Doris Day Icon

WIP:

 Love, backlash and redemption

 

Baby Boomers is the common term, especially in the United States,  for the post WWII population born between 1946 and 1964. It was a period of sustained growth and prosperity in the United States and most western democracies.  It is in this period that Doris Day had her greatest fame, from a singer in the Les Brown Band to a solo singing career and then to the hights of movie stardom. Many a Baby Boomer was exposed to Doris Day in the movies or through records as she was one of the most popular entertainers of that era.

As the early Boomers became teenagers and young adults American society was going through a social and cultural upheaval with the onset of the war in Vietnam , the sexual revolution, the Civil rights movement, followed by the Women’s movement and so on. The Sixties, especially the late Sixties, was the time when many young people rejected their parent’s values and tastes in music , films and so on. as being hoplessly old-fashioned. Since Doris Day was one of the biggest and brightest stars and a favourite with their parent’s generation then she ,too, had to be rejected.

In 1968, as Doris Day’s movie career ended and although she was still very popular with the American public, it was not cool anymore, especially amongst the young people, to admit you liked Doris Day. For many people, Boomers included,  Doris Day became a guilty pleasure. You might like her in private, but you’d never admit it in public.

  The following article by Louis Black in the Austin Chronicle illustrates the contradictory feelings Boomers have towards Doris Day:

Years ago, while casually watching this film very late one night, I was stunned. Doris Day, having romantic problems, goes into the ship’s bar, orders a drink, and begins to sing. Her performance opened me up to Day. I had already been through the two basic Doris Day stages experienced by my generation. As a kid, there was nothing more fun than going with the family to see Day in The Pajama Game (1957) with John Raitt (Bonnie’s dad) or That Touch of Mink (1962) with Cary Grant. We especially loved the collaborative relationships, the Day/Rock Hudson films — Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1962), and Send Me No Flowers (1964) — and the Day/ James Garner ones — The Thrill of It All (1963) and Move Over, Darling (1963). Later, I came to hate Day. Seeing her as the epitome of Hollywood’s vision of sexless suburban conformity, I thought she was the Harriet Nelson of the big screen. Watching Romance opened my eyes. As Groucho Marx once said, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” It’s not that she’s a vamp here, there’s just an undeniable sexiness and intensity. I spent a couple of decades, after this revelation, rewatching Day (as she was beginning to be rediscovered by feminist critics, including a 1980 British Film Institute dossier, Move Over Misconceptions: Doris Day Reappraised). Her later work resonated differently; I realized she was more in control, more powerful, more on her own. I came to appreciate the body of her work, the contradictions and tensions in her films that enrich the humor. Romance is the more simple beginning. Trust me, the charms here are gentle.

Scott Holleran, in his article ”From Luke to Anakin: Growing Up on ‘Star Wars’”(May 18, 2005) explains the sociopolitical situation at the time of the release of the first Star War’s movie  

That raises the cultural context, which was the war in Vietnam, initiated by communists and bungled by politicians, and the Watergate scandal, which magnified the minutiae just when America needed to get serious about its philosophy.
But America was in the grip of the hippies, who held American values in contempt, and they were having an impact in Hollywood. Fiery Katharine Hepburn and sunny Doris Day had all but departed from pictures, versatile Sidney Poitier had been vilified in his prime for being an Uncle Tom, and classy Cary Grant and upright Gary Cooper had given way to sniveling, squinting anti-heroes. The hum of a light saber firing up was a pleasant change from the sound of shrill hippies and their cinematic counterparts screaming in our faces.
Star Wars delivered a tonic for the time: sweeping music, opening scroll and a heap of hokey dialog set to purposeful action with enough optimism to cleanse the stink of Woodstock for a long time.
Bringing self-confident heroes back to life, Star Wars engaged them in vital pursuits and its catch phrase—”May the Force Be With You”—was an affirmative ‘chin-up’ for a nation deluged by the drug culture. The intellectuals gave us Annie Hall; the middle class—a guy from Modesto—gave us Star Wars. It was a choice between cocaine and the Millennium Falcon. It was not a tough call.

 

Writing for the Wll Street Journal Opinion Page, Mark Lewis in his article ”The baby boomers snubbed a sexpot. She deserves an Oscar” calls for the reconciliation of the Boomers with Doris Day.

Julianne Moore made the 1950s seem sexy again in “Far From Heaven,” for which she was just nominated for an Oscar. But Hollywood is not quite ready to reconcile with the decade’s original sex goddess. No, it wasn’t Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. The era’s biggest female star was the perky sexpot Doris Day, who reigned as America’s sweetheart until she was jilted in brutal fashion when the baby boomers came of age. To make amends, a campaign has been launched to award her an honorary Oscar. Alas, it won’t happen this year; they’re giving one instead to Peter O’Toole, who doesn’t even want it.
Ms. Day’s name has been evoking sneers since the late ’60s, when the boomers hijacked the culture and jettisoned as irredeemably lame everything their parents had valued. Prominent on that list were chastity and its foremost exemplar. Nowadays the boomers are themselves the parents of teenagers, and they no longer frown on chastity with the same vigor. But they are not yet willing to bring Ms. Day in from the cold.

It’s odd that “Doris Day” remains a byword for the opposite of sex. Her period of stardom coincided almost exactly with the baby boom, when exuberant procreation was the national pastime. She presided over this fecund era like a freckle-faced fertility goddess, exuding pheromones that lured men into matrimony.
She peaked with a series of sex comedies beginning with “Pillow Talk” in 1959, which earned Ms. Day her only Oscar nomination. She didn’t win the statuette, but for the next half-decade she was America’s No. 1 box-office star. The pill had just been introduced, Helen Gurley Brown was heating up the bestseller lists with “Sex and the Single Girl,” yet winsome Doris Day was the No. 1 box-office star in Hollywood. She generally portrayed a successful career woman pursued by a chauvinist (usually Rock Hudson), to whom she eventually decides to give herself without benefit of clergy. Plot complications delay their tryst, and by the time they finally end up in bed, they are married.
These plots were farcical but not necessarily farfetched; there were still a fair number of upwardly mobile virgins around in the early ’60s, and Ms. Day was their champion. She made domesticity seem sexy. But by 1966, the swelling cohort of boomers was taking over, and their idea of sexy was Raquel Welch bursting out of her fur bikini in “One Million Years B.C.” To the young boomers, middle-aged Doris Day was utterly implausible as an object of lust. She was . . . well, their mother.
She might have turned that to her advantage by accepting the Mrs. Robinson role in “The Graduate,” but she rejected it as too vulgar. Suddenly, Doris Day was culturally irrelevant. She made her last film in 1968, segueing to television and then to retirement.

She later cooperated with a biographer who established that the Chastity Queen was quite fond of sex–and she emphatically did not believe in waiting until marriage. No less a cultural arbiter than John Updike admitted that as a young man he was smitten by Ms. Day’s persona. All to no avail; her cheery-yet-chaste image remains fixed in the national memory. “The words ‘Doris Day’ get a reaction, often adverse,” Mr. Updike wrote. “They are an incantation, and people who have no reason to disdain her fine entertainer’s gifts shy from her as a religious force.”
It was Ms. Day’s misfortune to be the world’s biggest movie star at just the moment when the world turned upside down. To counterculture insurgents, she exemplified the old regime–and she still does, decades later. Many boomers cling tenaciously to their cherished memory of the ’60s as a heroic rejection of the forces of repression. They overthrew Doris Day, didn’t they? Rather a meager accomplishment in retrospect, yet they are loath to give it up. That explains why Hollywood’s graying hipsters declined to honor her at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.
The ’50s instead will be represented by Julianne Moore. But Ms. Day’s cause will be better served if Ms. Moore loses the Best Actress award to Renee Zellweger of “Chicago.” The wholesome-yet-hot Zellweger is an updated Doris Day type–and as it happens she will follow up “Chicago” with “Down With Love,” an homage to the “Pillow Talk” genre. If “Down With Love” is well received, that could set the stage for Ms. Day to accept her first Oscar at next year’s ceremony, just in time for her 80th birthday.
These honorary statuettes routinely are handed out to the likes of Ralph Bellamy and Mickey Rooney; it would not defile the academy to give one to Doris Day. Nor would it unduly discomfit the boomers to finally make their peace with the ’50s, by reconciling with their parents’ favorite female star. Bring back the queen, if only for a day.    February 13, 2003
Mr. Lewis is an editor at Forbes.com.

 

The following is some of the reaction to Mark Lewis’ commentary.  

 

Day Was Great

M. V.- Asheboro

Yeah, she was a hottie! Even Al Hitchcock, that connoisseur of bodacious blondes, featured her in “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” and she looked good in that one too.

Doris Day had the persona that reminded me of the kind of girls I used to date, before being happily married (of course): Gives you a little “nibble,” but slaps the hand away if you were reaching for the danger zone. Old-fashioned by today’s standards!

Yes, it is OK to wait for marriage, and it would be great if more of the current movies/actors would advocate this. Ms. Day may not have practiced this in her private life, but chose her roles to reflect this in her film career.

 

Day Was My Idol
M.I. - Chicago
Growing up–now 54–I always wanted to be Doris Day. She set the standards in “my time” for beauty, class and sex appeal and bright personality. She also had the figure to die for and did not have to bare all to let one know what was hiding under her gorgeous clothes. She could also sing and I still enjoy hearing “Secret Love” played on the radio from time to time.

Now she’s a “retired” animal lover who puts her money where her mouth running her pet-friendly hotel in Carmel.

Truly a class act and hopefully will be honored one day by Hollywood 

 

Day Taught Me My Mother’s Lessons
C.C. - Dallas
I’m a baby boomer, born in 1951, and Doris Day is still one of my favorite actresses. I love her movies. Some of my most cherished memories are going to the theater with my mother to see the newest Doris Day movie. She represented all the things my mother was trying to teach me–always do the things you do for your own reasons and not someone else’s; in the end try to solve the problem and not be the problem; don’t take yourself too seriously; and in the end the love in your life is the biggest part of your life.

Hollywood rejected Doris Day because they take themselves too seriously. I do admit that I admired Doris Day privately, until my husband told me that he thinks she is the sexiest actress in his lifetime. He is a baby boomer too, and is not a particular fan of blondes. Now we unashamedly enjoy her movies together. She does deserve an Oscar and a lifetime achievement award and a lot of admiration because she is a quality human being and has led a wonderful life. And don’t forget what a wonderful big band jazz singer she was. She had her own unique style that still sounds great today

 

Why the Boomers Shunned Day
P.C . Danboro
I would posit that the real reason so many of the baby boomers shunned Doris Day (aside from their inherent ignorance) is that they secretly wanted her in a way one does not feel about one’s elders.

Even in her 40, Doris Day was a real beauty, with intelligence, wit and charm to match. She was the kind of women one wanted to marry, with a sex appeal that rested on more than just cleavage in a fur bikini

 

Great Voice
M,C. - Howell
It would have been nice if you mentioned Ms. Day’s prowess as a singer, really her primary claim to fame. There’s an album from the late ’50s on which she sings Gershwin, Kern, Porter, etc. that is really fabulous, especially “Hooray for Hollywood, that phony super-Coney Hollywood.” So I’m 58, what can you do?

 

Honor Day
F.J.D. - Baltimore
Yes. Yes. Yes.

I must admit that I am a boomer but unlike most of my generation Doris Day has always sparkled my imagination.

An Academy Award, even an honorary one is earned based on either a performance or a body of work. If one looks back on the film career of Ms. Day one will see a talent that grew. From cute girl next door films to sultry singer to wife etc. That she was a number one box office attraction for many years is a plus but not the icing. Rather, it was her performances. The audience believed what they saw on the screen. We believed her to be the characters she portrayed.

To me that is the mark of a good actor. The ability to act a role and to have the audience forget that an actor is on the screen but rather the character is.

Hollywood, please wake up and smell, don’t eat the daisies and honor a women who honored you so well for so long.
Smitten
N. V. - Ohio
I am 51, and I acknowledge–heartily–that as a boy and later a teenager I was quite smitten with Doris Day. Still am, in fact.

She’ll Decline
L.R.W. - Miss.
If Doris Day is still the classy lady I think she is, she won’t accept the “honorary” Oscar. Just a guess.

Day to Grasp the Grail
T. S. - Wash.
I completely agree with Mark Lewis–give her an Oscar. She’s earned it. My wife and I just recently watched “Send Me No Flowers.” I’d forgotten what a charming performer Ms. Day was! My favorite comedy is “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” yet I found myself laughing out loud quite often during “Send Me No Flowers.

From the above articles and letters it is nice to see that not all Boomers snubbed Doris Day. The late sixties and early seventies were a time of great social upheaval and many young people were rejecting the idols of their parents and stars they themselves might have loved. As some writers have mentioned, Doris Day had the misfortune of being the number one star in America as these events were unfolding.

At the same time the inteligentsia of the day deemed certain stars unhip. An example of that can be seen in the writings of film critic Pauline Kael who was no fan of Doris Day. If you wanted to be a hipster you certainly had to reject stars such as Doris Day who, to them, represented old-fashioned values.

By rejecting Doris Day they threw out the baby with the bath water. As Molly Haskell observed in From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies , the post Doris Day Hollywood was not too friendly to female stars. The late Sixties and most of the Seventies can be deemed as the Dark Ages for women in film. 

  Could redemption be close at hand?

We’re all Doris Day now by Louisa Pearson , The Scotsman aug.27 2003

When Doris Day snuggled up to Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk back in 1959, the film was billed as a “sophisticated sex comedy” and posters warned “leave the children at home for this one”. As an interior decorator working in New York City, Day represented a thoroughly modern girl, irate at Hudson’s bachelor who ties up their party phone line with his constant phoning of girlfriends. By the end of the film they realise they’re made for each other, but Day doesn’t give up her independence without a fight. Pillow Talk was the first of several bedroom farces which tuned into the loosening of morals in Middle America. Fast forward almost half a century and the Doris Day-style heroine is back with a vengeance.
If Doris Day and US TV sitcom goddess Lucille Ball are back in fashion, perhaps it’s because modern women can share their best traits - the fast-talking, smart-dressing, businesslike behaviour - without feeling constrained by them.
This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/s2.cfm?id=940602003