Posted on 05/13/2019 7:17:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The actress, who has died aged 97, worked with the greats of Hollywood’s golden era and rivalled the crossover success of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley
The face of Doris Day, eerily beautiful in all its buttery-blond wholesomeness, beamed over Hollywood in the 50s and early 60s like a gigantic roadside billboard advertising the American way. In that extraordinary period of white America’s postwar prosperity and patriotism, Doris Day was the biggest box office and recording star in the US: easily equalling the music-movie crossover success of alpha males such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, although somehow without being entitled to the guys’ iconic status.
Day’s career was a roll call of studio-era greatness. She worked with Michael Curtiz (who discovered her) and Alfred Hitchcock, and played opposite James Stewart, Clark Gable, James Cagney and Cary Grant. But her uncoolness – a vital, mysterious ingredient of her success even in her extraordinary heyday – was soon held against her. No one ever says that Doris Day is their favourite star, in the way that no one says vanilla is their favourite ice-cream flavour. Yet a heck of a lot of vanilla ice-cream gets sold.
Day was utterly without irony and she radiated a can-do straightforwardness, optimism and good nature that resonated with millions of filmgoers. She rolled up her sleeves and got on with whatever she was contractually obliged to do: a lot of good pictures, one or two brilliant ones – of which, more in a moment – and a lot of embarrassing nonsense. But she didn’t complain. Day was in her way the presidential first lady of Hollywood’s early 60s: dignified, a good sport, lovable.
John Updike, a fan of Day’s, found something fascinating and alluring in just this niceness.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
May she Rest in Peace.
Yours, Darla & TMN78247
And, oh my God, she was a REPUBLICAN. That’s why the effeminate writer didn’t like her movies.
Peggy Lipton and someone else, now Doris.
Lena Horne passed on May 9.
Lena Horne passed in 2010.
Thanks. There was another thread just awhile ago, and someone else raised the issue of “they go in threes” and that other person mentioned Lipton, Day and then Lena Horne. I hadn’t come across a Lena Horne story, so I quickly checked Wikipedia. Yup! May 9! Sure thing!
I just completed neglected to notice the 2010 thingy.
That was it.
Lena Horne.
Thanks.
A fine lady... today’s actresses needs to take a page from her.
I loved them too, but my favorite was “Send Me No Flowers” - hilarious! And applies to me a whole lot, too.
Actually I love when she really sings. Love the Moonlight Bay series.
And I will put in a bad word for a couple - “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” was amazingly annoying on one hand and boring on the other, with awful strange treatment of the kids. And “That Touch of Mink” - immoral, and actually also kind of boring. Both these are usually considered top-notch DD movies but after really watching them in the last few years, well, you already read.
Who is Lipton?
While she was great in movies, she was one of the great female vocalists of the 20th century.
Shanghai--Doris Day (1951)
She eas a close, platonic friend of Rock Hudson and visited him on his death bed.
Lipton co-starred in the late 60s/early 70s cop show Mod Squad and later on Twin Peaks.
I’m guessing the Guardian was a multicultural heaven in the 50’ and 60’s. Racism is still alive in their reporting though.
First - when was China at war with US?
Second, I wouldn’t be too nit-picky about the subject. People at that point were still used to Shanghai just being another exotic locale, not a communist territory, which only happened very recently.
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