[Dixielandjazz] Doris Day is Back!

[Robert Ringwald]

Sexy Side of the Girl Next Door
Even Doris Day is baffled by her image
by Neil McCormick
London Telegraph, August 20, 2011
There has been much excitement in some corners of The Daily Telegraph offices at
the news that Doris Day is back. Well, not back exactly. The legendary singer and
movie star is 87, and has been effectively retired from screen and stage since the
late Sixties, living a quiet life in Carmel, California, dedicated to animal welfare
charities. But she has resurfaced in the public eye, at least, with news that Day
will release a new album, My Heart, 66 years after her starmaking hit Sentimental
Journey became the soundtrack to the end of the Second World War.
Not that there is any suggestion that Day has actually been in the studio recently.
These are previously unreleased recordings produced by her only son, Terry Melcher,
before his death in 2004. How far before is not exactly clear. Day has released a
statement, saying: "I had to sing some modern songs because I had already done all
the old ones", though it is perhaps telling that Day's idea of getting down with
the kids is covering Joe Cocker's 1974 hit You Are So Beautiful.
But let's not quibble. The woman once cruelly dubbed "the world's oldest virgin"
by movie critics is back, even older, and quite possibly still virginal, in the minds
of her admirers at least. An online comment beneath the Telegraph's news story rhapsodised
about meeting "this personification of Christian beauty" in 1967, proclaiming "the
atmosphere of inherent goodness was so infectious that I smelled like lilacs for
weeks".
He's not the only one. Boys everywhere had their first crush sparked by mid-afternoon
television screenings of Calamity Jane, Young At Heart and all those tightly buttoned
romantic comedies on which she was paired with Hollywood's most closeted homosexual,
Rock Hudson, such as Pillow Talk and Send Me No Flowers -- which seemed to be based
on the premise that what happens behind closed doors is usually nothing but a misunderstanding
between consenting adults.
At the height of the supposedly Swinging Sixties, Day was the original Safe Sex symbol.
Even as the decade (and her career) came to an end, Day seemed an anachronism. She
turned down the title role of Mrs Robinson in the Dustin Hoffman coming-of-age classic,
rejecting the part of the older, alcoholic seducer on (as she put it herself) "moral
grounds". She may have been the last of her chaste kind. Even Julie Andrews eventually
got her kit off in husband Blake Edward's 1981 comedy S.O.B, which one critic dubbed
Mary Poppouts.
Whatever happened to the girl next door? The very concept seems hopelessly outdated,
perhaps because these days we all live next door to the Big Brother house, where
the latest object of national teen ardour, reality TV star Amy Childs, is showering
in her underwear with Jedward on 24 hour CCTV.
In the no-holds barred, fullfrontal modern age, the girl next door is expected to
have a dark side. Tabloids are driven by the voyeuristic pleasure of watching once
fresh-faced ingenues such as Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears or even (perhaps especially)
child stars such as Charlotte Church transform from innocent sweethearts to knowing
sexaholics.
To be fair, the stars themselves generally seem to participate enthusiastically --
shooting salacious videos and posing for men's magazines in an attempt to shift their
persona (and widen their audience) from child friendly to adult. She may have appeared
in Agent Provocateur lingerie ads astride a bucking bronco, but Kylie is probably
as close to a contemporary Doris as you can find, radiating inherent wholesomeness,
even in gold lame hotpants. Perhaps, in the end, girl-next-doorness is more to do
with a dimpled smile than dimpled buttocks.
Without getting all Germaine Greer, it is hard to imagine any modern actress or singer
wanting to be perceived as sexless. Maybe it was the same in, er, Doris's day. Musician
and comedian Oscar Levant famously joked "I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin".
She was married four times, with a colourful private life that included adulterous
affairs, nervous breakdowns and physical abuse, all hinted at in her 1975 autobiography,
Her Own Story and more brutally documented in David Kaufman's Doris Day: The Untold
Story of the Girl Next Door.
In later years, Day herself proclaimed that "my image baffles me". She endorsed cohabitation
before marriage as "just good sense" and claimed she would do it herself "if the
opportunity arose". She has remained single since divorcing her fourth husband in
1981, and has suggested that most women are animal lovers because "men are such beasts".
Doris Day is, like all human beings, much more complex than her public image ever
allowed. But to hear her soft, crystal clear singing voice gliding through lushly
orchestrated melodies on the romantic ballads of My Heart is to turn back the clock
to more innocent times, for a moment at least. It's good to have her back. Just don't
expect to see her popping up in the Big Brother house any time soon.


--Bob Ringwald
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