Saturdays with the Stars: Doris Day

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  Last month, we discussed Audrey Hepburn, a Belgian-born actress who would eventually become the most beloved actress in America.  This month, we're going to talk about a performer who also retired for decades after her stardom (refusing virtually all public appearances, including an Oscar & a Kennedy Center Honor), but in her heyday, enjoyed financial success at the box office that was pretty much unparalleled while she ruled as an "America's Sweetheart" for well over a decade.  This month's star is Doris Day.

Day was born the daughter of a music teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was named after actress Doris Kenyon.  While initially she pursued dance, a car accident & a broken leg put an end to that, and she started to sing on radio programs and eventually in acts with famed bandleaders like Bob Crosby & Les Brown, and eventually became a performer on Bob Hope's weekly radio program.  During this time, she signed a contract with Warner Brothers, making a series of forgettable musicals while also having massive success as a radio star (in 1952, if you asked people whether or not Day was an actress or a singer, they would have undoubtedly said the latter).  Calamity Jane was a monster success for Warner Brothers, getting Day her biggest hit song to date with "Secret Love," and it was enough that Day decided she was ready to leave her contract with Warner and strike out on her own in the mid-1950's.

Day would then enjoy one of the longest, most successful runs at the top of the American box office of any actor in the history of the movies, being in the Top 10 most successful actors all the way until 1966, when at the age of 44, she was operating in a field usually reserved for actresses a decade younger than her.  Day's legacy is fascinating in retrospect.  Famously conservative and one could even admit a bit prudish, her films have not survived in the same way as someone like Hepburn's, as her persona was built on a girl-next-door appeal that occasionally ran against the real-life woman behind the part.  Oscar Levant once said of Day "I knew her before she was a virgin" and indeed, Day toward the end of her career had to wear the snarky moniker "the world's oldest virgin" considering she kept playing naive women onscreen.  This month, though, I want to talk about Day's unusual personal life (which had some really rough chapters, including her son being involved with the Manson Family and her third husband squandering her fortune), and maybe see if there was more to the actress than the homespun America's Sweetheart persona let on.