Doris Day: On the Sunny Side of the Street

Day in 1973

The day that Doris Day died, I did something irrational. Instead of driving straight home from work, I went out of my way and visited her childhood home.

Maybe I was half-expecting a small crowd of mourners. Elderly men and women in overcoats on a damp, overcast evening, sharing their grief over the passing of another icon from their youth.

Of course, no one was there but me. The red-brick house appeared shuttered, as did the entire neighborhood. I wondered, Do the current residents know they are living in Doris Day’s house? It’s a much different neighborhood now than in 1922, when she was born. An interstate highway rips through the center of Evanston, Ohio, now part of downtown Cincinnati. You can see the semi trucks from her front yard. Most of the residents are African-American, not German-American.

Perhaps I was the only visitor all day. But I like to think that my sentimental journey provided a smile for the girl christened Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff, wherever she might be right now while tossing pastel pillows back and forth with Rock Hudson.

Doris Day birthplace

The former Kappelhoff home, Cincinnati, Ohio

I was only a year old in 1959 when the movie Pillow Talk was released. As the 1960s progressed, I knew little about what was happening in the world. I received news of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, Haight-Ashbury, and the Watts riots via “trickle down” effect. The Cold War, for me, was Boris and Natasha from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. I’m not really a child of the Sixties. Much as I often hate to admit, I’m a child of the Silent Majority.

Doris Day was a Silent Majority cultural icon. She was conservative 1950s who spilled into the 1960s before they became “The Sixties.” She was middle-class, nuclear-family, Caucasian America; traditional, familial, uncomplicated, and safe. With her ever-present smile, twinkling eyes, golden-blonde bob haircut and California tan, she was sunshine and, in my imagination, is always clothed in canary yellow. The ending of her film Move Over, Darling says everything: she jumps in the backyard swimming pool—fully clothed—to join her husband (James Garner) and two kids. Their laughter and splashing, after finally being reunited, are as good an antidote to late 20th and early 21st century anxiety and cynicism as you’re likely to find.

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The nuclear family in Move Over, Darling (1963)

Day’s close friends called her “Clara Bixby.” Rock Hudson, her romantic co-star in three of her most well-known films, called her “Eunice.” To her parents she was Doris Kappelhoff, and to everyone else, Doris Day. Names that are simple, non-glitz, and (though she hated the term) girl-next-door. And despite her great beauty, difficult personal life, and professed dislike of her chaste image, that’s how she presented herself in her movies.  It’s telling that she turned down the juicy role of “Mrs. Robinson” in Mike Nichols’  The Graduate because she found the script “vulgar and offensive.”

Doris’s father was a philanderer who walked out on the family when she was young. (One night, in her bedroom, little Doris was a traumatized earwitness to her father’s sexual relations with a party guest in the next room.) She was married four times. Her first husband, a jazz trombonist, tried to force her to abort their unborn child, then beat her when she was eight months pregnant. She divorced her second husband, a saxophonist, because he was jealous of her success. She was married to her third husband, Martin Melcher, for 17 years. But despite producing some of her best films, his blind faith in a fraudulent attorney left her bankrupt when he died. (She fought for years to finally obtain a $6 million decision.) Her fourth husband divorced her because he was jealous of her “animal friends.”

There was the tragedy of Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS. They were good friends offscreen, and his last public appearance was in 1985 when, looking extremely frail and telling her he had no appetite, he visited “Eunice” at her home and was filmed for the short-lived cable show, Doris Day’s Best Friends.

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Dramatic turn in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Her biggest sorrow was the death of her only child, Terry Melcher, from melanoma in 2004. They were only 20 years apart and like brother and sister. Melcher was a talented music producer, working with the Byrds, Beach Boys, and Paul Revere and the Raiders, assisting with music for his mother’s movies, and producing the 1968-73 sitcom The Doris Day Show. He came close to producing songs by Charles Manson, but backed out after visiting The Family at their ranch. The house Melcher had earlier shared with actress Candice Bergen was the site of the 1969 Tate murders (although Manson denied he was targeting Melcher).

By the mid-1970s, Day had had her fill of Hollywood. She moved up the California coast to Carmel Valley, taking in stray pets and establishing the Doris Day Animal Foundation. She was also part-owner of the pet-friendly Cypress Inn. In the last few decades, she politely but steadfastly refused requests for appearances, even after receiving a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

That’s the private Day. Doris Day the entertainer took her alliterative stage name in 1939 after a song, “Day After Day.”

Doris Day Posing with Hand on Chin

“Clara,” in 1949 (Bettman Archive/Getty Images)

She became a popular ballad singer with Les Brown and His Band of Renown, scoring a huge hit with the WWII homecoming theme, “Sentimental Journey.” She had a confident and clean singing style, modeling herself after Ella Fitzgerald. She was a natural. In a rare audio interview with Turner Classic Movies, she said she never experienced stage fright, either while singing or acting.

As great a recording artist as she was, though, it is her 1950s musicals and 1960s romantic comedies that she is remembered for, especially the latter. They’re G-rated, but sophisticated; light and fluffy confections, with upbeat music, colorful clothing, and animated opening graphics, maybe a little Day singing, and lots of playful romance. (Called “sex comedies” when they were filmed, the word “sex” referred more to gender than physical lovemaking.) The plots generally revolve around a trite and temporary misunderstanding between Day and her partner.

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Classic Day expression from Lover Come Back (1961)

These innocent predicaments allow Day to skillfully shift emotions between domestic contentedness and exasperation or outrage. The humor comes because you know what will transpire before Day’s character does. Then, when the revelation hits, you get to see her puff her cheeks, swivel her head sideways, plant her hands on her hips, and stomp away briskly, her back stiff as a board.

While Day is the undisputed focal point in these movies, a key humorous element is her leading men. As a foil for her, they had to be handsome, but in a warm, non-threatening way. Rock Hudson (Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers), James Garner (The Thrill of It All and Move Over, Darling), and Rod Taylor (Do Not Disturb and The Glass Bottom Boat) all fit the bill, because they have a puckish playfulness, especially Hudson, who was extremely adept at light comedy.

But it is Doris Day who carries these films. The great Steve Allen called her “one of the very best comedy actresses of all time” but one who “hasn’t gotten the critical appreciation to which she is entitled.” Steve, you are correct on both counts.  And longitudes predicts she will ultimately get this recognition.

Since her recent death at age 97, some male writers have grappled with just how sexy was this “World’s Oldest Virgin,” as she was mockingly labeled (though she actually advocated living together before marriage…four marriages might have something to do with that). Sex and sexuality are an obsession in our post-sexual revolution age, when mere pillow “talk” is considered boring. I won’t dwell on this topic, other than to assure the aforesaid writers that—while I never knew Day before she was a virgin—in my testosterone-soaked eyes she was hot, in both looks and personality, and she got hotter as she got older. Anne Bancroft is talented and beautiful, but it’s a shame adolescent males couldn’t enjoy Clara as “Mrs. Robinson.” And if you writers don’t agree, you can click this.

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One of Day’s most fun flicks, The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

***

As with The Lawrence Welk Show and Petticoat Junction, which I’ve also profiled on longitudes, Doris Day’s films are a safe harbor for me. They carry me back to a time of innocence, to family and fireside. It’s not because I’m a “male animal” who pines for the days when women were merely Pollyannaish partners to the “stronger sex.” (My career-minded wife and liberated daughter also love her films and introduced me to several. My macho son, on the other hand, is a different story.) It’s more because they are uncomplicated, wholesome, funny, and fun. They are a shelter from the storm, and we all need shelter, especially in these turbulent, less rational times.

While I’m thankful for the “The Sixties” and the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., Grateful Dead, détente, civil rights, equal rights, gay rights, copyrights, etc., I’m also thankful for animal rights and Doris Kappelhoff of Greenlawn Avenue in Evanston, Ohio for the safe harbor she’s given us.

Que será, será!

***

After retiring from the spotlight in the 1970s, Doris Day devoted herself to the cause of animal welfare. I gave a small donation. If you’d also like to help, here’s the link: Doris Day Animal Foundation.

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(Silver Screen Collection/Moviepix/Getty)

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“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Justice Fascism:” A Comedy-Drama in Four Acts

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Cast of Characters:

Actress Lillian Gish
Producer/Director D.W. Griffith
Bowling Green State University administrator (“Mr. Gobsmack”)
Black Lives Matter (BLM) representative
Black Student Union (BSU) representative
Two anonymous soldiers

ACT 1
February 8, 1915: The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Lillian Gish: “I don’t know, Mr. Griffith, this moving picture could cause trouble.”

D.W. Griffith: “Oh, come now, Miss Lillian. Just because it depicts the Ku Klux Klan as saviors? This is 1915 and no one cares. Who in Robert E. Lee’s name is this ‘Jim Crow’ fellow anyway? Besides, it’s not my fault…it’s the guy who wrote the book.”

Lillian Gish: “Well, despite the unusual interpretation of history, it is an awe-inspiring achievement. Critics are already calling it a motion picture landmark. It’s a shame sound hasn’t been invented yet, so people would be able to hear my voice.”

D.W. Griffith: “And Lil, you’ve done so well in Birth, I would like you to appear in my next epic project.”

Lillian Gish: “Mr. Griffith! Thank you! My friends back in Ohio will be so thrilled! What is the title?”

D.W. Griffith: “I’m calling it Intolerance.”

griffith

ACT 2
June 11, 1976: The GISH FILM THEATRE is dedicated at Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio, U.S.A.

Bowling Green administrator: “…And in this glorious two-hundredth year since our nation’s birth, we humbly dedicate this new theatre to two of Ohio’s own, legendary actresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish, for their combined 136 years on stage and screen!”

(loud applause)

Lillian Gish: “Thank you, Mr. Gobsmack. I accept this elegant honor in honor of my late sister and myself. Dorothy was a better actress than I, and I only wish she, and mother, could be here to bask in this lovely moment.”

Bowling Green administrator: “And tomorrow we will be presenting you with the honorary degree of Doctor of Performing Arts!”

(more loud applause)

Lillian Gish: “Dear me, you are all so very kind. I have never been a doctor before. By the way, can everyone out there hear my voice?”

ACT 3
February 2019: Black Lives Matter approaches Black Student Union at Bowling Green State University

BLM representative: “Put your smartphone down, brother. We gotta remove another intimidating and hostile name. We’ve been spendin’ time researchin’. Do you know who Lillian Gish is?”

BSU representative: “Uh…doesn’t she have a cooking show?”

BLM representative: “No! She was a white actress from Ohio! Did a bunch of silent films! She was in that film Birth of a Nation!”

BSU representative: “Huh? You mean that racist Civil War movie with Cary Grant?”

BLM representative: “No! You’re thinking Gone With the Wind, and the actor was Clark Gable! (But don’t worry, that movie is next on our agenda.) No, I’m talkin’ ’bout a 1915 film dealing with Reconstruction where the KKK is a hero!”kkk

BSU representative: “Damn! And she acted in that shit?! Yeah, we need to wipe out another name, like Wisconsin did last year with Fredric March. I’m now intimidated by that hostility!”

BLM representative: “Good, glad you agree. Get with those university trustees and tell them to wipe that intimidating and hostile Gish name offa that theatre.”

BSU representative: “Got it covered. And I guarantee it’ll be a 7-0 vote in favor of wiping.  No American college official these days wants to risk being labelled racist. We can’t tolerate our university having a performing arts theatre named after a legendary actress from Ohio who had the intolerance to appear in a racist film 104 years ago. We will wipe!”

BLM representative: “Cool. Her sister Dorothy wasn’t in any racist films that our people can determine—yet—but she doesn’t have a voice in this. This is 2019 and no one cares that her name will also be…uh…whitewashed. Anyway, she was friends with that Griffith guy!”

ACT 4 (Epilogue)
July 3, 2063: Somewhere on a field strikingly similar to Cemetery Ridge near the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

First soldier: “I think this battle could be the turning point in the war.”

Second soldier: “You could be right. Finally, the end of political correctness.”

First soldier: “Yep. You don’t need to correct anything when there’s nothing left to correct.”

(fade out)

pickett's charge

Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, 1955-2019

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“The typical trajectory for a rock artist goes like this: Start out raw, risk-taking, totally true to yourself, then gradually get ground down by the industry into making ever more spirit-sapped and radio-ingratiating records. Far less common is the reverse: a career whose public story commences at the showbiz heart of mainstream pop, then torpedoes fame and fortune by embarking on a series of increasingly weird adventures in sound.” —National Public Radio, in an obituary for Mark Hollis on February 28, 2019

NPR is right. There are not many rock artists who deliberately sabotage a successful career to pursue a strange and less commercial musical path. It would be like ditching a six-figure salary as an attorney to sell homegrown produce from a roadside stand.

Scott Walker (Walker Brothers), who died in March, is one such musician. Syd Barrett was never exactly “showbiz,” but his two post-Pink Floyd solo records have people scratching their heads to this day.

Mark Hollis, lead singer of the 1980s English synth-pop band Talk Talk, is another who stepped off the carousel. Although details are sketchy, Hollis died February 25 at age 64.

***

My music era is the mid-1960s to the mid-70s. I can count on four fingers the punk rock bands I like, and I generally dismiss the entire synthesizer-sapped and overproduced 1980s. A few names stand out: XTC, Prefab Sprout, China Crisis…and Talk Talk, led by singer Mark Hollis. I liked this band’s bouncy New Romantic sound and songs written by Hollis and non-performing member Tim Friese-Greene. The rhythm section of Paul Webb (bass) and Lee Harris (drums) defines the word “punchy” and is sorely underrated. And I especially liked Hollis’s odd singing style. His voice sounded like Bryan Ferry’s, only with a frog stuck in his throat.

talk talk

Early Talk Talk. L to R: Hollis, Harris, Webb (Photo: Picture Alliance/Photoshot)

Talk Talk made five albums between 1982 and 1991. The first two, The Party’s Over (1982) and It’s My Life (1984) produced seven singles and established Talk Talk as a sort of thinking man’s Duran Duran, with whom they recorded on EMI and toured (and shared similar redundant name). The single “It’s My Life” hit number 31 on the American charts, and “Such a Shame” became a hit in continental Europe.

The first clue that EMI might have a “difficult” artist on its hands was the promo video for “It’s My Life.” (Remember, this is the visual image-obsessed 1980s when everyone needed MTV and VH1 to listen to music…or record companies believed they did.) In the original version of this song video, Hollis refused to move his lips to the vocalized words, then winked at the end. EMI fumed when they saw it. They forced him to do it over.  The second time, he practically jumped through the camera, spitting out the lyric.

Then, the 1986 album The Colour of Spring presented a more reflective and sedate Talk Talk, slightly at odds with its earlier pop leanings. Ironically, this record went to number 8 in the UK charts, the group’s highest position. It was propelled by the powerful singles “Life’s What You Make It” and “Living in Another World.”

Examining the titles for these two songs, alongside “It’s My Life,” provides further clues that Hollis might have some misgivings about his pop stardom.it's my life

A scintillating 1986 concert from Montreux, Switzerland shows the band had by then closeted the stock designer costumes that New Wavers wore, and Hollis is bedecked in jeans, rumpled shirt…and sandals. He also hides behind sunglasses, clutches the mic stand, and keeps his head bowed for almost the entire show.

By the fourth record, Spirit of Eden (1988), Talk Talk was practically another band.

Today, Spirit of Eden and its follow-up Laughing Stock (1991) are regarded by some critics as shining examples of ambient or minimal music. The singing is sparse, as is the instrumentation. Tone and mood are emphasized over rhythm and structure. It’s an approach that probably dates back to avant-garde composers like Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage, and was explored later by Brian Eno. Lately, it’s been interpreted again and renamed “post-rock.”

While I find this music relaxing, and I’ve dabbled at the edges of ambient music with certain jazz and prog rock records, I don’t usually find it engaging. But in writing this essay, I’ve listened to Spirit of Eden several times, and we’re now engaged. Whether most critics who praise Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock do so more for Hollis’s artistic courage than the music itself, I can’t say. But I have no doubt Hollis was serious about capturing some magic with sound, and not merely trying to cultivate a legacy as an “enigmatic artiste.”

But while the usual adjectives and nouns for this music are “sparse,” “atmospheric,” “mood,” and “ambient,” the word that counted for EMI was non-commercial. After Spirit of Eden, the band and the company “parted ways,” as they say, not long after battling in court. Talk Talk signed with the smaller Polydor-Verve label for Laughing Stock. Then the band broke up. In 1998, Hollis released a self-titled solo LP, furthering Talk Talk’s minimalist approach. All three records are highly praised but, of course, they only assisted Hollis with his disappearing act.eden

Hollis gave few interviews, but in one of them he said something quite simple (minimalist) but also quite profound: “Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note. And don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.” Hollis was talking about music, but he could have been talking about life.

After his solo album, Hollis, who’d been crouching at the edge of the carousel platform for over a decade, took the leap. Beyond minimalism, the only place to go was total silence. He left music to be a full-time husband and father in rural England, later moving his family to Wimbledon, London. “Maybe others are capable of doing it, but I can’t go on tour and be a good dad at the same time.”

For the next 21 years, Hollis guarded his privacy. He made some minor contributions to other peoples’ music, but he insisted his name not be used.

R.I.P. Mark Hollis.

(Thanks to WordPress blogger moulty58 for alerting me to Hollis’s death, and to Wikipedia for quotes and information.)

(For further reading about Mark Hollis, Talk Talk, and in particular the making of “Laughing Stock” and how art intersects with commerce, I highly recommend reading an article in “The Quietus,” located here.)

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