Doris Day Icon

 

 From the 1948 Michael Curtiz’ Romance on the High Seas, which made Doris Day a star to With Six You get Eggroll in 1968, which spelled the end of her film career, Doris Day ruled the silver screen as very few others have.

Doris Day reinvented herself several times during her 20 year movie career. Initially, she played the sunny , energetic musical star or the Girl Next Door with a few film noirs sprinkled in (Storm Warning, Young man with a Horn), then came the wonderful gender bending Calamity Jane which became a musical classic. In the mid-fifties dramatic roles followed: Love me or Leave Me , The Man Who Knew Too Much and Julie . 

The end of the decade and the early sixties provide Doris Day with roles that made her a legend. The romantic comedienne was born and Doris Day became the gold standard. It started with Teacher’s Pet, but was most representitive with Pillow Talk , the beginning of the trilogy with Rock Hudson that made them both the top movie stars in the world.

From 1960 to 1968 Doris Day played many different roles: the single career woman, wife and mother, widow, spy, sheep farmer, Broadway actress and so on.

In 1967 Doris Day turned down the role of Mrs. Robinson in the film, The Graduate. The part went to Anne Bancroft and both she and the film were a critical success. Was it a tactical error on Doris Day ’s part to have turned down this film?  This we will never know. However it is interesting to note that ”Bancroft was ambivalent about her appearance in The Graduate; she stated in several interviews that the role overshadowed all of her other work.”