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 SEARCHING FOR DORIS DAY  At the Top: The cover of Doris Day's new album, her first in decades. Lower photo: How Doris Day may look today in her Carmel neighborhood. |
Day In, Day Out...Where
is the elusive superstar?
By GERALD NACHMAN
of TheColumnists.com
When my old college crony, Randy Poe, was in San Francisco recently, we searched for something different to do, a compelling if foolish pursuit, and somehow came up with the bizarre idea to track down Doris Day, Carmel’s most famous citizen (along with Clint Eastwood, a far more visible presence there).
It was but a two and a half hour drive
to seek out America’s most elusive pop idol, now nearly
90, the J.D. Salinger of pop singers.
Our odyssey began when I heard the reclusive Day interviewed
on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” by Scott Simon for
a new album--her first in about 20 years--to benefit her animal
rescue foundation, the Doris Day Animal League. Like many men
of a certain age, Simon was a bit gaga in Day’s presence
in what amounted to a major scoop, settling for a few gushy fan
magazine questions. But he salvaged the interview by confronting
Day with the famous Oscar Levant line, “I knew Doris
before she was a virgin,” to which Doris emitted a hollow
chuckle and said, “Oh, Oscar was always so funny.”
The other Lady Day sounded as contained and inscrutable as ever,
all her marbles intact. Not even an insult could crack the perfectly
preserved `50s façade of the original Miss Congeniality,
Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff of Cincinnati. She was the decade’s
favorite good girl (to Marilyn Monroe’s bad girl), who upon
being anointed a star, said, “If I can do it, you can
do it!”
And Day did it after becoming a singer by accident--literally,
when recovering from an auto crash in 1937 that damaged her legs
and ended her dancing career. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald in
the hospital inspired Day to try singing. After singing in small
bands she joined Les Brown’s “Band of Renown”
in 1945 and recorded her first hit, “Sentimental Journey”
(the background music when you call her Carmel hotel, the Cypress
Inn).
On NPR, Day didn’t sound diffident or defensive, just resolutely
nice and polite, as expected. In her films, no matter how miffed,
she would cross her arms petulantly and furrow an untroubled
blonde brow.
I was never a Day fan--my `50s songbird
of choice was Joni James--but most men found her virginal persona
a massive turn-on. In the American Sweetheart sweepstakes of
the era, I leaned toward Debbie Reynolds, whose spicy manner
somehow eluded Day, despite all of her pretty little pouts.
To me, though, Doris Day was a plastic Barbie Doll in that pre-Barbie
age--blond, bland and sexless, too Waspy white bread, pretty
on the surface without much of interest underneath--sort of a
grownup cheerleader. She was calculatedly cute, an efficient
but uninteresting singer whose slightly husky voice made her
seem semi-vulnerable in songs like “Secret Love,” “Que
Sera, Sera” and other Hit Parade titles that no longer leap
to mind. On the old “Your Hit Parade” radio show, she
was introduced as “the girl who invented the dazzling
smile.” “Que Sera, Sera” (aka “Whatever
Will Be, Will Be”) is being inducted into the Grammy Hall
of Fame next month, a few weeks after Day receives a Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
So it matters little what I think--clearly, most of America still
adores Doris.
Throughout the Fifties, she was the juke box princess and ranked
among the top-ranked female box office stars of all time. Argues
Randy Poe: “Nobody is in Day’s class. She is the
final voice of every song, from ‘Sentimental Journey’
to ‘Night and Day,” and the endgame for ‘Hooray
for Hollywood’ and ‘In the Wee Small Hours.’”
Of all the `50s songbirds, Day had by far the biggest screen
career; it’s hard to even recall any others who even made
a dent in films--Julie London, Polly Bergen--but that’s
about it.
I liked her better as a singer than an actress, especially in
those squishy, unconvincing assembly line Rock Hudson romantic
comedies. Even in her meatier dramatic films-- “The Man
Who Knew Too Much,” “Midnight Lace,” “Love
Me or Leave Me”--Day seemed unable to express anything much
beyond girlish anxiety. In “Calamity Jane” Jane’s
most calamitous act was stamping her foot.
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in "Pillow Talk," which Nachman considers a "squishy, unconvincing" romantic comedy. |
In her 39 films (from “Romance on the High Seas” in 1948 with Jack Carson to “With Six You Get Egg Roll” in 1968 with Brian Keith), she played opposite every major leading man--Clark Gable, James Stewart, Jimmy Cagney, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Richard Widmark, Jack Lemmon, Gordon MacRae, even Ronald Reagan. Mike Nichols tried to snag Day for the Mrs. Robinson role that Anne Bancroft wound up with in "The Graduate." (Had Day said yes it would have turned her stalled career around but she declined it on moral grounds.) She was Albert Brooks’s first choice as the feisty title character in “Mother” (1996), which her brunette rival Debbie Reynolds landed.
Los Angeles Times movie critic Kenneth Turan insists that Day was underrated as an actress, especially in “Love Me or Leave Me,” about singer Ruth Etting, an edgier role than the stereotypical Day screen persona. Turan says Day “made interesting choices and made interesting films.” It’s hard to think of any beside the Etting film, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “Midnight Lace.” She generally settled for safe comedies, but rumor has it she was asked to star in “Murder, She Wrote,” “Dynasty” and other series.
To reacquaint myself with the Day oeuvre, and to make sure I hadn’t missed something about her great appeal the first time around, I watched “Pillow Talk,” the quintessential 1959 Day-Hudson film. Leonard Maltin’s video guide calls it “an imaginative sex comedy.” I don’t think so. No sex and precious little comedy. Playing an interior decorator opposite the equally pleasant and plastic Rock Hudson (sporting an unpersuasive macho beard), Doris was all that I remembered--twinkly, pert as the dickens, buttoned up to the neck in sensible pink knit suits with a perky little hat, not a hair, a line or a thought out of place. What was it about her that men like John Updike found so irresistible and yet so totally eluded me?
Doris was semi-sexy in a determinedly un-sexy way--a terminal tease in those prim and proper outfits she wore like full-length body armor, a kind of cloth chastity belt that resisted prying eyes and thus inflamed the male fantasy libido; Doris was the ultimate `50s female challenge, all coy come-on. Her chipper, chummy goody two-shoes manner must have been what got guys so excited, cocking her head like an adorable little puppy that demands to be petted. That neatly buttoned-up look begged to be unbuttoned.
Locating the fabled Day in the flesh would be a colossal coup, so we set out on safari for the elusive Doris, a Carmel resident since her retirement in the 1970s. She’s now an unbelievable 89, but on the NPR interview Day sounded far younger and still perky as all get out. The “brand new” album she was touting contains unreleased or unpublished songs recorded many decades ago, including the CD’s title ballad, “My Heart,” by her late son Terry Melcher; all proceeds go to her animal rescue foundation.
For the book he once planned to write on the girl singers of the 1950s, Poe had spoken to Melcher, who promised to get him to Day, but Melcher died before that could happen. Poe is a walking Wikipedia on all things Doris Day--number of films made (39), albums released (29), songs sung (656), weeks in the Top 40 (450) and for a decade among the Top Ten box office stars--plus personal trivia, to wit: Clark Gable told Day she was the only actress who ever turned down an invitation to his home; but Gable may have told that to all the women who said no thanks, as a face-saving ploy. Poe maintains, “Nobody has a more definitive American ass. Gable referred to her cheeks as ‘morsels’ and Bob Hope called her ‘JB’ for ‘jut butt.’”
Her pursuers, adds Poe, included everyone from Edward G. Robinson to Dick Van Dyke, and her literary stalkers range from John Updike (who wrote a famous ode to Doris entitled “Suzy Creamcheese”) to A.E. Hotchner (who wrote the only competent biography of her, but she emerges untouched and terminally opaque), and even Raymond Chandler is said to have chased her.
Poe is conversant in all matters regarding Day’s four marriages and skirmishes with her manager/husband (Marty Melcher), who bilked her out of a fortune that led to a landmark lawsuit she won, the largest civil law settlement in California history ($20 million) to that date (1969). Poe says Melcher and the lawyer, who later went to jail, committed Day to appear five years on a vapid TV sitcom she hated (“It was awful,” she winced), “The Doris Day Show,” plus TV specials and other obligations she didn’t even know about but had to fulfill to pay attorneys and other debts. Much later, she hosted a short-lived TV talk show in Carmel far more to her liking, “Doris Day’s Best Friends,” who turned out to be animal pals.
Day conquered career and personal reversals with her characteristically gosh-darn resolve, determined not to let the demons drag her down. She told one interviewer that when she feels depressed she goes to a certain chair in her house and swats away the blues. “I won’t walk around with a long face.” Those therapeutic moments in her chair, she claims, rids her mind “of all bad thoughts of the past.”
So, as we pulled into the Cypress Inn, the Carmel hotel founded in 1929 that Day co-owns--we were armed with a treasure trove of Doris Day data. The Inn is a large but cozy Mediterranean design that feels like a fancy pueblo, with patios and a garden. It’s straight out of a Doris Day movie, with a crackling fire in the lobby, afternoon tea and posters of Doris Day movies everywhere. A silent TV screen in “Terry’s Bar” depicts her movies on a continuous loop and a small glass case in the lobby holds Doris Day artifacts--a Doris and Rock “Pillow Talk” doll set (plastic, fittingly), a set of Doris Day paper dolls, a trophy and trinkets, LPs, books and one album “hand signed” by DD for $150.
The Cypress Inn is a mini-Doris Day shrine, but it isn’t tacky or obtrusive, as tasteful and tidily turned out as Doris herself. “Husbands and pets welcome!” proclaims a postcard (maybe a little dig at her fabled husband problems, or possibly a sly inside joke about her gay female following thanks to “Secret Love,” the lesbian anthem.) There were dogs (but no husbands) on leashes in the hallways; Day once owned 17 canines.
Many guests looked like regulars if not necessarily Doris Day freaks like Poe, who grilled two desk clerks about Day and found they had never set eyes on her at the hotel in eight years but knew where she lived--out of sight on a circuitous country road behind a golf course. Poe instantly decided we must go there, but later happily changed his mind. As chauffeur, I imagined getting arrested for trespassing on Queen Doris’s property -though that would have lent a little needed drama to our quixotic quest.
We strolled down Ocean Avenue and found an art gallery owner at Terwilliger & Jones with a fund of facts about Day, whom she had only once glimpsed from afar waving to people on the golf course near her home. Randy posed as a BBC reporter (to give him credibility) for a made-up show called “Wanderings.” Randy was convincing and disarming in his golf cap, scribbling notes while engaging her in conversation about Doris.
The gallery owner said Day never comes to town but helpfully called a friend who popped right over to talk to us. No, she had never seen Day either but is a friend of Joan Fontaine, who also lives in Carmel, is now 96 and not at all reclusive--indeed, quite happy to talk if you don’t mention a certain sister, Olivia De Havilland. Poe plans to get to Fontaine later. James Garner is another Hollywood refugee hiding out in Carmel, a recluse haven that, until recently, also included Day’s fellow animal rights activist Kim Novak, who has taken her pet llamas and moved to Portland.
Clint Eastwood is reported saying he used to see Day shopping at Safeway, but in an online interview she says that even placid Carmel grew too “crowded” for her. She first moved here when teeming Beverly Hills overwhelmed her as she tried to bicycle about, plus she was sued for owning too many animals. Day retreated to the hills above Carmel and now stays pretty much in her estate there overlooking the golf course.
Our DD search was well-timed: the cover
of that month’s slick, ad-jammed Carmel Magazine
featured a cover story on, yes indeed, Doris Day, labeled “Carmel’s
Own American Icon,” with an inside story by Dina (Mrs. Clint)
Eastwood, who also does a column in the magazine--“Behind
the Spotlight,” which that month featured the inside dope
on the Eastwoods’ favorite pets, domestic rats. Their 2010
Christmas card depicted the Eastwood clan offering holiday greetings
holding furry rats in their hands. Sweet.
Poe vows to get to Dina via Facebook for more Day low-down. Dina,
a former local TV journalist, reveals in her exclusive puff piece
that Doris likes being remembered as “the girl next door,”
has “no health or beauty secrets” but eats lots
of fresh vegetables and yogurt and confesses she loves ice cream.
Journalists confronting Doris Day seem unable to utter a critical
word. Eastwood contends that Day “is still making headlines
today” and that “her career continues to bloom.”
She writes that Day “has no angst and no regrets about
her Hollywood fairytale.” Right.
One of the magazine photos shows the ever-radiant Doris with
short whitish-blonde hair and famed bangs--an “undated head
shot.” In a recent 2009 (clearly doctored) shot, she looks
closer to 60 than hr actual age, which is 87, but 2009 photos
on YouTube depict a sweet-faced little old white-haired lady
who bears no resemblance to the Doris Day in our heads; 87 is
87.
The only other person Poe turned up who had even a tenuous contact
with Doris was an aging jeweler who had once repaired the star’s
watch that he brought out to her car, but “only saw her
vaguely.” Nobody in Carmel seems to have ever got a
clear view of the town’s most regal citizen, who remains
a shadowy presence.
That was about it for our own Doris Day sightings but Poe remains
doggedly on the case and even if he only gets to Fontaine, who
is said to know Day, he plans to return to Carmel. He observes,
“It would be almost disappointing, anti-climactic, if
we had actually met her.” Sometimes the quest is more
intriguing than the quarry.
While our Doris Day hunt failed to turn up the secluded freckled
pop idol, be forewarned, Dodie--Randy Poe usually always gets
his woman singer. He has so far smoked out Kay Starr, Kitty Kallen,
Joni James and Patti Page. So, it’s only a matter of time
until he corners Doris Day, assuming he can get past those 17
watchdogs.
©2012 by Gerald Nachman. This column first posted Jan. 23, 2012.
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