The great Doris Day, who died the other day [May 2019], was celebrated for her work in romantic comedies of the 1960s. She was box office gold with James Garner, Cary Grant, and Rock Hudson. But her real achievement was as a singer. In musical movies she gave outstanding performances as Ruth Etting (in Love Me or Leave Me in 1955) and as Mrs. Gus Kahn (in I'll See You in My Dreams in 1953). One of the finest of all Big Band vocalists, whose version of "Sentimental Journey" is a madeleine that can transport you to 1945, she sang with the Les Brown Orchestra when swing was king.
Maybe her biggest single hit was the Academy Award-winning song of 1956 in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much in which she played opposite James Stewart. In honor of Doris Day, "Che Sera, Sera" was sung at sing-alongs in smart clubs all over the nation yesterday.
Doris gets her own day in my Playlist:
from Playlist (12 / 17 / 17)
I live in Hitchcock’s America
What does that mean
It means the ride always ends in an amusement park
and a girl and her uncle can have the same first name
Cary Grant is suave Jimmy Stewart has a broken leg
or a bruised psyche Doris Day’s voice fills the house
Even the Jews and the blacks are white
Even the brunettes are blonde
I confess I’m at the end of my rope,
spellbound by the notorious master of suspicion
maybe Janet shouldn’t have taken that dough or had that tryst
Joel McCrea tells America that all Europe’s lights are out
and Priscilla Lane recites Emma Lazarus’s lines
atop the Statue of Liberty -- DL
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