Movieland. (1950)

Two for the show. Doris Day and band leader Les Brown are making Bob Hope’s all-star Hollywood show a big hit. Audiences claim Doris’ freckles are an added attraction. “Here, you take this one, and I’ll take that,” she said with disgusting energy. Well, we scrubbed the house from top to bottom. She scrubbed one bathroom, I scrubbed the other. We did the floors, the walls and the shelves. And when we were through, we scrubbed the garage. It was my friend’s idea, not mine, I assure you. Dodo works hard at every¬ thing. Thank heavens she doesn’t do much housework nowadays because she’s too busy, but when she tackles it she’s not content to vacuum a floor or dust a table. Oh, no! With her it becomes a Big Project. She has to turn the house up¬ side down, scrub it from top to bottom, and then put it back together again. For the first three weeks we lived in the house without a stove or refrigerator, waiting for her mother and Terry to arrive. i‘The kitchen is Mom’s department,” said my sentimental friend. “Let her choose the stove and refrigerator she wants.” So we lived on Danish pastry and cartons of coffee sent in from the drug store until Mom came out. Mom is wonderful. Knowing her, you understand why Dodo is the way she is. Mom is warm-hearted and loving, with merry eyes that twinkle behind her glasses, a broad smile for every situa¬ tion and an overwhelming love for every¬ one. Terry is a seven-year-old bundle of streaked lightning with Doris’ blonde hair and clear blue eyes. Dodo must have some hidden atomic force inside of her. I still don’t know how she does it, but she’s always peppy, al¬ ways smiling — even at six in the morn¬ ing. She goes to bed with a laugh and wakes up with one. I wish I were triplets so that I could keep up with her. Once she couldn’t sleep, so she got up at four in the morning and shampooed her hair. “I can’t just lie in bed and do nothing, can I?” she said when I sleepily opened one eye and wanted to know what on earth was going on. Doris was singing and setting her hair with such appalling ambition, that I crept back under the blankets again. If she comes home late and I’m asleep, on go the lights and Doris’ husky voice calls out, “Hey, crow-type (Doris’ nick¬ names are purely her own invention!). Get up and let’s have coffee and some laughs.” It’s always time for coffee with Dodo. We go to the kitchen, set up the coffee and talk away all night. The next day I’m as wilted as a two-hour-old souffle; Dodo is fresh and bouncey. Doris has a sincere philosophy of her own that all things — no matter how grim' they appear to be — all work out for the best. “Every experience you have is a step¬ ping stone,” Dodo has told me time and again when things have gone sour with either her or me. With Doris it’s not a Polly anna act. It’s on the level. She doesn’t believe in wast¬ ing her time or energy in worry over a misfortune. “It’s happened,” she says. “It’s over. Now, what benefits can I get from it?” And darned if she doesn’t always emerge with a constructive idea. I like to get my problems off my chest to her. I value her judgment. When she sees me moping, she doesn’t barge in and try to force me to talk. She says very quietly, “What’s the matter, Lee? Got a problem?” When I feel like talking, I tell her about it. Hours later, when I’ve forgotten all about it, Dodo will turn to me and re¬ mark, “Do you know, I’ve been thinking about what you’ve told me, and I think that it might be smart for you to do this. . She’s quick and impulsive when it comes to fun. But she thinks out serious problems intensely. When I gave up my job at the store, and then immediately regretted tossing away a pleasant job, it was my friend Dodo who took it upon herself to worry out my problem. “You were getting in a rut there,” she told me that night. “It’s for the best that you gave it up. Don’t take another job like it. Turn to something else. Why not take a business course and then you may be able to get a more interesting job where you can advance?” Which is just what I'did. You see, she makes sense. Her philosophy that you learn from all your unhappy experiences has -helped tide her over two ill-fated marriages. “The first time,” Dodo told me one evening as we sat in the deq in our robes having coffee, “I gained something from my marriage — my son. From the second, I learned what mistakes not to repeat, so that I’m prepared for a real marriage now.” Doris would like to get married and find lasting happiness. She first married when she was very young and didn’t know what time it was. In the second, to George Weidler, a musician in the band where Dodo was the girl singer, she was carried away by the romance and the love songs that surrounded them. Away from the glamor of the band, they couldn’t face the realities and everyday problems of marriage. She and George are still friendly and Dodo has no regrets in finally securing a divorce. Once before they tried a recon¬ ciliation, but it didn’t work. “A clean break is better than hanging on and on and being miserable,” Doris told me at the time. “This way, we can part before we get to hate each other.” Evenings when we sit around and talk, our conversation is often about those things that most girls talk about — men and marriage. “It won’t be easy for me to get mar¬ ried,” Doris has told me several times. “I want this one to last, so it has to be right. There aren’t many men who can take being married to a girl who’s busy with a career like I am. And it would take an exceptional man to make me want to give up my work. That wouldn’t be right. I doubt very much,” Doris went on, “that I’ll marry an actor. I’d like to marry a man in music. I get along best with people in my business.” We call ourselves — Mom, Dodo and I — three girls in search of a man! For Mom is alone and I have not yet found my dream man. My poor boy friends have to run the gauntlet of Dodo’s and Mom’s scrutiny when they come calling. Heaven help the man who doesn’t come up to their expectations. Not only is he off the list, but Doris does a burlesque of him that’s so devastating I could never look at him without laughing after that. Because friends talked her into it, she called in an interior decorator to do the house. After two weeks of it, she let the decorator go and is doing it herself. “How could I let anyone else decorate the house I’m going to live in,” she ex¬ claimed. “He wanted to furnish my house for a movie star. That’s not for me!” It’s taking time to do the house because Doris is a very busy girl, but on Sundays we drive out to a little antique shop in Santa Ana, fifty miles away, and if you could see Dodo’s face as she prowls around and picks up something she likes, you’d know that even if it took her ten years, she has to select every last little ash tray herself. She’s changed in only one way. Dodo used to live in blue jeans and sweaters. She still wears them, but she has also become one of the best-dressed women in Hollywood. She never used to wear a hat — now she has a collection of them! With her tall, slim figure and that bright, starry look about her (nothing deadpan about Doris!) she makes clothes mean something. She gives them life — just as she livens everything about her. She’s not so serious about clothes that she can’t clown when we go shopping. On those occasions, Doris parades around the store wearing, for instance, a very chic green hat with the price tag showing, and adds the final flourish by bouncing over to another counter and returning with a big, floppy red beach bag twisted around her shoulders and putting on a riotous fashion show. Everyone around howls. That’s my friend. Dodo. The End