T
o get something of the measure of the emotional investment that
Doris Day was capable of as a screen actress, just look at one particular
scene she plays in a Marrakech hotel room in The Man Who Knew Too
Much(1956). Her character’s husband, a physician played by James Stewart,
is preparing to break the news of their young son’s kidnapping to her, but
only after he has administered, without asking her permission, a knockout
dose of sedative. It’s a wrenching exchange, with Day first holding out against taking
the pills before giving into Stewart’s paternalistic browbeating, then fighting with every58 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019
IN MEMORIAM Remembering cinéastes who have passed on
Clear as Sunshine
Beyond the pristine persona, Doris Day excelled as a realist
BY NICK PINKERTON
ounce of her willpower against sleep once
he’s broken the news, before finally sink-
ing into an unquiet unconsciousness. No
“Que Será, Será” complacency here—
Day’s character is established as having
surrendered a promising stage career in
order to play housewife in Indianapolis,
and so to lose her son is to lose what little
she has left of herself. That she later shows
at least as much competence as Stewart in
securing the boy’s recovery is Hitchcock’s
sly joke, a goof on the film’s title.
Day, who died in Carmel Valley, Cali-
fornia, in May at age 97, was famous for
her beaming, cloudless cheer and bound-
ing energy, but she had also an immense
capacity for exasperation, embarrassment,
and even, yes, despair. Though she was
often discussed as an icon of wide-eyed
all-American innocence, a key component
of her persona was in fact circumspection,
self-preservation. She was only too happy
to do low, even cornpone comedy, as she
had no mystique of the eternal feminine
to uphold, but even when playing a
woman named Calamity, she wasn’t reck-
less, exactly. Her women kept an eye on
themselves because they could be hurt ter-
ribly, and because furthermore themselves
was all they had.
She had been born in Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1922 as Doris Mary Kappelhoff,
her family part of that city’s then-vast
ethnically German middle class. She
went to movies with her mother at the
RKO Albee downtown, took ballet and
tap at Hessler’s Dance Studios where a
fellow student was future On the Town
(1949) star Vera-Ellen, and aspired to
be a dancer, forming a duo with one
Jerry Doherty that performed around
town. That dream was shattered along
with her right leg in a 1937 car accident
that left her laid up in bed with little to
do but sing along to the radio, imitating
the clean, nuanced phrasing of Ella
Fitzgerald, and discover her backup plan.
At this time Cincinnati was a recording
and broadcasting center, home to the
country’s only 500,000-watt radio sta-
tion, the superpower WLW, which broke
acts like the Clooney Sisters, the Mills
Brothers, and, eventually, Day. Her regu-
lar appearances on the amateur program
Carlin’s Carnivalbrought her to the
attention of bandleader Barney Rapp,
who began her on a career as a big-
band vocalist. WARNER^BROS/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK