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Doris’ present world is fully complete with her son Terry and her mother, Alma
ESCAPE TO HAPPINESS
BY GEORGE SCULLIN
At the very moment of her deepest despair , the sun broke through for Doris Day , and a new life was born
What has cone before: From the time she broke her leg to the time her second marriage ended, Doris Day lived in alternating happiness and despair, triumph and defeat.
Doris Day was numb after the emotional turmoil of her second marital breakup on the April day in 1947 when her agent, A1 Levy, took her over to see producer Michael Curtiz about what might be her first movie role. Curtiz was planning to produce and direct a musical called “Romance on the High Seas.”
“Sing for me,” Curtiz directed in his strong Middle European accent.
Obediently Doris launched into “That Old Black Magic.” And burst into tears at the second line. In desperation she ’started the loud and raucous number called “Murder, He Says.” It was dismal.
“And what’s more,” she wailed.
paying no attention to Levy’s alarmed shushing, “I can’t act either. I’ve never acted in my life.”
Fortunately, this honesty impressed Curtiz favorably rather than otherwise. He signed her for the picture and to a personal contract as well. At the end of one of the most unlikely auditions in Hollywood history a girl headed for stardom walked out of the producer’s office clinging to the arm of her agent and weeping.
Curtiz was not out of his mind. He knew Doris could sing. Everyone in the entertainment world knew that. What he signed up was that rarest of combinations — naturalness and honesty. As for acting, he would handle that one scene at a time, and do his best to keep acting out of it. He wanted Doris Day as she was, not as she would be in heavy makeup and with studied mannerisms.
Then began for Doris a bewildering period that she has since referred to as “Doris Day’s daze.” Her leading man was Jack Carson, the gay but innocuous story involved an assortment of romantic shennanigans on a boat trip to South America, and everywhere that she turned there were dancing girls, musicians, lights, cameras and Michael Curtiz.
She made mistakes. Her biggest mistake, and one that took her years to overcome, was that she could never remember to act like a star. On her solo numbers she had no difficulty in dominating the mike and the camera, just as she had dominated the audience as a night-club and radio singer, but when it came to asserting her starring role in a group scene she was always deferring to other actors. They might have lesser, or even insignificant, parts, but if they were experienced, with “names” especially ( Continued on page 111)
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