Doris Day, Dogs

Because, why not?

Day/Lee Pleasures

I love both Peggy Lee and Doris Day, as most folks know. There's a lot of reasons to like these gals, from Peggy's Sass to Doris' All-American Charm, but one good reason is PUNS. I love 'em, and these gals sure liked making them with their album names. So, for Mister Safire, here are a few of my faves.

Peggy's first greatest hits was called Bewitching-Lee - get it?

Then she did those two Latin albums, Latin ala Lee! and its sequel, Ole ala Lee! Both are pretty fun.

The well had pretty much run dry by the time she got around to Guitars A La Lee. Still, at least it was titled interesting-Lee.



Doris Day had some fun ones too. There was A Day To Remember...

Day Dreams...



And of course eventually a greatest hits...

Thanks gals, for the fun times.

Dot, Line, Love

This one is a little long, but is absolutely worth it.


The Dot And The Line won the 1965 Academy Award for animated short, deservedly so. Amber and I saw this as a Bonus Feature with a Doris Day movie once. The movie itself was fun, Doris wore a mermaid costume and Dom DeLuise was up to all his old tricks, but this little coda was perhaps my favorite part.



Enjoy.

Births-Day

It's that day of the year again! We at Internals Plural are very happy to wish Miss Doris Day, nee Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff, many happy returns.

Last year on her birthday I wished her a good one, and that's been one of my most viewed pages. People sure like to google her to see what the reclusive lady looks like nowadays.

I'm happy to remember her with all her vim and zest, especially in this photo below, which Vanity Fair ran a few years ago - fun times.


I also like to remember her from the time she impersonated a pole dancer, for some zany misadventure on the Doris Day Show. Here she is, Miss Peanut Brittle:


And of course, here she is rocking some Cole Porter in Lullaby of Broadway.


Happy 86th, Miss Day!

A Rather Confusing Day

So on Saturday, Amber and I watched On Moonlight Bay, a rather non-sensical Doris Day musical set in 1918. We didn't understand it one bit.

At first, it seemed to be about a tomboy who gets spanked by her next door neighbor for shooting him with a gun. But then, she quickly becomes a lady and falls for him, then we realize he is a Communist and her father doesn't like him. Then, he signs up for The War.


I still don't get it. The box sure didn't prepare us, nor did Amber's $80k Film Degree.

Here's a sequence we particularly liked. Doris' little brother goes to the movies and sees this anti-booze propaganda film. Of course, after this he starts a rumor in town that his own dad beats the family, but somehow that's OK.




Anyway, thanks Doris.

iToss, iTurn, iTunes

So last night I bailed on my plans and stayed indoors, attempting to beat this stupid cold and to recover from a bit of yelling in the office at the end of my day. I watched the first half of a Doris Day movie that curiously starred Shirley MacLaine and Dean Martin.

It was a very traditional Doris Day mistaken identity sex farce, but as much as I like my personal friend Miss MacLaine, I didn't connect with the movie and turned it off.

And THEN, I tried going to bed but I tossed, I turned, I tossed some more, eventually falling asleep after what seemed like hours.

Before I went to bed I noticed that my alarm clock was missing. I have a feeling a certain pussycat thought it was a toy and hid it on me, I'm sure I'll find it under the stove one day. So I set the alarm on my cell phone for my regular time. My iPod alarm is set for the same time every day, for a random shuffle of music to help me wake up.

Lo! Cell Phone alarms do not have Snooze features!

For about an hour I snoozed while my studio apartment was filled with songs. I had listened to, among other things:

Blondie - "Last Contact in Red Square"

Bette Midler - "Stay With Me Baby"

Dionne Warwick - "Do You Know The Way To San Jose"

R.E.M. - "What's The Frequency Kenneth"

Evita Soundtrack - "Waltz With Eva & Che"

To what song did I eventually fully wake up? I wish I could claim synchronicity and say Miss Day's "Sentimental Journey" or even a MacLaine song from Sweet Charity, but I can't. It was the relatively mundane, yet pretty, "Daniel" by Sir Elton John.

Anyway, here's a great scene from Sweet Charity, with MacLaine, Chita Rivera, and Paula Kelly, which I will take as the theme for my day at work in the Yelling Factory. There's GOT to be something better than this.

Murder, I Blog

I *love* Murder, She Wrote. I love everything about it.

I love Mrs. Jessica Fletcher and her busy-body ways.

I love Cabot Cove, Maine.

I love that supposedly both Jean Stapleton and Doris Day turned the role down until Angela Lansbury stepped in.

I love the cross-over episode where she and Magnum, P.I. solved a crime together.

I love the fact that she traveled the world for 12 years visiting nieces and nephews and former college roommates in far flung places, and each time a murder would take place.

I love all the sophisticated guest stars from the golden age of cinema, Broadway, and vaudeville, not to mention the up-and-comers. Everyone from Sonny Bono to George Clooney to Rue McClanahan to Mercedes McCambridge to Leslie Nielsen to Lynn Redgrave to heaps more - and not certainly least Miss Nina Foch.

One I watched recently even featured Maxwell Caulfield from Grease 2 putting on an Irish brogue as a stablehand - rather eerily similar to the time Humphrey Bogart put on an Irish brogue to play Bette Davis' stable hand in Dark Victory.

I love the exposition lines. "Jessica, we may have been roommates in college, but..." and "Jessica, you remember my fiance, the son of daddy's rival in the race-track business?"

I guess what I like about them is how cozy the mysteries are - kind of like the ones that Rita Mae Brown writes where her cat helps her solve crimes.

And the bestest part? Each ep opens with Miss Angela Lansbury intoning "Tonight, on Murder, She Wrote..." as we watch scenes from the episode we're about to watch, just so nothing takes you by surprise. How cozy and great is that?

Here, enjoy the opening credits, if you haven't in a while.

The Game of LIFE

Here's something really cool I just discovered.

Google is digitizing all of LIFE Magazine's photo archives - as of now they're apparently 20% of the way there. Most of the pictures have never been published. It's an amazing archive.

You can search the archives here, or when googling you can just type "source:life" after your keyword.

Here's my fun finds:

Doris Day in a pretty yellow top. With a poodle!

Ooh, my fave. Miss Shelley Winters with a book. So publishing! I printed this one out and tacked it to my bulletin board.

Hee hee. Here's Miss Charlotte Greenwood caught in the act of showing off her pisketti-legs.

And Miss Barbara Stanwyck, staring at a painting of herself which makes me think she was in a re-make of Picture Of Dorian Gray.

Happy searching! And please share anything cool that you find.

The Ballard Of The (Not) Sad Kaye

So I was at the NYPL the other day on the hunt for Ernest Borgnine's new memoir, Ernie, by Ernest Borgnine. There I am in the B section of Bio and Ernie isn't out yet, but I stumble upon Kaye Ballard's How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years.

I really only knew Ms. Ballard from her Pepsodent commercials and often confused her with Martha Raye, but since Shelley Winters was in her index and there were pics of her with my pals Maurice Chevalier and Doris Day, I figured it was a go.


The book was fun and she had a lot to say about the early days of talking pictures, her friendships & costars, her fling with Marlon Brando, her role in the internal-plural-friendly The Mothers-In-Law, her part in one of the revivals of Follies, and her love of the gays.

Really though, I'll always remember her best for her tremendous dance scene with Sweetums Thog on the Muppets.

Caprice-ush-ness

So last night Amber and I watched Caprice, Doris Day's 1967 flick with Sir Richard Harris.

Now, I picked the movie out of the masses at the NYPL because the cover, as depicted above, screamed out to me. It promised to be a zingy mix of Alias & With Six You Get Eggroll, and how could that possibly go wrong?

Now, to be sure, this is as promised my new favorite movie. However, it wasn't until after we had watched all 98 minutes and had started in on the bonus features that we discovered it was in fact a spy spoof. The fact that Doris & Sir Richard were spies looking for the secret formula for waterproof hairspray? We weren't in on the joke.

Lesson learned. Sometimes, you DO want to watch the bonus content first.

Doris Day She Was Born

Happy Birthday, Doris Day! 84 years young.

My favorite Doris Day movie is probably The Man Who Knew Too Much, where she saves the day by introducing "Que Sera, Sera" into the world. I also love Lullaby Of Broadway, and just about everything else she's in.

Amber's favorite Doris Day is Touch Of Mink, where she plays a 40 year old virgin (decades before Steve Carrell thought of it!) who falls for lothario Cary Grant, and has a panic attack when he suggests they Do It pre-nuptually.

We both like one of DD's last movies, With Six You Get Eggroll, featuring a young Barbara Hershey and the always wonderful Alice Ghostley, who later played dear old Bernice on Tyler's favorite show, Designing Women.

Doris Day's favorite thing, according to this commercial, is Blue Band Margareen.