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■ During the recent shooting of one of the big Doris Day musicals at Warner Brothers' Studio, some out-oftown visitors dropped in on the set. It was in the middle of a very, complicated musical number in which Doris and a couple of the other principals were required to interrupt their singing and dancing to put across a plot point. This is at best a harrowing procedure, for it involves cues for the actors, cameramen and technicians that must be hit right on the button. The timing, in other words, must be exact to the finest degree.
Nobody ever shoots a scene like this right the first time. As a matter of fact, 10 or 20 times is sometimes required before the scene is satisfactory to both the director and the cameraman. This shot, however, was a real toughie and it was shot again and again and again. As the hours wore on the visitors sat and waited, just, maybe, to see what would finally happen. The director was a nervous wreck. The leading man looked like a lunatic wanting to burst from his cage. The photographer seemed about to go right through the roof at any moment. But Doris Day just smiled and ' tried again every time she was asked to. She did each take with a smile, the same sort of smile she wore the first time. Finally one of the visitors turned to their guide.
"What's the matter with her?" he asked. "Hasn't she got any nerves? Doesn't she ever explode?"
The guide looked puzzled for a moment. "No," he said. "I guess she doesn't. Say, that's kind of funny."
You're doggone right it's kind of funny. It's just about as odd as a star working for nothing. It's something that has seldom been seen on a sound stage before. But it is no miracle. It is just that Doris Day is happy. She's found a peace, an ability to live with herself and others that is superior. There are those who say she has found religion, but that is only part of it. She has learned the secret of patience, and it is one of the main reasons why she is a star today. It is one of the main reasons she will go on and on while other stars fall or become victims of bad habits, greed and self-adulation
It was a gradual process. When Doris Day first came to the movies she was as anxious as most newcomers who break into pictures are. She had been a band singer for years. A girl who had made a living by moving from one town to another every day of the year. A girl who had dressed in washrooms, slept for weeks in the back seat of a bus, and who had to get before a milling throng of strangers at each stop and sing warmly about love, or whip herself into a tizzie with a jump song she'd sung a thousand times. In other words, she was a fake by profession. A performer, but never actually in the mood she pretended to be.
When she first came to Hollywood, Doris was pretty bitter about life. She was married to a young fellow who was a musician with one of the bands she had. sung with and they were broke. Instead of staying at a swank hotel, as most performers dream (Continued on page 84)
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