Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door

Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door
by David Kaufman

Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door
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Book Summary Information

Author: David Kaufman
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-01
ISBN: 1905264305
Number of pages: 630
Publisher: Virgin Books

Book Reviews of Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door

Book Review: Doris Day Gets Her Due
Summary: 5 Stars

Doris Day was my very first movie star. I saw PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES in 1959--I was nine and it was love at first sight. Which is funny when you look at the picture now. The idea that any mother would put her child in a cage is appalling! Nevertheless, Day, along with Audrey Hepburn and Sohia Loren, became the movie stars I loved most in my youth. Even their least interesting films were an experience. These ladies were radiant screen presences. Hepburn and Loren were well respected. They got Oscars. Doris, equally talented and more because she could really sing, didn't get the respect of the aforementioned ladies, though her box office clout was undeniable. I've pretty much seen the entire Doris Day canon and it's got its classics: LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, CALAMITY JANE, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, PILLOW TALK, LOVER COME BACK, THE THRILL OF IT ALL. Day is also wonderful in MIDNIGHT LACE, WITH SIX YOU GET EGGROLL, and my personal favorite, BILLY WILDER'S JUMBO.

At 86, it was long overdue for an objective bio of this star with the sunny image. I enjoyed her autobiography because A.E. Hotchner is a solid writer, and while Day revealed a less than sunny life, it's not all that searching. David Kaufman's detailed book is just what is needed to fill in a lot of blanks and to put the whole career in perspective. I recently finished reading Tom Santopietro's excellent CONSIDERING DORIS DAY and they make an excellent combination as a critical overview of one spectacular career, and a behind-the- scenes lok at the peaks and valleys of that career.

Several important things emerge about Day's family. Her mother Alma wasn't a very pleasant mother and once Doris becomes famous she keeps her mother at arm's length even as she calls on her to help with the many chores her stardom entails. In fact, Day pretty much exploited her family (however unconscious). She, like many female film and entertainment stars of the 50s and 60s, turned over way too much control of their careers and money to their husbands. Think Rosemary Clooney, Debbie Reynolds, Esther Williams, etc.). After reading her memoir, you walk away thinking that Marty Melcher, Day's third husband and the real architect of her superstardom, was responsible with their lawyer for stealing Day's fortune. And I can understand her thinking that. Jerome Rosenthal was a legal shark who fleeced Day and Melcher and other stars (Kirk Douglas among them) and got away with it for far too long before finally being disbarred (at 76). Melcher is portrayed her as a controlling, somewhat slick manipulator who protected Doris (as he alienates her co-stars and the crafts people on film sets) to the point of smothering her. But it looks like he was just as duped as Doris was, and while he probably knew it long before she did and was desperate enough to let Rosenthal continue to bilk them, believing that he could restore their lost nest egg, Melcher seems essentially innocent of being the thief Rosenthal so obviously was.

Day does need to atone for leaning so thoroughly on her troubled son, Terry Melcher. She neglected him as a mother as she was busy working from film to film at a grueling pace. One wonders why she worked so hard. What made her so ambitious and driven? Worse still, when Marty dies, Doris continues to lean on her son as he reluctantly takes over the reins of her career, steering her through her TV series (which she says in her memoir, Marty signed her up without telling her, and this book reveals that she more than knew the series), and taking on the onerous burden of unmasking Jerome Rosenthal's nefarious thievery, untangling her complicated finances, and overseeing the nearly 20-year legal battle with Rosenthal. And Rosenthal threw up every legal barrier he could to legally steal $millions from his client. Terry Melcher emerges as a wonderful and loyal sun. She should have been a far less careless or clueless mother.

This blindness to her support system doesn't flatter Day at all, and you get the idea that her fans often meant more to her than her family. There is very little self-reflection here by this enormously appealing movie star. It's like the reality of her life away from a movie set or a recording studio meant that there was no there, there! She's often careless or insensitive with friends and staff whom she often erroneously misjudges over issues of loyalty, discretion, etc. Her sense that Jacqueline Susann used her stardom to promote one of her bestseller when they travelled together to London in the early 70s, seems wildly insensitive. Susann was a huge bestselling author when they made that trip together, and it was Susann who reached out to Day as a friend. Day emerges as petty, selfish, despite her visiting Susann in the last days of her battle with cancer.

Days obsession with animals after a time, becomes annoying. Sure dogs and cats need a celebrity advocate, but Day too often shows that these creatures require more thought, more love, more sensitivity to their needs than to the needs of her family and friends and she ends up seeming to be monstrously selfish and using the animals to satisfy her self-absorption.

The trajectory of Day's career as an actress and top-flight recording artist is well captured here. Essentially Day peaked as an actress in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. She reached superstardom with PILLOW TALK and all the sex comedies that followed. But no matter what the vehicle, she is a mesmirizing presence on the screen. Even in turkeys like TUNNEL OF LOVE or CAPRICE, or THE BALLAD OF JOSIE, Day is a glowing presence.

I suppose when you're that wrapped up in your career, you can't see see anything objectively, Doris Day's declining years as a movie actress make you scratch your head about what might have been. But I do see how she could turn down the part of Mrs. Robinson (and no matter, Anne Bancroft was astounding in the part). Day was a great singer, a fine actress, a crackerjack comedienne, and could do a million things. But she would never been mistaken as a character actor in the making as she aged. Yet to allow herself to calcify the way she did in those final films seems somehow wrong. Her fear of performing live robbed her of a lucrative late career. Instead of getting a boob job or a facelift (what for, she was essentially retired by then), she might have spent that money more profitably seeking the help of a shrink or a specialist who might have helped her get over her fear of performing live. Still, Doris Day worked like a dog for more than 25 years. I recently slogged through all five seasons of THE DORIS DAY SHOW, which I missed when they first aired, and oy, is it dated! Still, it restored her fortune, and I'm happy for her that she found some measure of peace in her retirement years in Carmel, California.

An earlier review was very nasty towards Kaufman's effort. I think he is wrong. It would have been nice to have more contemporary quotes from Cary Grant or Frank Sinatra or Jimmy Stewart. As it is, we have many quotes from a lot of people in the background who who generously offer their own perspectives.

Doris Day gets the bio she richly deserves here. Kaufman sets the record straight and she emerges as a fascinating, talented, lovely, flawed, and ironic woman and star. If she can't have an Oscar, or won't consent to going down to Hollywood on Oscar night to pick one up, DORIS DAY: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door leaves no doubt about her place as a durable and endearing legend.

Summary of Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door

David Kaufman has now written the long-awaited, definitive biography of Doris Day. By telling Day?s incredible, previously untold story, Kaufman takes the reader to the epicenter of American popular culture? a roller-coaster saga, from the 1940s to the 1980s. While Day symbolized virtuous America to the rest of the world?especially in her heyday, the 1950s and early 1960s?both she and that era are still perceived as being far more innocent and carefree than they really were. Indeed, what makes Day?s story so richly fascinating is the fact that she was in many ways the opposite of her image as ?the girl next door.? She was also a real-life Cinderella who regretted having gone to the ball and who found a series of princes who proved far less than charming.
Thanks to Kaufman?s dogged diligence in tracking down countless colleagues and intimates, he gives us:

Scintillating tales of fame, beauty, money, tragedy, sexual ambiguity, and sexual conquests.

Anecdotes about a vast array of major subsidiary players in Day?s life, including Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Charles Manson, Mickey Mantle, Candice Bergen, and Rock Hudson.

Kaufman reveals Day?s demons while emphasizing the extraordinary credit she deserves as an artist. In the tradition of great biographies, Kaufman?s detailed work not only reveals the surprising story of one of America?s most beloved icons, but also compels us to rush back and see her best films?including The Man Who Knew Too Much, Pillow Talk, Love Me or Leave Me?and to listen to her unforgettable songs??Sentimental Journey,? ?Secret Love,? ?Que Sera, Sera.? Though she made more than 550 recordings and starred in 39 movies?not to mention her own TV show for five years?the epic story of Doris Day?s life has never been told . . . until now.

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