s Got to Give and it starred Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, and Cyd Charisse. The production was infamously troubled by Monroe’s erratic behavior due to a pill addiction and was eventually abandoned due to her untimely demise. A rough version of the completed footage was eventually assembled and released on the DVD Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days, a documentary detailing the entire ordeal.
The production was restarted with Day reuniting with her Pillow Talk director (Michael Gordon) and Garner. The plot follows the basics of My Favorite Wife, including a meta-textual scene of Day disguised as a Swedish housekeeper giving Bergen a massage and recounting the entire plot of the previous film as a not-so-subtle poke. (Hearing Day’s squirrely Swedish accent say “Irene Dunne” is worth the viewing experience alone.) Move Over, Darling may not be the pinnacle of film art, but it did hit the spot for me while watching. I found the entire thing charming.
If you don’t know the plot particulars of the film, let me sum up for you: Five years ago, Garner and Day, a happily married couple, were involved in a plane crash. He survives and believes that she was killed. Flash forward, he has her legally declared dead so he can marry his new romantic partner (Bergen), only for her to be rescued. Screwball antics and romantic entanglements ensue. Your mileage may vary, but this is a trio of consummate pros playing exactly to their strengths in a silly madcap narrative that gives them plenty to do and to do it well.
There are also numerous scenes featuring some of the finest, quietest work of Day’s entire career. The current of emotions that Day manages to play and keep just below the surface when she meets her children for the first time in five years is a stunner. Or her reunion with her mother-in-law (Thelma Ritter) that finds the two of them at a seeming loss for words and overflowing with gratitude and joy while still employing wisecracks. And she gets plenty of chances to demonstrate her incredible skill as a funny lady, like her eccentric Swedish accent or a whole pantomime involving Chuck Conners’ Adam to her Eve playing in Garner’s hyperactive imagination. Even better, Day gets to play a woman once more with a healthy sexual appetite as she pulls out a billowy pink nightgown from her purse after talking with Garner in a hotel room.
Her final collaboration with Hudson and Randall, Send Me No Flowers, is a winning swan song for the comedic trio and a bit of a changeup of the typical setup and execution of their other pairings. Day is a devoted wife to Hudson, a raging hypochondriac who mistakes someone else’s fatal diagnosis for his own, with Randall as their best buddy/neighbor. Almost as here and queer as Pillow Talk (this one adds in Paul Lynde), Send Me No Flowers is the type of movie that used to be called “a delightful romp.”
The only thing keeping Send Me No Flowers from being the best of their trilogy of films is that it opens with them as a happily married and settled couple so the witty, erotically charged banter is noticeably absent. They still play off each other beautifully with Hudson once again demonstrating that he was far more as an actor than so many of the strapping, stolid leading man parts resigned him to be before his work with Day. He had the chance to play against that in these films and he acquits himself remarkably. His neurotic man of the house here threatens to topple Day in the first half. Not to mention a drunken luncheon with Randall that practically throbs with secret love between the pair.
But the second half belongs to her with able assists from Randall, Lynde, and Edwards Andrews. Her musical background granted her an extra oomph in her line deliveries and readings that made her standout from her peers, much like Irene Dunne before her. She has the ability to make her voice crack and pulsate with heavy emotion before winding it up into a shriek or lowering it down into a menacing timber. This was one of Day’s strongest assets throughout her film career, her treatment of lines as if they were from a song and finding ways to play with the syllable count or fluidity of the sentence.
Do Not Disturb was made against Day’s wishes as her then-husband, Martin Melcher, signed her up for the production without her consent or input, and trooper that she was, she made it anyway. Would you be shocked to learn that Day signaled this out as one of her least favorite films in her autobiography? It shows on the screen, which is an incredibly rare occurrence for such a consummate pro.
She stars opposite Rod Taylor here as a couple that relocate to England, where they begin to experience marital problems. Mainly, Day thinks Taylor is having an affair with his secretary, and he thinks she slept with a sleazy antiques dealer. More zaniness ensues before the truth comes out, the couple happily reunites, and we fade out as they presumably have makeup sex.
That is a perfectly fine premise for a one of her star vehicles, but the execution is all wrong. Rod Taylor’s a great actor in dramatic parts, but he appears adrift with the kookier approach required of this material. In contrast, Day plays a lot of the material too cutesy, or gives a routinely polished performance that we had seen several times by now. A bevy of supporting players amount to bit parts, and a series of gags play out like rejects from I Love Lucy. There is no fire, no believable romantic chemistry or anxiety, and just one lone joke that lands. It is the sight of a glamorous looking Day trying to shimmy and shake at a convention surrounded by businessmen and their mistresses. She deserved better.
1966’s The Glass Bottom Boat was Day’s final box office hit, and what a strange concoction it is. A reunion with leading man Taylor, still one of her most humorless and worst, that is also a live-action cartoon from director Frank Tashlin, perhaps the most underrated comedy director of this era. The film operates at a zany, loopy level that its bloated running time cannot possibly sustain.
If The Glass Bottom Boat had been a solid 90 minutes, it would have been a classic farce that correlates the battle of the sexes to the Cold War. Instead, it is nearly two hours and it take a while to get going, but once it does it zips along at a breakneck pace that feels like Tashlin and company throwing as many camp jokes at the screen as possible. After all, not only does Dom DeLuise provide his fey bluster, but Paul Lynde, Dick Martin, and Robert Vaughn all hurl a remarkable number of queer-themed jokes at the screen that make you wonder how they snuck it all past the censors.
For her part, Day seems to know the exact rhythm of the material and leans into it. She seems game for the physical comedy bits, the comedic accents, and the zingers. The amount of sexual white noise and hysteria orbiting around her, including a scene where Taylor imagines her as a vampy Mata Hari, seems to poke gentle fun at her persona as a frigid, virginal queen of the screen. I mean, the first scene finds Day dressed as a mermaid to help her father’s glass bottom boat business only to get her fins caught by Taylor’s fishing pole. If that isn’t a dirty joke of epic proportions, then I am not sure what else would count.
The only thing missing from Tashlin’s mistaken identity spy comedy-cum-romantic comedy is Bugs Bunny in drag. Then again, Lynde showing up in full drag at a soiree to keep an eye on Day and getting the once over from Robert Vaughn. That seems close enough. Hell, Tashlin manages to make Day into a destabilizing feminine erotic force in this, or, at least, one on par with Bugs Bunny in his tightest sweater and big breasted Lana Turner drag. Even for its faults, it is worth seeking out.
Her last four films, Caprice, The Ballad of Josie, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, and With Six You Get Eggroll are alternately a fascinating yet despairing glimpse into a star out of time and flubbing their efforts to update their screen presence. Caprice is a reunion with Tashlin but one that produces less than memorable results. The whole thing is a spy farce in which Day is involved in business espionage on behalf of a cosmetics company. There just isn’t enough there to really build a successful or coherent film, despite how game Day seems.
She does get a few funny bits, including a wiretapped lunch date that finds her ruining their efforts to record her by making a ton of noise. But she is tasked with acting opposite Richard Harris in the prime of his drunken indifference. He slots neatly alongside the likes of Rod Taylor as the driest of her leading men, ones who look like they would be anywhere but there and are merely thinking of the zeroes at the end of their checks.
The Ballad of Josie is a feminist western until it isn’t. Day accidentally kills her drunken abusive husband then goes about starting a sheep farm and wearing pants, which is amongst the grandest scandals the Wild West has ever seen in these parts of Wyoming, apparently. The local distaff side of the population roots her on as a political cause célèbre, while the men view her as a threat to the “natural order of things.” Women’s suffrage as a punchline? Guess things have not changed drastically since the likes of Kitty Foyle.
Day’s working girl screen presence slots neatly into the burgeoning feminist movements of the era, but the film lets her down. Repeatedly. Essentially arguing that all her exasperation at men telling her what to do and how to do it is only there until the right man tells her the same thing. The right man being Peter Graves, I guess? The whole thing has fits and starts of promise and potential that quickly go squandered because even in 1967 while the New Hollywood movement was making waves, the old guard couldn’t envision a happy ending that didn’t involve a woman giving up her independence for domesticity. The Ballad of Josie is understandably forgotten and a mere footnote in her body of work.
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? starts out with such promise and a solid ensemble but quickly loses steam contorting itself into sitcom-level gags and setups. Day and Robert Morse deliver some great physical comedy in a gag involving them taking too much of a sleeping draught and constantly getting woken up only to crash back down. But the entire thing is yet another excuse to imperil the virtue of its star who by this point was approaching marbled statue territory as far as screen sexuality was concerned. Hell, this film includes a gag involving her starring in a Broadway smash called The Constant Virgin. Even better is her scene after getting a ride from a hippie where she pays him $50, and he gives her a rock stating that they pay with things they love. She tries to yank off her wedding ring but encounters difficulty. Her physical precision throughout the whole thing is as expert as her vocal intonations.
The whole thing is nearly a goof on her persona, but it cannot seem to decide on what farcical object it wants to target or which of its various subplots are important. It is not the worst thing in her body of work, but it is imminently forgettable. A noticeable problem of so many of her films during the waning days of her time as a movie star.
Her final film, With Six You Get Eggroll, is of a piece with a lot of media at the time: the blended family and a glimpse at second time-around romance in middle-age. Think of Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in Yours, Mine and Ours or TV staple The Brady Bunch, for instance. Instead of the awkwardness of blending the families being the driving force, we have Day and Brian Keith dealing with warring factions of offspring who do not want their parents to get together.
The problem is not that the setup is bad, it’s not even if it is already well-worn by 1968, but that the entire thing feels out of step with the times. Her final run of films throughout the mid-to-late 60s are a case of a cheerful persona incapable of updating, but not their any fault of her own. Edgier, darker opportunities were presented to her, but rejected by her husband for being “filth.” The mind boggles at what she might have done with Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Would she have been better than Anne Bancroft? Who knows, but it is an interesting mental exercise.
Instead, she remained in her bouffant hair with chic clothing and a plastered-on smile. Entombed as she was in 1959 for perpetuity. Throughout her career she gave glimpses of her hardness and teeth, but the public only responded to her eternal virginity and wholesomeness. Frankly, her career is a marked study in what the limitations and strengths of a “star persona” were. She career is also a study in how undervalued gifted comedic actors can be during their time as they are largely reduced to being perceived lightweights. Looking at how stylish, supplicated, radiant, and easy she made her work seem and trying to replicate that as been the undoing of many an actress since.
And that was it on her film work. After her husband passed away, she learned two things: he had squandered away her fortune AND contractually obligated her to a television series and various specials. Between 1968 and 1975, the various seasons of her show and specials marked the final acting performances of Day’s career. After this, she largely lived as a reclusive figure dedicating herself to animal welfare causes, mainly through the Doris Day Animal League, and running her rental/hotel properties out at Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Day was a unique screen presence who left it and rarely returned to the spotlight. She rejected potential honors such as the Kennedy Center or AFI Life Achievement for a lack of interest in appearing in public. She reportedly did not want her fans to see her as a “little old lady.” She only agreed to accept her Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe because neighbor Clint Eastwood (seriously, you can’t make this up if you tried) begged her to do it. She was presented, in absentia, with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and various lifetime achievement awards from critics’ groups.
And what about that pesky Honorary Academy Award? She rejected numerous offers believing that her film career was something in her past. So, rest easy film fans, the Academy tried to make it right. Numerous times. In one of her final interviews before her death in 2019, she mentioned that she never knew why she rejected the offer, but she just had no interest. Well, award or no, what endures is her body of work, one that is more charming, risqué, and funny than initial blush would think.
Sure, she never got the gold, but the likes of her best work still do the talking or singing. Check them out. I would recommend Universal’s The Essential Collection which collects her three Rock Hudson films, The Thrill of It All, Midnight Lace, and her Hitchcock collaboration. While it is missing her best work at WB and MGM, for obvious reasons, it still does a good job representing the best of Day’s performances from her creative peak.
In TCM’s book, Leading Ladies: The 50 Most Unforgettable Actresses of the Studio Era, they, naturally, mentioned Doris Day. Each of the ladies highlighted had five feature films mentioned as “essential viewing,” and I believe that they got it exactly. Their five and my five are the exact same, which rarely happens. (I will fight them that National Velvet is a better example of young Elizabeth Taylor’s screen presence than Father of Bride where she is largely supporting, for example.)
April 3, 2022 was her centennial, and I decided it was
time to dive deep into the effervescence of a Doris Day film. I walk away from
her screen presence with a newfound appreciation and respect for her as an actress.
I believe that her legacy and pop cultural presence endure because she stopped
making movies and largely stepped away from the spotlight. She became an enigma
where the only thing left behind was her film legacy and her audio recordings. Some
of them have dated poorly, some of them have ripened with age, and some are as magnificent
now as they were then. It was time well spent.
Essential Viewing:
Calamity Jane
Love Me or Leave Me
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Pajama Game
Pillow Talk
Honorable Mentions:
Romance on the High Seas
Midnight Lace
Lover Come Back
Move Over, Darling
Send Me No Flowers
The Glass Bottom Boat
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