A Sunny Day?

Day was always portrayed as happily married8212;to third husband and manager Martin Melcher8212;and loving mother to son Terry. But the real story couldn8217;t be further from the truth, according to David Kaufman8217;s expansive new biography, Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door. Instead it8217;s a sad story of a talented woman who was unloved by her father, pushed by an ambitious stage mother, with four failed8212;and mostly loveless8212;marriages, who never got what she wanted: to have a happy home life. 8220;What is even sadder is how insecure she is about her looks and about her talents,8221; said Kaufman, a theatre critic and author.

Now 86, Day lives in Carmel, California, and spends her time rescuing wounded animals and overseeing the Doris Day Foundation for Animals. She wouldn8217;t talk with Kaufman. 8220;The only way she could put some adversity behind her was by leaving the past and devoting all of her energies to pets,8221; he said. Kaufman believes the reason the actress won8217;t talk about her life 8220;is because she feels so completely disassociated from who 8216;Doris Day8221;was.8221; That8217;s why her friends call her Clara8212;a nickname bestowed upon her by a co-star, Billy DeWolfe, years ago. Kaufman says, 8220;She answers the phone as Clara.8221;

Doris Day was born Doris Kappelhoff in Cincinnati in 1922. Unlike the brassy blondes of the 1930s and 8217;40s, Day was the girl-next-door8212;tomboyish and sexy. She fit perfectly into the zeitgeist of the 1950s 8212;a decade of prosperity, hope and wholesomeness. Kaufman says that Day8217;s reputation as a movie star suffered in the mid- to late 1960s because Melcher made her act in romantic comedies in which the 40-something actress was playing the same type of bouncy8212;and often virginal8212;heroine she did early in her career. 8220;The last handful of movies were schlock,8221; says Kaufman.

Kaufman says Day8217;s choice of husbands, the musician Al Jorden and the bombastic Melcherare, was connected to her horrible relationship with her father, William, who abandoned the family when Day was young. 8220;She was constantly looking for people who reminded her of her father.8221; Kaufman believes that Day and Hudson, who was gay, became fast friends because, 8220;they realised they were the opposite of who they really were8221;. He adds, 8220;I don8217;t think she8217;s ever had a truly confidential, candid conversation with anybody on this earth.8221;
-Susan King LATWP