Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

gum (that picture hit newspapers all over the country) could have had no relation whatsoever. Some people, of course, see significance in anything. But it is a matter of record that not long afterwards, husband Marty Melcher was off in San Francisco “producing a new play” while Doris remained at home. That was when the first hint of a possible rift between the “always happy” Melchers slithered into print. “Doris and Marty Melcher are readying an announcement,” said Mike Connolly, in his Rambling Reporter column, and a shocked Hollywood gasped, “Not Doris and Marty!” Just days later, forty-six-year-old Marty Melcher was again away, this time in New York “making arrangements for the opening of his new play,” while Doris, his wife of eleven years, stayed in Hollywood. “Doris is working in a picture. Universal’s ‘The Thrill of It All,’ ” Marty explained. “She didn’t come to New York because it would take too much time.” But the rumor mills were still churning. “Doris Day, America’s favorite movie star, will be making headlines out of Hollywood in the near future,” declared New York columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, with Sidney Skolsky and Sheilah Graham adding their voices to the now familiar chorus. Most startling of all, however, was a somewhat incredible item in Earl Wilson's column. Said Wilson: “Hollywood won't believe the rumor that Doris Day’s sweet on a N. Y. Yankee star — first, I she and Marty Melcher are very rich and seemingly happy together; second, she’s a Dodger fan.” Was it, then, D-Day once again for Doris, everybody’s girl next door? D-Day for the much, much written-about but strangely little-known girl from Cincinnati who “had made millions swinging on the garden gate with a prim neckline and a song in her heart”? She had married first at sixteen, again at twenty-one, and once more at twenty-seven. Those first two husbands of hers, musicians both, were forever, in Doris’ mind. “The Trombone Player” and “The Saxophone Player,” though the Trombone Player had given her her son. She had the happy knack of “forgetting things that I don’t enjoy remembering. I never look back, and I can barely remember my first two marriages.” But of her third husband, Marty Melcher, the wide, comfortable shoulder on which she leaned, the man to whom Doris always ran if a mouse appeared or a fuse blew ... of him she could say, at least as recently as just a few years ago: “Marty is my understanding husband and my favorite friend.” And Marty would quip back, “The secret of our happy home life is, half the time I let my wife have her way, and the rest of the time, I give in. So we get along fine.” He’d smile when he’d say it. Only a year or so ago. Marty Melcher, tall, sun-tanned and looking very successful (which he is) sat in the office of his and Doris’ Arwin Productions in Beverly Hills, and over a wide desk flanked by a trio of telephones, spoke of his wife’s “colossal box-office appeal.” It was nothing to be modest about. “Doris,” Marty explained affectionately, “is a one-lady factory, a commodity that turns out so much a year and brings in so much money. Just like a car. Occasionally we must retool and put out a slightly different product. But there is no big inventory to worry about.” Marty’s grin became even wider. “What’s more,” he went on, “Doris can sing, too.” Did some of the reasons for the ( Continued on page 61) Asked if their marriage was in trouble, Doris answered with a big bubble her husband Marty Melcher (above) said “No!”