Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, there was no avoiding the adorable Doris Day. She was cute as a bug, wholesome, winsome and adored, at least in movies, by the swooning-est leading men in Hollywood — Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and Clark Gable, to name a few.
As a young girl, I simply loved her and, of course, wanted to marry Rock. As dreamboats went, he was without par. And Doris (we were on a first-name basis back then) was this motherless girl’s idea of what a woman should be — cheerfully feminine and wise to men.
Today, Day’s characters would be laughable to world-weary children trapped in a sexualized world. But I can testify that watching grown-ups crawl into twin beds wearing pajamas brings no harm to the underaged. I’m grateful for the innocence that society then permitted its younger generation, and to actors such as Day, who declined roles, including Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” that defied her values.
Also, Day was honest enough about herself to figure she probably wouldn’t have been believable as a seductress. She was certainly glamorous, but was also perhaps cursed by a prevailing perkiness that could be neither subdued nor camouflaged. Besides, who would want to see a lascivious Doris Day? Surely not her fans.
