Come to think of it, like Hitchcock, like Wilder, like Sinatra, like Chuck(Bugs Bunny) Jones, Doris Day is another one whose peak rather came as the 50's shifted into the 60's. She made it until 1968 and the family comedy "With Six You Get Egg Roll" that nicely paired her with Brian Keith(a final beau, and a rather gruff and burly one) in the same year as Yours, Mine and Ours -- the "competing merged family comedies" that led to The Brady Bunch.
Go on YouTube and you can find Doris singing The Way We Were on some TV special. As she sings it,on the dark screen to the side of her float all her leading men. Like Shirley MacLaine and like Faye Dunaway, its like Doris got to work with every male star extant in her time: Sinatra, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, James Stewart(but of course)...Brian Keith.
In the sixties, she did two rom coms with James Garner: "Move Over Darling"(with Doris and James in for Marilyn Monroe and Dino in a do-over of the movie MM never completed, Something's Got to Give -- about 40 minutes of the MM movie exists and wow the difference between MM and DD in the lead.) The other one was more "beloved"(a lot of NBC showings) -- "The Thrill of It All," in which housewife Doris becomes a TV spokeswoman and drives her doctor hubby Garner nuts(uh oh, its 1963 and he does NOT want his wife working.) Its beloved anyway -- like when Garner drives his car into a swimming pool in his backyard that wasn't there before. Also, there's a subplot -- a rather "old" couple(reliable Edward Andrews and mature-sexy Arlene Francis) are going to have a baby. Garner's a baby doctor and the finale is about a cab delivery.
Also in the sixties, she did two rom coms with Rod "The Birds" Taylor. (Both mine and a lot of critics "underrated male star of the 60's.) I saw them both as a kid. "Do Not Disturb"(Rod and DD living in London and hating it) bored me. But The Glass Bottom Boat was the kind of thing a young spy TV show fan could like: Robert Vaughn even turns up for it for 30 seconds as The Man From UNCLE. Its set in Southern California and flits back and forth from "aerospace industry LA" to Catalina Island and its a time capsule of my LA youth(among a LOT of aerospace families, though mine wasn't one of them)...that I saw DURING my LA youth. There's even a little chase at the end; hardly Mount Rushmore, but dangerous enough as a bad spy tries to kill Doris. Also Rod Taylor in bathing trunks(for the ladies and certain men) and Doris unseen "bottomless" when Rod hooks her mermaid costume with his fishing rod.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
That "bottomless" bit was proof positive of what some critics are saying this week: beneath all the virginal unavailability(until wedding ring was on finger), Doris Day was quite the sex symbol.
She had a great body -- confirmed by many a male co-star. She had a great voice -- confirmed by all of us. Yes it could be sweet and innocent, but it could also be damn sexy...SEXUAL. Deep, erotic. I mean it. Hedda Hopper said that Janet Leigh had the best voice in Hollywood at that time, but that was for speaking. DD could SING.
Janet Leigh, hmmm, Janet Leigh...
Turns out that Doris Day was the biggest box office star in a few years in the 60's, including: 1960. The year of Psycho.
So if Hitchcock wanted to kill off a REALLY big star in 1960 in the shower...Doris Day?
Impossible? As a matter of reality, impossible. But I can see her in the role. I can see her with the cop and with California Charlie , and chatting in that gorgeous voice with the nicely-voiced Tony Perkins(imagine Doris saying "But you SHOULD mind" in that voice of hers.) She'd be even older than Tony than Janet was but...motherly?
The big hurdles for DD in Psycho would be the opening tryst (but hey, if we're putting her in Psycho, let her BE as sexy as we knew she was), and the shower. No, I just don't think middle-class church-going fans of Doris Day could stand to see her stabbed to death while naked.
But still, she was the biggest star of 1960.
In honor of DD, I watched a few scenes of her in The Man Who Knew Too Much. Principally, the one where Jimmy gives her sedatives and takes a well-written five minutes building up to the big news. But the SECOND he says their boy has been kidnapped...Doris loses it . Massively. I mean, deep emotion. There's a possible Oscar scene. Honestly.
Plus, one realizes that with Stewart and Day as the leads of Man '56, Hitchcock had both two of the greatest voices in movies AND two of the most deeply emotional performances. Man '56 is a real powerhouse.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Day was Oscar nom'd for her role in the effervescent Pillow Talk (1959),
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Which started her most famous period and which I remember pretty vividly as a kid. I got took to ALL those movies, and they all provided a glimpse into a fluffy romantic future, really. Funny, too.
We must here note with something approaching anger that Pillow Talk won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar over the one for North by Northwest. Quality-wise, its a travesty head-to-head, but perhaps folks felt NXNW had too much "re-heated Hitchcock" in it (The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Foreign Correspondent and especially Saboteur) and Pillow Talk was pretty damn clever. Frankly, I'm OK with the win. Hitchcock got snubbed so many ways and times that I just can't count 'em up.
"Rock and Doris" WERE a helluva team. Such a helluva team that one critic noted when Cary Grant took over Rock's part in "That Touch of Mink"(a HUGE hit, one of many for Cary in that cusp period)..Cary wasn't really as good AS Rock. Too blasé...not committed to his character or the material as Rock could be.
"Pillow Talk" for Rock (always billed first) and Doris was followed by the Madison Avenue spoof Lover Come Back(try Rock as Don Draper and Tony Randall as Roger Sterling and Doris as Peggy and Edie Adams as Joan and you're not too far off), and then "Send Me No Flowers," in which Rock and Doris are finally married to start the movie and finish it (funny: Big Rock is a blubbering hypochondriac who thinks he's going to die and hence goes husband hunting for Day.)
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Tony Randall pointed out that Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers "were really about Rock and me" and in some ways, he's right. Together, Rock and Tony were buddy-buddy comic relief together while Rock pursued Doris. I thought all three were great. Note that when Cary replaced Rock, suave and handsome Gig Young replaced neurotic Tony as "the sidekick"...and it indeed wasn't as funny.
The Hudson/Day comedies allowed for the "knock offs" with James Garner and Rod Taylor in them -- I think you almost have to accept them as a "genre".
The oddest pair-up for Day was one of her last...given over to rugged, much younger Richard Harris in the terrible "cosmetics spy" movie Caprice(Day looked too old and too silly for the part). Then she moved on to TV guys like Peter Graves(The Ballad of Josie) and Brian Keith and then(made broke by her late manager husband and despised by the counterculture) she nested in TV and slowly faded out.
And here's one weird co-star: Richard Widmark. In the fifties. In a movie about makin' babies. He was just too weird, too tough for the part.
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and was Oscar-worthy in the excellent Love Me or Leave Me (1955) w/ Cagney.
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I've never seen that one all the way through, but its fairly rough stuff and Doris is nicely "opposites attracted" to tough gangster Cagney. Doris is also overtly sexy in that one, too. In the scenes I've seen.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Special note: The Pajama Game. It was from the same makers as Damn Yankees -- the same songwriters? And Warners released it in 1957, a year before Damn Yankees. I think Pajama Game was a bigger hit, perhaps because Doris was a bigger star than Tab Hunter(recall, each movie paired one movie star with one star from the Broadway show; Doris got Bonnie Raitt's dad John; Tab got Gwen Verdon.) I like Pajama Game(about management/labor disputes at a pajama factory) fine, but I like Damn Yankees better. Ya gotta have Heart...
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Really, The Oscars should have given her an Honorary award some time in the last two decades;
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Fully agreed. She was a huge Number One star for a few years, she really COULD act, and she -- like Sinatra and Streisand -- had that special ability to be a star in two fields.
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there was a bit of campaigning for this about a decade ago, but nothing happened, which is a shame.
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She would have been in her seventies. One worries that the younger crowd wouldn't remember her.
Which reminds me: Mike Nichols DID send Doris Day the script for The Graduate, with her in mind as Mrs. Robinson. Doris never got to decide -- her husband rejected the script without showing it to her. Bancroft hit neurotic-predatory heights, but Day might have been...well like Tony Perkins as Norman Bates.
I also just read that DD turned down Murder She Wrote. I guess she was satisfied with her wealth. But she probably had no idea what a long running hit it would be. (Richard Boone turned down Hawaii Five O and he already lived there!)
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
I've had one of her relatively unheralded '60s comedies The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) (w/ Rod Taylor from The Birds) on the shelf for a while, and I'll watch it & maybe TMWKTM again this week in her honor.
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I do think that The Glass Bottom boat is best watched a kid...preferably IN 1966. But its a nice time capsule of SoCal in the sixties, and some of the TV comedy talent of the time -- Paul Lynde and Dom DeLouise and Dick Martin(without Dan Rowan and as a perfectly funny-sexy comedy sidekick for Rod Taylor.)
There's an significant CIA/FBI agent in it played by...Eric Fleming, who starred with Clint Eastwood on Rawhide. Clint went on to superstardom. Eric drowned when his movie canoe capsized in a river a coupla years after "Glass Bottom Boat," while filming some sort of cheapo international adventure flick trying to "do it like Clint." Sad. Well, he's good on Rawhide and he's interesting in Glass Bottom Boat.
RIP , Doris Day.
PS. If you're ever in Carmel, go to the Cypress Inn hotel downtown and have a drink in the bar. You'll be surrounded by dogs, surrounded by Doris Day movie posters...and a movie of hers plays on the TVs in the bar. Its a shrine.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
''They go in threes"
Doris Day was the superstar to go this week, but two interesting lesser lights left us, too:
Tim Conway. Who would have figured that the rather cherubic dumb guy from McHale's Navy would turn out to be, on The Carol Burnett Show, a very hip, witty and intelligent master of improv comedy and ad libs. Its like the guy transformed. Whether paired with taller, more handsome Harvey Korman and cracking the man up..or doing that "Mizzuzz'a Wiggins" routine with Burnett...funny guy. He left, as far as I'm concerned, as a master comedian, one of the really talented ones.
Peggy Lipton. A Gwenyth Paltrow lookalike(looks more like Gwenyth than Gwenyth's own mother, Blythe Danner), who famously married Quincy Jones and had a famous beautiful TV star daughter. Seen just a few years ago in a movie called "A Dog's Life" or something . (I rented it and...boo hoo hoo hoo hoo...the damn dog gets multiple death scenes and reincarnates for the NEXT one.)
But c'mon Boomers: 1968 it started. 1973 it finished. The Mod Squad! Pete(the white guy), Linc(the black guy) and Julie(the white gal.) Controversial -- hey man, they're narcs! But I recall the bad guys being really bad and the fight scenes moving up from Peter Gunn fun to bone crushingly brutal. I was a fan for awhile and crushin' on Julie. (Trivia: it was announced first as "The Mod Squad" then after some critical jokes, they called it "The Young Detectives" and then somebody realized: "Hey, call it The Mod Squad! Nobody will forget THAT name. Even in 2019.)
Its just a matter of luck and history, but Doris Day, Tim Conway and Peggy Lipton leave us roughly together. They made their marks in different ways...but Doris is entitled to top billing.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Being the mystery buff I am, my favorite film of hers was 'Midnight Lace'. Yes, it was an over-produced melodrama, but I always found it highly entertaining. And as a kid, it scared the blank outta me. That stranger's voice!
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That voice creeped me out too. Especially in the fog. Here was a movie where Doris showed off her amazing ability to SELL emotion. I felt it was used more profoundly in The Man Who Knew Too Much, but she sure sells it here. Crying. Hysteria. Howling. And(say some) Orgasm. (not in a sex scene, just in her hysteria.)
Quite a cast. You got Rex Harrison in there. Myrna Loy. Roddy McDowall. And...and...and..
...in the year of Psycho...
John Gavin. Again.
"Stiff" he may have been but he sure got cast for a coupla years there: Imitation of Life, Spartacus, Psycho, Midnight Lace...and one other movie in 1960.
When you think about it, he was probably only on Psycho for about a month or less. Plenty of time to make other movies...
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swanstep (2745)
6 years ago
I do think that The Glass Bottom boat is best watched as a kid...preferably IN 1966.
I gave it a go but, really, it was just too silly and broad for me as an adult in 2019. I ended up fast-forwarding through a lot of it.
I was surprised by how little of the story after the pre-credits sequence revolved around the glass-bottomed boat. Misleading title!
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
I gave it a go but, really, it was just too silly and broad for me as an adult in 2019.
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I had a feeling it would be.
We have to face it: much of Doris Day's career(and popularity, and wealth) came from fairly "simple" material. I'm not looking to be a snob about this. In 1966, I loved The Professionals, which is a well written action Western...but still just entertainment. The Best Picture of the year? A Man for All Seasons? Above my abilities (my parents took me, "to learn something." I remember finding the final beheading COOL.)
Still, Doris worked maybe a level down. As a veteran of many "date movies" I can tell you that Sandra Bullock had the same career through much of the 90's, and Melissa McCarthy has that career now(when she is not being Oscar-nommed for indies.) Its a very good living and it entertains people.
Consider Rod Taylor. He ended up in two classics -- The Time Machine and The Birds. Genre and thriller. He's in the very intelligent(but mainstream) Hotel. But he had to make a buck. Two Doris Day movies likely kept his name in lights for quite some time. There is an anecdote that John Wayne(a Rod Taylor pal who finally put him in the lousy movie The Train Robbers) had this talk with Rod:
John Wayne: So what you making right now, Rod?
Rod Taylor: A romantic comedy with Doris Day. The Glass Bottom Boat.
John Wayne: DORIS DAY! I would crawl on my knees through broken glass to make a romantic comedy with Doris Day.
He should have told her. Though in '66, The Duke was a little too old for her.
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I ended up fast-forwarding through a lot of it.
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Well, it was more fun than the other Day/Taylor flick, Do Not Disturb. I can tell you that! Paul Lynde, man!
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I was surprised by how little of the story after the pre-credits sequence revolved around the glass-bottomed boat. Misleading title!
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Truth in advertising problems. Catchy little ukulele song, though.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
swanstep, I would think it is a bit difficult to try to get through a film like The Glass Bottom Boat at this point in your life and age(though age is...only a number!)
A few weeks ago, you looked at two George C. Scott films from the 70's...The Hospital and The New Centurions. I think those could reasonably be called intelligent films crafted for the serious adult audience, and they "travel well" to today for an adult to watch.
But Glass Bottom Boat and other confections of the 50s and 60's were really aimed a children and/or the young at heart, i think. That's something to ponder: kids could like The Glass Bottom Boat, but so could adults...if that's what they were interested in. I'd call it "Family Entertainment," but really the goal was getting man and woman together, so there was always some sexuality right there on the screen. Unseen.
But keep watching all types of films. I do. There is something educational about all of them.
Which reminds me: I watched Send Me No Flowers as my Doris Day homage. Rock and Doris are married(but without children, they'd only get in the way of the plot), and he's quite funny as a hypochondriac who thinks he's going to die. But those mistakes are "all wrapped up" at the end when convenient characters just happen to drop by with convenient answers(Paul Lynde! Again! As a funeral parlor director who corroborates that Rock thought he was really going to die, and wasn't cheating on Doris.)
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Edward Andrews is in Send Me No Flowers (he's in The Glass Bottom Boat, too.) A great presence in the 60's with his glasses and average American face and physique. Though he was a robust man who could play that face(without his glasses usually) for villainy.
But not here in Send Me No Flowers. He's the doctor whom Rock overhears telling another doctor about ANOTHER man who IS going to die, and he "solves everything" at the end (along with Paul Lynde.)
Trivia: Walter Matthau was offered this doctor role, but thought it was beneath him. He didn't turn it down -- he just asked for outrageous money to play it. No deal.
Matthau went on to stardom, but Edward Andrews knew how to make a good living and become a familiar face... and...
....in 1972 when Matthau had to back out of a cameo (as an American diplomat) in Billy Wilder's Jack Lemmon movie "Avanti" -- Edward Andrews took the role.
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