my favorite movie of hers was Midnight Lace with Rex Harrison... it was creepy... scary... not your typical sunshiny Doris Day movie... i also liked Young at Heart with Frank Sinatra...
"This film was chosen by Ross Hunter, the producer of her hit comedy, Pillow Talk. Playing the role in the film had a great effect on her physically. As the expert she is, she tried to develop a mental image of the woman she was playing and the part became very real to her. She said, I became that woman to the best of my ability. To create the fear which the character I played had to project, I re-created the fear in myself which I had once felt in my own life. I relived it. It was painful and upsetting. In one particular point in the emotional climax of the film, Doris has a very dramatic scene on a descending staircase. She says, I wasnt acting hysterical, I was hysterical, so at the end of the scene I collapsed in a real faint. Production of the film had to be suspended for a few days. http://www.dorisday.net/midnight_lace.html
Doris, I have read, was thinking about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband and father of her only child- who beat her in the stomach and threw her across the room, almost causing her to have a miscarriage. .