Doris Day turns 88 today. Day was ubiquitous when I was growing up... in movies of the early 1960s like Pillow Talk or Lover Come Back she was the good girl next door whom the bad-boy hero ultimately married... sort of a taller, more buxom version of Reese Witherspoon. None of it was real, of course... the hero she usually married was Rock Hudson, who we later famously learned was Hollywood's gayest star, while Day herself at the time was on her third of four marriages. But she was the biggest box office star in Hollywood playing what wags of the time termed "the world's oldest virgin."
I wonder how those movies would look after watching five seasons of Mad Men? Probably pretty strange.
It is highly amusing to me that Doris is so often referred to in that dismeaning way. The majority of her films portrayed her as either married (often with kids as in PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES) or as a sexy lady looking (GLASS BOTTOM BOAT). The people who harbor that myth just have not seen enough of her films, and they should.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I have just published a book now available on www.amazon.com called "My 'Secret Love' Affair with Doris Day" (pun intended with the title of one of her Oscar and Grammy Winning Songs. Check it out.