What Ever Will Be Will Be (97)

Aw, the beauty of the voice of Doris Day.

Doris had a birthday this past week.  She was either 89, according to her publicist’s records, or she was 91, according to court records.  Which ever age she was, she has had a very full and fantastic life, starting out as a singer with the likes of The Les Brown Band, on to radio shows with Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, then movies, then TV, and even in 2011, back to music.

When I heard about her birthday, I was kind of unsure about whether or not she was still alive.  Glad to know she is.  I looked her up to see if she is still active and was shocked to find out she had released a new album in 2011 in France with some old music and some new.  I haven’t heard it yet but plan to.  I am a sucker for big band music, like the style of the 40s and early 50s and the current big band sound of groups like Big Bad VooDoo Daddy. 

Most people that remember Doris Day, remember her movies and think of her as the quintessential ‘girl next door.’  She had a beautiful, yet squeaky clean, look.  Her early longing to be a dancer always showed in her trim, curvy figure.  Many girls in the 1950s and 1960s tried to copy that look.  But then, ‘squeaky clean’ fell out of favor.  I had a literature teacher in that transition period between the wholesome years and the hippie years that hated Doris Day.  She used  every opportunity to say how fake and trivial the Doris Day persona was.  Particularly she was focused on Doris’ white shirts.  The teacher (a very bitter old maid if I may be allowed to use that expression, as un-pc as it is) would find ways to fit that white shirt in to discussions on the ‘important’ literature about the haves and the have nots.  It is something that made a huge impression on me.  Not necessarily in a good way.

I have to take a slight detour here to say something about squeaky clean and white shirts.  In the depression years (no, not the recent ones–the 1930s) times were really bad.  Soup lines, unemployment, people dropping from hunger in the streets.  What was a popular past time?  Going to movies.  People liked to go and watch images of rich people on the screen.  The people they watched were, for the most part, in real life pretty well off. Yes, people during bad times, and even in good times, like to watch people that are better off than they are. We want to be Madonna, or Lady Gaga, or Kim Kardashian. This is human nature, I am convinced. We look at a big house or a fabulous trip to Europe and we would like to own it or do it. I don’t think this is a bad thing. Sometimes wanting the unreachable is what makes us try harder and work harder. I don’t think having money makes someone else poor. I don’t think someone with good looks makes other people ugly. It is just human and it is in our nature to want the best and be the best. Even with those who want to serve the poor this longing to be the best takes over. Don’t social servers want to be like Mother Theresa or to make a mark like Nelson Mandela? And people with a political bent want to be like a Kennedy or a Reagan. Doris’ beauty and her white shirt didn’t take a thing from me. I thought she was entertaining.

Doris Day has strong loyalties to friends and to animal welfare. In July, 1985, her show, Doris Day and Friends, featured her long time friend Rock Hudson. No one had publicly seen Rock Hudson for quite a while and people were stunned to see him, gaunt, pale, and frail. Doris knew this ahead of time because she had always been a friend to him and knew him as a close friend and understood what his medical problems were. They had a very good interview, talking about the many movies they made together and reminiscing. A short while later it was revealed to the public that Rock had AIDS. He died in October, 1985 at age 60. That one movie star death brought the AIDS problem into the public light and created an open discussion about HIV as well as bringing in millions of dollars of research money with then President Reagan making a commitment from government to put a priority on finding a cure for HIV. Through all of that, Doris Day remained a devoted friend to Rock Hudson and with her encouragement, millions of dollars more were raised to help find a cure.

Another friend of Doris Day was Cleveland Amory. Before I began this writing, I knew about Doris’ love for animals–cats and dogs–and I knew about Cleveland Amory’s love for cats and his goal to rescue Grand Canyon wild burros. What I didn’t know about was their mutual love of horses. Amory founded Black Beauty Ranch in 1979 as a place where, in his own words, the animals were, “there to be protected, not there to be looked at.” In 2009, Doris Day provided funds to help the Humane Society relocate 100 mustangs from a failed horse rescue mission in Nebraska. In 2011, the Doris Day Horse Rescue and Adoption center was opened at Amory’s Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison, TX.

Although my former literature teacher maligned Doris Day, simply because she was just too ‘squeaky clean,’ I am happy to say Doris has totally proved herself to be much more than ‘just’ a singer, radio star, movie star, and TV star. She has been proved to be a loyal friend, an advocate for AIDS research, and a constant advocate, saver, and friend to all types of animals.

So, Doris, I just want to say I have taken a Sentimental Journal, not just of your life, but of mine and I will say, yes, ‘the future’s not mine to say,’ but you have given us a great start to a better future.

We will do our best and leave it with, ‘que sera, sera, what will be will be.”