Doris Day reconsidered

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Nellie McKay attempts a reselling of Doris Day -- who she was (or seemed to be) on-screen, who she may have been off-screen, the bizarreness of her personality, her weirdly virginal nature -- in a 6.3.07 N.Y. Times piece, which I for one am not buying for an instant. I admire Day's work on behalf of animals, but she always played exceedingly strange women, especially from the mid '50s on. Try and watch her labored performance in Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much without wincing.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on June 3, 2007 at 3:38 AM

comment #1

le corbeau says ...

The "stupefying popular success" of Doris Day is only a mystery if you don't realize that things were ever thus-- the biggest star at the moment is usually someone who later audiences find uninteresting and sexless. The biggest female stars of the 30s were Norma Shearer and Jeanette MacDonald. The biggest star of the 40s, of either sex, by a country mile was Bing Crosby. There's no mystery here, though there's a lot of unintentional hilarity in her exquisitely 2007 NY Times-bubble viewpoint:

"Did she embody McCarthyism or transcend it?"

Or, possibly, was there more than one thing going on in a decade?

"Her movies feature... Ronald Reagan as a civil rights crusader"

How bizarre! He certainly never showed any interest in liberating anyone as president!

"In Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do Not Disturb,Ã¢â‚¬Â she saves a fox but sports a fur. Day is an inexhaustible animal advocate today, but these plotlines dismay because..."

Because God knows people in the Cold War had NOTHING else to worry about. (Sort of like today, when in the absence of any other problems, the NY Times leads our great moral crusade against sex discrimination in private golf clubs.) How could they be blind to the fur problem with trifles like nuclear annilhation in their midst!

"Ã¢â‚¬Å“Animal loverÃ¢â‚¬Â canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t help carrying a note of condescension, often used by those wishing to dismiss the larger issues at stake; it is similar to calling a white person who fights for civil rights a Ã¢â‚¬Å“Negro lover.Ã¢â‚¬Â

And what matters most is not what you do but that you strike exactly the correct attitude doing so. (Not, of course, that anyone in American history has ever used the phrase "Negro Lover," but the Times rewrites history because it can't even bring itself to acknowledge the actual phrase any more. The N-word is their African-American in the woodpile.)

Finally, the article carefully ignores (save for a trivial mention) the one movie of hers that strikingly contradicts so much of this-- Love Me or Leave Me, with Day as Ruth Etting and James Cagney as her insanely controlling boyfriend/manager, a genuine piece of feminism from the early 50s.

What a silly newspaper.

Posted by le corbeau at June 3, 2007 7:05 AM

comment #2

Jayne Gacey says ...

Mgmax 1, NY Times 0. Gray lady down!

Posted by Jayne Gacey at June 3, 2007 7:23 AM

comment #3

vansmith says ...

to quote g gekko in wall st - "the thing about the wasp, they love animals, hate people.."

Posted by vansmith at June 3, 2007 9:19 AM

comment #4

nemo says ...

"Love Me or Leave Me" with Doris Day and James Cagney leaps to my mind whenever someone is inclined to dismiss Doris Day's acting and choice of roles. I see Mgmax has already brought up that excellent movie.

"Love Me or Leave Me" is a personal best for both Day and Cagney, and with Cagney's filmography that is really saying something. It's an evenly matched struggle of the wills. On the surface, Cagney is strong, blunt, and controlling, but underneath he is insecure, and with good reason, since his world and his love gradually slip away from him. On the surface, Day is compliant, but underneath she is stronger and more ambitious than Cagney, and as she gains confidence in her talent and business judgment, she gradually moves out from under his shadow.

Both characters are complex: she spends a lot of time manipulating him, and he is a lot more than a simple bully. Day and Cagney both excel. It's an excellent, almost great film.

But that film also stands alone in Day's career. I wonder whether she was constrained by her own preferences in roles, by the studios, by audience expectations, or by a combination of all three.

Posted by nemo at June 3, 2007 9:36 AM

comment #5

christian says ...

actually jeff, doris day is terrific in THE MAN WHO etc. it's easily her best performance because hitch got it out of her -- her breakdown scene after learning her son was kidnapped isrealistic and disturbing.

Posted by christian at June 3, 2007 9:54 AM

comment #6

raskimono says ...

Doris Day was a talented actress. So was Norma Shearer and Jeanette Macdonald. Let's disregard box office for a moment. Doris Day never got bad reviews. Neither did Norma Shearer. Do the research. It's the movies which are looked at sourly today. They might have been studio puppets but among actors, they are well respected. And I'm sorry. She is really good in the movie. It's Jimmy Stewart who is unconvincing in the picture. That scene, when they tell him his son has been kidnapped is completely false.

Posted by raskimono at June 3, 2007 10:11 AM

comment #7

corey3rd says ...

Doris is so out of her league in Caprice. Watch her barely disguse her disgust when she's supposed to get wild on the swinging bed.

Edna Best was better in the original Man Who Knew Too Much.

and don't confuse the NYTimes with the writer, a singer/songwriter who fashions herself as a 21st century Doris Day with more ironic twists in her hair.

Posted by corey3rd at June 3, 2007 10:36 AM

comment #8

Larry says ...

We have images of Norma Shearer and Jeanette Macdonald being sweet and virginal because of their later films. Their early work shows very earthy, sexy women.

I'm not much of a fan of Doris Day, but I know one critic who loves her--Roger Ebert.

And who gives a damn about her work with animals? Leave it to Jeff to bring up these irrelevant points.

Posted by Larry at June 3, 2007 11:22 AM

comment #9

George Prager says ...

Wow this is a weird thread. All these men waxing poetic about the appeal of Doris Day. You people must not get outside much. I feel like I've stumbled across a NAMBLA message board.

Larry: "And who gives a damn about her work with animals? Leave it to Jeff to bring up these irrelevant points."

I hope you're kidding Larry. Look at this website for crissakes:

http://www.ddal.org/

It's like saying "And who gives a damn that Jeffrey Jones liked to photograph young boys? Leave it to Jeff to bring up these irrelevant points."

Posted by George Prager at June 3, 2007 12:06 PM

comment #10

I,Claudius says ...

Once again Jeff reveals what a clueless tool he often is. Day's performance in TMWKTM is a masterpiece of controlled hysteria. Her perfromance in Love Me or Leave Me is one of the most sensual ever committed to celluloid.

Posted by I,Claudius at June 3, 2007 4:03 PM

comment #11

Dixon Steele says ...

Jeff Wells slamming Doris Day.

How hip. How edgy. How typical.

What else is new?

Posted by Dixon Steele at June 3, 2007 4:54 PM

comment #12

lipranzer says ...

I'm not a fan of Doris Day either (admittedly, I haven't seen LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME yet), but I have to agree with those who think she's good in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. If nothing else, for the scene where she's singing "Que Sera Sera" and hears her son.

Posted by lipranzer at June 3, 2007 7:45 PM

comment #13

thatmovieguy says ...

In her autobiography, Day admits that most of the films she made from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s were selected for her (and often produced by) her husband at the time, Martin Melcher. When you think about that, it really puts her career in an unusual light. Here was a man who pushed his wife into roles in which she played a thirtysomething-year-old virgin (and my parents have told me that her "look but don't touch" image was considered comical even in the supposedly unenlightened early 1960s) or -- Day's other specialty -- a wife menaced by her demented husband (see JULIE, in which she has to go on the run from an insane Louis Jourdan, or MIDNIGHT LACE, in which she is driven to the brink of madness by cold-hearted Rex Harrison). Interesting dynamics in that marriage, you can bet. What was behind her popularity? She was a first-rate comic actress with expert timing, she worked comfortably alongside a variety of male co-stars and, by most reports, she was a genuinely kind person, both to the people she worked with and to her public. That lovely, expressive singing voice certainly wasn't a handicap either. Melcher might have been a lousy husband (when he died, he left her saddled with mountains of debts, bad investments and professional commitments she had never known about), but he obviously knew what worked for her and for her audience. And as corny as many of those movies are, they have an enduring appeal for many viewers.

Posted by thatmovieguy at June 3, 2007 8:35 PM

comment #14

nemo says ...

"You people must not get outside much. I feel like I've stumbled across a NAMBLA message board."

Funny! Especially coming from the one guy who knows all about the Doris Day Animal League web site. You don't have to feel so insecure -- that's NYCBusybody's turf.

What can we say? It's a movie web site, so we talk about movies. Some of us are old enough to have seen a few movies that were made more than 3 or 4 years ago. Jeff Wells brought up Doris Day, and some of us know a few things beyond the stereotypes. If you were a kid in the 1960s you couldn't have avoided seeing some Doris Day movies on the tube.

I have to admit, I'm surprised to hear about Day's husband. I'd always assumed she was a closeted gay, like her frequent costar Rock Hudson. I'd always read her song "My Secret Love" as a beautiful gay-and-lesbian torch song expressed in 1950s code: "My secret love's no secret anymore."

Posted by nemo at June 3, 2007 9:13 PM

comment #15

christian says ...

the only reason i have an opine at all on doris day is because of hitchcock. she's surprisingly effective in TMWKNM and her exchanges sound real. she's not playing a virginal maid but a hysterical mother. otherwise i could care less...

okay, and i've always kinda liked "que sera"...

Posted by christian at June 3, 2007 10:59 PM

comment #16

NYCritic says ...

One also has to remember that the women cited -- Shearer (who was married to the head of production), Macdonald, and Day were often hamstrung by the material that the studio chose for them. These women weren't fighters like Crawford or Davis or de Havilland who demanded better roles. These dames simply did what they thought was best.

The truth is: Shearer was only passable as an actress. Macdonald and Day were thought of as singers first and actresses second. So they went into films with that strike against them. Neither really tried to "rock the boat" as it were by stretching too much.

Posted by NYCritic at June 5, 2007 11:02 AM

comment #17