Calgary Herald (26/Nov/1989) - Day's talent still shines through

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• article: Day's talent still shines through
• newspaper: Calgary Herald (26/Nov/1989)
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Doris Day, James Stewart, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Article

Day's talent still shines through

She could have been Mrs. Robinson. Director Mike Nichols wanted her, and what a change of pace it would have been to see Doris Day, the screen's princess of purity, seducing Dustin Hoffman and helping him "graduate." But the grasping character turned her off.

Today, 21 years after her last film, Day remains beautiful. When she showed up at this year's Golden Globes to pick up a life achievement award, she was elegant, eloquent, the epitome of a star.

Unfortunately, she's often remembered as a joke — a '60s version of Pollyanna. "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," Oscar Levant once quipped.

The bottom line on Day is this, though: She is vastly underrated. Certainly, she was popular. Seven times, Day was the country's top actress at the box office, and four times she was the No. 1 star overall. That popularity sometimes obscured her talent.

In the 1950s, she gave four amazing performances, all available on videotape:

• In 1953, she was the feisty, good-hearted title character in Calamity Jane, offering a physically exuberant performance as a tomboy and raising the song Secret Love to standard status.

• In 1955's Love Me or Leave Me, she brought heartbreaking intensity to the role of singer Ruth Etting. She showed she could match the best — James Cagney, playing her sadistic husband.

• In 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much, she was a mother trying to reclaim her kidnapped son. As her husband, James Stewart had top billing in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, but this is really Day's movie. After learning of the boy's abduction, Day breaks down in a wrenching scene that confirmed her dramatic skill.

• In 1958's Teacher's Pet, Day plays a journalism instructor who holds her own with brash city editor Clark Gable.

But Day fell into a trap after making 1959's hugely successful Pillow Talk. In a way, the sex comedy was Day's greatest success — she received her only Oscar nomination for the film — but it was also her downfall. She tried to duplicate its success over and over.

In Pillow Talk, Day shared a party line and a battle of wills with Rock Hudson. Their sparring, if not up to Tracy-Hepburn standards, was diverting and paved the way for two more successful films, 1961's Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers in 1964.

Her other comedies were uneven. Sometimes Day's material was good: 1963's The Thrill of It All, written by Carl Reiner and directed by Norman Jewison, was a delightful send-up of advertising. More often the material was insipid: 1962's That Touch of Mink, co-starring Cary Grant, is particularly embarrassing.

There is some good news for Day fans. She has been announced for an NBC movie, Running Mates, scheduled for this season. In the film — a comedy — she will play a mayoral candidate whose opponent is the man she loves.