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Doris Day

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Doris Day
Musical artist

Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff, known as Doris Day (born April 3, 1924), is an American singer, actress, and animal welfare advocate. A vivacious blonde with a wholesome image, she was one of the most prolific actresses of the 1950s and 1960s. Able to sing, dance, and play comedy and dramatic roles, she has been an all-round star whose personality has permeated many popular and diverse movies.

Biography

She was born Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Evanston to German immigrants. The youngest of three children, she had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older. She was named after silent movie actress Doris Kenyon, whom her mother admired. Her family was Roman Catholic and her parents were known to have divorced. She later embraced Christian Science.

Movie career

Day pictured in the early 1950s on the U.S.S. Juneau

Day's popularity as a radio performer and vocalist led directly to a career in films. After her separation from second husband George Weidler in 1948, Day was apparently set to leave Los Angeles and return to her mother's home in Cincinnati when her agent Al Levy convinced her to attend a party at the home of composer Jule Styne. Her personal circumstances at the time and her reluctance to perform on such short notice apparently contributed to an emotive performance of Embraceable You which so impressed Styne and his partner Sammy Cahn that they recommended her for a role in Romance on the High Seas (which they were currently working on for Warner Bros.). The withdrawal of Betty Hutton due to pregnancy left the main role to be recast. Thus, Day began her film career in a "peppy" Hutton-esque role.

The success of Romance on the High Seas established her as a talented (and popular) performer. In 1950, U.S. servicemen in Korea voted her their favourite star. Early publicity saddled her with such unflattering nicknames as "The Tomboy with a Voice" and "The Golden Tonsil". She continued to make saccharine and somewhat low-level musicals such as Starlift, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, and Tea For Two for Warner Bros. until the cycle exhausted itself. 1953 found Doris as pistol-packin' Calamity Jane what has become one of Hollywood's most enduring musicals, winning the Oscar for Best Song for "Secret Love".

After filming Lucky Me, a lacklustre musical comedy, Day chose not to renew her contract with Warner Bros. and instead freelanced under the management of her third husband, Martin Melcher. As a consequence, the range of roles she played broadened to include more dramatic roles. In 1955, she received some of the best notices of her career for her portrayal of singer Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me, co-starring James Cagney. She continued to be paired with some of Hollywood's biggest male stars, including James Stewart, Cary Grant, David Niven and Clark Gable.

In Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, she sang "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)", which won an Oscar. According to Jay Livingston (who wrote the song with Ray Evans), Day preferred another song used briefly in the film, "We'll Love Again", and skipped the recording for Que Sera, Sera. When the studio pushed her, she relented, but after recording the number in one take, she reportedly told a friend of Livingston's, "That's the last time you'll ever hear that song." This was ironic, as "Que Sera, Sera" became her most famous song. It was used, for example, in her later film Please Don't Eat the Daisies and was reprised as a brief duet with Arthur Godfrey in The Glass Bottom Boat and became the theme song for her television show. (The song was also covered by Sly & the Family Stone in 1973 in a recording that has become a sort of secondary standard version.) This was her only film for Hitchcock and, as she admitted in her memoirs, she was initially concerned at his lack of direction; she finally asked him if anything was wrong and he said everything was fine.

After the great critical and popular success of Teacher's Pet, Day's popularity at the U.S. box office seemed to wane and some critical attention focused on perceived elements of "blandness" in her on-screen persona, although in some foreign markets (Germany, Britain and the Commonwealth), she remained a top box office draw. A dynamic performance in The Pajama Game received warm critical notices, but box office returns were disappointing. In the case of Tunnel of Love and It Happened to Jane, both the critical and popular response was uneven. As a result, during the period of 1957 to 1959, she was no longer regarded a "Top Ten Box Office Draw" by U.S. film exhibitors. Arguably, this development may have been linked to the marked decline in popularity of musical films during the late 1950s, and some poor choices in material made by Melcher on Day's behalf, rather than any waning in public regard. In addition, Day's popularity as a recording artist was diminished due to the growing popular taste for rock and roll. "Que Sera, Sera", for instance, was never a "U.S. Number One", being kept from the top spot by Elvis Presley's recording of "Hound Dog".

Box office queen and "world's oldest virgin"

File:PillowTalk.jpg
with Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk (1959)

In 1959, Day entered her most successful phase as a film actress with a series of romantic comedies, starting with the hugely popular Pillow Talk co-starring Rock Hudson, who became a lifelong friend. The film received positive reviews and was a box office favourite. It also brought a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress for Day. She and Hudson made two more films together, and she also made two films alongside James Garner, starting with 1963's The Thrill of It All. Many of her 1960s films ignored her singing abilities and painted her as a good-hearted woman with a strong will, a hint of naïveté, and the purest virtue. Algonquin Round Table member and showbusiness wit Oscar Levant, who had known Day earlier in her career, summed up the paradox of Day's late-blooming ingenue phase when he famously said, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." But the public loved Day's light, frothy comedies of this period, buying enough tickets to make her by far the top female movie star in America during the first half of the 1960s.

By the late 1960s, the sexual revolution and the widely discussed promiscuity of the maturing baby boomer generation had refocused public attitudes about sex and sexuality. Times changed, but Day's films did not. Critics, comics and pundits dubbed Day "the world's oldest virgin" and audiences began to shy away from her repetitive, gimmicky roles. Day herself found many of her mid-late 1960s films to be of very poor quality (her least favourite was Caprice, co-starring Richard Harris) and did them only at the insistence of her third husband and sometime producer, Marty Melcher. One of the roles he supposedly turned down for her was that of middle-aged adulteress Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (a role that went to Anne Bancroft). Later, in her published memoirs co-authored by A.E. Hotchner, Doris says that she herself rejected the part on moral grounds.

The impact of changing public tastes can also be seen in the waning popularity of Day as a vocalist and recording artist at this time. Paradoxically albums like Duet and Latin for Lovers garnered much critical praise, but did not generate strong sales within the U.S. (although sales were strong in overseas markets like Britain). Day's last "Top Ten Hit" was achieved in the UK in 1964 with her recording of "Move Over Darling", written by her son specifically for her, that Day secured her final chart success in the UK at this particular time was ironic considering that the British Invasion of the mid-1960s contributed to a decisive change in popular taste away from the type of music that Day was associated with. In 1967, Day recorded her last album, The Love Album essentially concluding her recording career, though this album was not released until 1994.

Bankruptcy and television career

Melcher died in 1968. After more than a decade as a top box office star, Day was shocked to discover that her husband of 17 years and his business partner Jerry Rosenthal had squandered her earnings, leaving her deeply in debt. Day sued Rosenthal and won the largest civil judgement up until that time in California, over $20,000,000 (USD). (How much Day actually collected is not certain).

According to Day's as-told-to autobiography by A.E. Hotchner, the usually athletic and healthy Melcher had an enlarged heart. Another factor in Melcher's death may be that he converted to the Christian Science religion during his relationship with Day, and his newfound religious beliefs -- which include a doctrine that illness is illusory -- led him to put off going to the doctor for some time.

Upon Melcher's death, Day also learned that he had committed her to a TV series, which became The Doris Day Show. "It was awful" Day told OK! Magazine in 1996. "I was really, really not very well when Marty passed away, and the thought of going into TV was overpowering. But he'd signed me up for a series. And then my son Terry took me walking in Beverly Hills and explained that it wasn't nearly the end of it. I had also been signed up for a bunch of TV specials, all without anyone ever asking me." Day hated the idea of doing television but felt obligated. "There was a contract. I didn't know about it. I never wanted to do TV, but I gave it 100 per cent anyway. That's the only way I know how to do it." Melcher died on April 20, 1968, and the first episode of the TV show was aired on September 24, 1968.

From 1968 to 1973, Day starred in The Doris Day Show, a situation comedy which had "Que Sera, Sera" as its theme song. Day continued with the show grudgingly and only as long as she needed the work to help pay down her debts. By the end of the series in 1973, Day was nearing 50, and public tastes had changed to such a degree that her firmly established wholesome persona was now completely out of fashion. Day essentially retired from acting when The Doris Day Show ended.

Animal welfare activism

Although the press had occasionally noted Day's interest in animal welfare, it was not until the early 1970s that her interest in animal rights was widely publicised. In 1971 she co-founded Actors and Others for Animals and appeared in a series of newspaper advertisements denouncing the wearing of fur, alongside Mary Tyler Moore, Angie Dickinson, and Jayne Meadows. Day's friend Cleveland Amory wrote about these events in Mankind (1974). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Day actively promoted the annual Spay Day USA, and on a number of occasions actively lobbied Congress -- and, it has been suggested, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- in support of legislation designed to safeguard animal rights. The Doris Day Animal League http://www.ddal.org is a group she funds. She has for many decades stopped her car on LA freeways when she saw an abandoned, stray or hit animal. She is reportedly a vegetarian.

In 2006, The Humane Society of the United States merged with the Doris Day Animal League. Staff members of the Doris Day League took positions within The HSUS, and Day recorded some public service announcements for The HSUS, which is now managing Spay Day USA, the one-day spay neuter event she originated some years ago.

Private life

File:Glass bottom boat dvd.jpg
DVD Package from the Doris Day film, The Glass Bottom Boat

In 1975 Day released her autobiography, Doris Day: Her Own Story, it revealed to the general public many of the painful events in her private life that belied the sunny image Day projected on the screen and through her music. In particular the book detailed Day's first three difficult marriages:

  1. To Al Jordan, a trombonist whom she had met when he was in Barney Rapp's Band, from March 1941 to 1943. She was not yet 17 when she married Jordan, and her only child, Terry Melcher (a boy), was born from this marriage, when Day was 17. Jordan committed suicide after their divorce.
  2. To George Weidler (a saxophonist), from March 30, 1946 to May 31, 1949. They broke up after eight months. Weidler and Day met again several years later and during a brief reconciliation he helped her become involved in Christian Science.
  3. To Marty Melcher, whom she married on her 27th birthday, April 3, 1951. This looked like a happy marriage, and lasted much longer than her first two. Melcher adopted Terry (thus renaming the boy Terry Melcher), and also produced many of Day's movies. Day also later revealed that Melcher had physically abused Terry. His profligate spending caused money difficulties for Day that continued for a number of years after his death.
  4. In addition to which, there was a fourth unsuccessful marriage to Barry Comden, from April 14, 1976 to 1981. Comden was her only husband outside show business. Comden was the maitre d' at one of Doris's favourite restaurants. Knowing of her great love of dogs, Comden began the practice of giving Doris a bag of meat scraps and bones on her way out. This is how he got to meet and endear himself to her. Sadly, this marriage unraveled, and Comden complained that Day cared more for her "animal friends" than she did for him.

The revelations contained in the book about Day's private life, and the testimony of many of her friends and colleagues about aspects of her life and career (most were scathing with regard to husband number three Marty Melcher) helped to make the book a bestseller. In promoting the book, Day also caused a stir by rejecting the "girl next door - virgin" label so often attached to her. Notably in an interview with Barbara Walters she commented "I don't know where that label came from. Maybe it's the way I look. Do I look like a virgin?", and in later interviews went on to say that she believed that people should live together prior to marriage, something that she herself would do if the opportunity arose again. Her candour won her some admiration among book reviewers and interviewers, and possibly contributed to the book's success.

At the conclusion of her book tour Day largely retired from show business, though film and TV offers continued to be made, she seemed content to focus on her charity work and business interests (In 1985 she became part-owner of the Cypress Inn in Carmel, California). In May 1983, Day became a grandmother for the first time when her son and his wife Melissa became the parents of a baby boy they named Ryan. However, in 1985 Day hosted her own talk show, Doris Day's Best Friends. The show generated unexpected press when her old friend Rock Hudson appeared in the first episode. Day was taken aback by Hudson's emaciated and wizened frame, as he had always been in top physical condition. Soon after, she and the world learned that he was dying of AIDS. It had been widely thought that Day and Hudson were good friends off-screen, but Doris would later claim she never knew he was gay. Despite the world-wide publicity the show received it was cancelled after 26 episodes.

After a brief attempt to become a surf music singing star, Day's son Terry Melcher became a staff producer for Columbia Records in the 1960s, and was famous for producing most of the hit recordings by the pioneering folk rock band The Byrds. In November 2004, Terry Melcher died from complications of melanoma (skin cancer), aged 62.

Renewal of interest

During the 1990s interest in Day revived. The release of a greatest hits CD in 1992 garnered her another entry into the British charts, while the inclusion of the song "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" in the soundtrack of the Australian film Strictly Ballroom gained her a legion of new fans (the song was also covered by the alternative rock outfit Cake in the same period ). During the late 1990s/early 2000s the progressive release of her films and TV series/specials on DVD fed into this renewal of interest in and respect for her work. A fact underlined by the development of a large number of websites devoted to her, and the growing number of academic texts analysing various aspects of her career. In 2003, Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellwegger starred in the film Down With Love, touted as a throwback to the old "Rock Hudson and Doris Day" romantic comedies. In many ways, the film is almost a remake of Day's film Pillow Talk. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom but refused to attend the ceremony because of a fear of flying. She has turned down an honorary Academy Award and one of the Kennedy Center Honors for similar reasons. Liz Smith, a long time entertainment gossip columnist, has mounted a campaign for several years trying to drum up support for an honorary Oscar for Ms. Day, as evidenced by this recent New York Post article: http://www.nypost.com/seven/12272006/gossip/liz/hell_think_party_invite_is_the_pitts_liz_liz_smith.htm?page=0

Songs

Albums

(see for details)

10" LPs

12" LPs

Complete recorded performances of Doris Day are available by collecting the two above referenced collections: the four Bear Family collections: It's Magic, Secret Love, Que Sera, Sera and Move Over Darling, The Complete Doris Day with Les Brown, and Hidden Treasures.

Singles

(see for details)

Hit records

(with Les Brown's Band of Renown)

5,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales
File:DorisDayalbumcover.jpg

(As a solo performer)

1,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales
1,000,000+ sales

Other songs

Filmography

Trivia

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles.
  • In 1972 the name of Doris Day was included in one of the songs of the famous musical Grease side by side with Sandra Dee as an example of an overly sentimental and religious person.
  • During the 2000 Canadian federal election, Alliance Party leader Stockwell Day promised to institute a policy under which a petition with 3% of Canadian voters' signatures could trigger a referendum on any subject. As a result, Canadian satirists This Hour Has 22 Minutes created a mock on-line petition to hold a referendum to force Stockwell Day to change his name to Doris Day, and obtained more than three times more signatures than the needed 3%.
  • Barbara Novak, the character played by Renée Zellweger in the feature film Down with Love (2003), is apparently based on the screen persona that Doris Day presented in the cycle of "sex comedies" beginning with Pillow Talk (1959)and concluding with Caprice (1967). Stylistically the film borrowed heavily from these films whilst being set in the New York of 1962. The soundtrack included one song associated with Day, Fly Me To The Moon, although her version was not the one featured. One song, sung by Zellwegger and Ewan McGregor, that featured during the closing credits Here's To Love directly references Day and her screen partnership with Rock Hudson, and possibly references the fact that after the commercial failure of Jumbo (1963) Doris Day's main musical contribution to her films was to record a single that functioned as a title track.
  • The famous quip, "I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," has been variously attributed to both Groucho Marx and Oscar Levant, though Levant appears to be its most likely author.

British fans can now buy a six DVD set of her US TV programmes from 1968 to 1969. The set is by Sanctuary Records Group and numbered SVEMO 131 TO 136.

External links


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