Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1957)

. Escape to Happiness ( Continued from page 71) As long as the conversation dealt with tennis, a game for which Miss Day is finding time for once in her life, Terry, no mean player himself, was a willing listener. But when the subject switched to motion pictures, he wandered off toward the pool. Having finished the ice cream, Miss Day munched on the rest of the cone, partly stalling for time, but mostly because she would have eaten it anyway. “About the whole story of my life,” she said at last. “I’m not really the person to talk about it, because I didn’t have much to do with it. Does that confuse you? It confuses me. But it’s true, in a way. Things just happened, and I had to go along.” “Like in your song?” I was referring to “Whatever Will Be, Will Be,” the record-sales of which had passed the million mark, and were soaring toward an alltime high. “Like in the song,” she agreed solemnly. “Que sera, sera. In just three words you have the story of my life.” Before leaving New York for Hollywood, I had pored over the thousands upon thousands of published words concerning this girl’s life. What I had read certainly had not hinted at a summation so brief and so fatalistic. Quite the contrary. I knew that a lot of things had happened to Miss Day through no fault of her own; that there had been times when her life was so crammed with adversity and personal tragedy that it is a wonder she did not break. But I also knew that her courage and fighting spirit had carried her from rock bottom to spectacular triumphs not once, but several times. This had been a life of violent contradictions, so filled with high romance that her two divorces seemed to have never occurred; so filled with exuberant health that her long months of bedridden pain must have belonged to someone else. So I said, “I can’t help feeling that this resignation, this fatalistic acceptance of whatever comes along, is something you have fought against all your life.” “I suppose it does look that way,” she agreed. “But if we go into all that, it would mean — ” She paused. She knew that it would mean going into memories long since stored away in pigeonholes built to be forgotten. It would take time, lots of time to tell it all. The afternoon was too pleasant, and there were too many people around who could not pass Miss Day without stopping to say hello. Sunshine, laughter, and a bright terrace blossoming with gaudy table umbrellas. A time for happy talk. So we talked for a while about the easy things — the Doris Day of 1957. I asked, referring to some recent headlines in the trade oress, “Don’t words like ‘Wow,’ ‘Sm"-h.’ and ‘Socko’ thrill you?” “Oh, sure,” she answered. “I can never believe it’s really me they are talking about. I just feel glad for the girl in the picture who got a hit. You see, I can’t bear to look at my rushes or my pictures, so I don’t think I deserve it when nice things are said. It’s somebody else.” She might be able to avoid seeing her rushes or her pictures, but there was one thing she could not escape, and that was her singing. She would hear her records on every radio station, on every jukebox and on every street that boasted a record store, whether she was in New York, Calamus, Iowa, or Coronado Beach. She would hear them at house parties, beach parties and picnics, and on everything from thousand-dollar hi-fis to handcranked portables. Did she like them any better than her movies? What did she think of Doris Day, the vocalist? “I like her,” she admitted frankly. “At first I didn’t think it was me singing, but then, no one ever really gets accustomed to hearing her own voice. I used to worry a lot when I heard myself. Some songs I might trip on several times before I’d get it just right, and then when I’d hear it on the radio, I’d start worrying that I might crack a note. I’d find myself straining, my throat getting all tight, trying to help the singer across the hard part. But now when I’m driving to work with the car radio on, I listen to Dinah Shore and Jo Stafford and Patti Page and Margaret Whiting — and me — and well, I just say, ‘Isn’t it nice to be in that company?’ ” For the time being I could let the psychologists wonder why she could enjoy the sound of herself on a record and not the sight of herself on a screen. Because I was busy looking at the sweet, scrubbed freshness of Doris Day’s face. It reminded me of a review I had just read by critic Hollis Alpert. “No one,” he wrote, “has ever asked me to choose the typical American beauty, but if I were asked, I think I’d by-pass Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Elizabeth Taylor and Sheree North. I’d Drifting Apart . . . 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