Doris Day Movies

This 1957 version of the Tony-winning Pajama Game is one of the finest film adaptations of a hit Broadway musical. The story is simple enough: Babe Williams, the head of a pajama company’s grievance committee, falls for an exec–the new superintendent–Sid Sorokin (John Raitt). Doris Day, as Babe, has never been so efficiently cute. Raitt starred in the Broadway version, as did much of the film’s cast (Day replaced original stage star Janis Paige). The Pajama Game is filled with recognizable, classic songs, done so well and danced so athletically that this musical can engage an action-film fan. Bob Fosse’s trademark choreography shines.

Check out two numbers danced by the late, underused, and underrated Carol Haney, who performs amazing feats for “Steam Heat” and “Hernando’s Hideaway.” Both Day and Raitt deliver lovely renditions of “Hey There.” They’re also supported by a great cast that includes, in addition to Haney, a slyly coy Reta Shaw and a dynamic Eddie Foy Jr. –N.F. Mendoza

In 1955, after seven years as a major star at Warner Brothers and a string of successful films, Doris Day began to free lance. The first project she chose was a lavish musical biography at MGM entitled, “Love Me or Leave Me”. It was the story of 20’s and 30’s chaunteuse, Ruth Etting and her relationship with Marty “The Gimp” Snyder. It opened that summer to critical and box-office kudos.

The well-fashioned script pulls no punches in it’s depiction of the sometimes seamy and tawdry lives of it’s principal characters. Etting and Snyder often used one another for their own personal gain and, for a change, the film doe not gloss over some of the less than savory aspects of their lives. The result is one of the best musical dramas ever committed to film.

This 1954 musical remake of Four Daughters stars Doris Day as a well-bred New England woman who marries a chip-on-his-shoulder musician (Frank Sinatra). Lots of tears, yes, but this version of Fannie Hurst’s novel is considerably cheered up from the 1938 tearjerker. Dorothy Malone and Elizabeth Fraser play Day’s sisters (a fourth sister present in Four Daughters was written out), Robert Keith is the paterfamilias to a bunch of musical prodigies, and Gig Young is entertaining as the composer-boarder who tries deflecting the sisters’ interest in him by bringing Sinatra home one day. Both Day and Sinatra really shine in this, and the songs include the Johnny Richards-Caroline Leigh title tune, which became part of Sinatra’s standard repertoire. –Tom Keogh

This 1953 musical is very much a vehicle for Doris Day, in the title role, as a wild cowgal who can outshoot and outsing any boy on the range. When an actress arrives in Deadwood and uses her feminine charms on Jane’s secret love, Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel), Jane tries to mend her tomboy ways. Not exactly up to the feminist code of honor, this is still energetic and Day is very perky. Of course, one could almost detect a homosexual undercurrent with the cross-dressing Jane, but this was Hollywood in the 1950s, so we best not. This won an Oscar for Best Song–”Secret Love,” by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. –Rochelle O’Gorman

The huge popularity of the nostalgic On Moonlight Bay prompted this 1953 sequel, which recaptures the first film’s small-town, post-WWI spirit. Because young lovers Doris Day and Gordon MacRae are already together, the movie needs some sort of trumped-up conflict to separate them for a while; it comes with MacRae’s decision to postpone their wedding until he gets his financial legs. Yawn. But don’t worry, the subplots abound, including younger brother Billy Gray pilfering a prize Thanksgiving turkey, and dad Leon Ames suspected of romancing a visiting French music-hall star. Naturally there are vintage songs, including umpteen renderings of the classic title song (you won’t need the bouncing ball to sing along) and Day and MacRae casually bopping out new lyrics to “Ain’t We Got Fun.” Also returning for the sequel are Rosemary DeCamp as the patient mother and shameless scene-stealer Mary Wickes as the bossy maid. And check it out: future talk-show host Merv Griffin cheerleading during the finale at an outdoor ice rink. Day and MacRae twinkle so aggressively that they sometimes resemble salesmen for a particular kind of Hollywood backlot America that probably never existed, but the whole thing is almost impossible to resist. –Robert Horton

America’s love affair with clean-cut, tomboyish, freckle-faced Doris Day got a boost with On Moonlight Bay, a period piece from 1951. The film’s masterstroke: put Doris in an old-timey musical full of small-town family values and vintage songs. Another inspiration: pair off Doris again with that chesty-voiced man’s man and future Rodgers and Hammerstein stalwart, Gordon MacRae (they’d already made Tea for Two and The West Point Story). The story is drawn from Booth Tarkington’s Penrod tales, although the movie is also under the sway of Meet Me in St. Louis. The WWI-era family is anchored by parents Leon Ames (the pop from St. Louis) and Rosemary De Camp, with echt-Fifties boy Billy Gray (later of Father Knows Best) as Day’s bratty younger brother. Mary Wickes, cinema’s eternal sassy housekeeper, provides comic relief. So does radio crooner Jack Smith, who would later host You Asked for It on TV for many years, as Day’s maladroit suitor (he’s really funny–too bad Preston Sturges never got a hold of him). The material is so relentlessly wholesome you might have to pinch yourself that anybody really believed it, but audiences sure wanted to. The film’s popularity prompted a sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, with most of the cast intact. –Robert Horton