The Unslappable Doris Day

I used to worry a little bit that Doris Day was supposedly a big slut in real life.  I also remember being worried about similar things I read about Mary Astor revealed through some particularly damning (and salacious!) lines in her diary in which she- oh- I can't even put it down here because it's too coarse even for me to repeat.

But here's the deal: sometimes you're up on your "Friday" night* quite late and you hear an awful cover of a song whose original then flies through your head like a sweet liquor and suddenly you absolutely have to hear the original because it's like eating the perfect peach on the hottest day of summer with the metal fan blowing hot air across your face in a travesty of effort to cool you off.

I heard the most awful cover of "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps" played in a fairly good movie tonight** and all of a sudden I needed to hear the original and yet I didn't actually know the name of the song or who originally sang it.  I knew only that I had first heard it on the soundtrack of "Strictly Ballroom".  I looked it up. 

Doris.  Blond wholesome (slutty) Doris!  I love her.  I think I like the idea of her as an easy lady more than I enjoy her studio persona as the all American girl around the corner who is corn fed and everything baseball and "Golly!" and smackable.  I am listening to it right now and I think you should too.

Go ahead and look it up and then listen to it.  Oh the slink, the slithery voice, the quiver of sexy without going overboard.  I see what they all saw in her.  That voice, when it's not trying to be insufferably cute reflects a woman who knows things and I think maybe "slut" is also the wrong epithet.  She's experienced and canny and better than the men she sleeps with.

I have underestimated her even as I enjoyed her.  Knowing now that she is the voice of this song is like finding out that the little sparkler you ignited on the fourth was actually a bomb.

I have two favorite Doris Day films and neither of them are her oh-so-beloved Rock Hudson hook-ups.  "Midnight Lace" with Rex Harrison is shivery and she's less the baseball-apple pie slappable ingenue than she is an actual real person in an unlikely situation and though I am not particularly crushing on Rex Harrison in general (My Fair Lady:  YAWN!!!)  but in this movie he is...I don't know...kind of delicious.

The other movie of Doris' that I adore is "The Man Who Knew Too Much" with Jimmy Stewart.  She does a wee bit of simpering but over all she is believable and charming and she sings that husky voiced version of "Que Sera Sera" which, by the way, I am now listening to. 

I dislike the mythical Doris but I adore something in Doris that is always just under the covers. 

So I am up in the wee hours bringing Doris out of the vault and anticipating a good sleep in.  These are my roots.  Doris is my early education.  What makes women beautiful.  What sexy singing sounds like.  Hips, lips, a voice, and a million hidden jewels.  Christina Aguilera has nothing on Doris.  Doris only shows you just enough so that you find yourself wanting to undress the quiet and disrobe the windows to see the casings beneath.  Hide a lot to show everything.  A concept lost on most young ladies now.  When you are mostly covered, a knee is as exotic as a dewy lotus blossom floating in a tropical pond.  When most of your body is covered the swell of a breast is like a promise of something much more naked that only comes with peeled layers. 

Striptease is not about being a sad stripper on Broadway doing the poles or the private booths.   It isn't seedy or wasted or vulgar.  It's more like the promise of paradise that can only be achieved in private and with the proper appreciation.

Except that sometimes you get barred from the real show because droolers are discouraged.

Oh Doris!  I'm so sorry I dismissed you after all the love I felt for you.  My early education in womanhood.  I would have liked to see your real face. 

Oh love.  You are better than the plasticized American ideal being erected across the strip mall billboards.   You are the flesh of man's real dreams.

Long live your contribution to sex!







*Which might actually be any night of the week, the important thing is that it's the first night of your weekend...