Doris Day and June Allyson

Although few think of Doris Day or June Allyson as comediennes, both were comedy and musical movie stars. In their personal lives, they were very different. Doris Day had a dark side behind her vacuous façade. Day began suffering panic attacks with frequent episodes of palpitations; she had been prone to heartburn since the days when she wolfed down hamburgers and huge portions of raw onions in the front of Al Jorden’s car. She was convinced she was about to succumb to a heart attack. On at least two occasions she had an attack in a restaurant and almost choked to death. Her friendship with Allyson was only intermittent, but they were not close. Day was more around musical comedy star Charlotte Greenwood and Judy Garland. Judy was a law unto herself, and she did offer Doris some sound advice: ‘Ditch the religion bullshit!’–which she, in her Christian Science under-the-spell state, chose to ignore. A ‘cure’ was therefore effected by more readings from Mary Baker Eddy and benders with Judy, which, though just as detrimental to Doris’ health as her imaginary illnesses, certainly enabled her to forget all about them until the next morning’s hangover. Away from the studio Doris Day became edgy and antisocial.

Christopher Frayling on BBC broached the subject of Mamie Van Doren’s attitude towards Doris Day's alleged ‘temperamental’ episode while they were making Teacher’s Pet. Van Doren’s memoirs had recently been published so she was currently in the media spotlight. ‘She is not well,’ Doris says of her. ‘This lady is making it up… I feel sorry for her to say something like that. I don’t behave like that!’ Steve Cochran was a very handsome and virile actor who oozed sexuality and said more with his heavy-lidded eyes than other actors could put into words. A former cowpuncher, he appeared in Mae West’s scandalous Broadway revival of Diamond Lil and invariably played the cynical, hard-edged thug whereas away from the set he was regarded as one of the nicest, gentlest men in Hollywood. 

Cochran also had a fearless reputation as a womaniser: besides Joan Crawford and Mae West his scores of conquests included Jayne Mansfield, Sabrina, Merle Oberon, Ida Lupino–and Mamie Van Doren, in whose memoirs no details about their sex-life are spared especially when discussing his legendary appendage which had earned him the nickname ‘Mr King Size’. Cochran’s lovers and friends, Doris Day included, were devastated when, in June 1965, shortly after his forty-eighth birthday, this fun-loving man died aboard his yacht of an acute lung infection, a tragedy made even worse by the fact that his body lay aboard the craft for 10 days until it drifted into Guatemala.

Besides of the rumors of being a nympho, Doris Day also seemed to suffer a compulsive eating disorder. Her first husband criticised her table manners; something that can be said to leave much to be desired in her formative years. Doris had a fondness for wolfing down hamburgers with huge portions of ketchup and raw onions (usually in Al Jorden’s car on their way home) and dropping chunks of food everywhere because of his reckless driving. She also had a habit of talking with her mouth full and spitting, which cannot have helped his mood swings. Whereas, June Allyson was not such a neurotic or hypochondriac personality. Legend has it that June was being tested by Hollywood and the best she could muster when asked if she considered herself a leading lady was, “Oh, I suppose”? It’s a scene that no screenwriter could possibly invent. It’s almost impossible to believe, and yet the clichéd Hollywood film image of a movieland wannabe eagerly putting her best foot forward does in fact morph into this very real-life picture of June Allyson’s ingenuity. This girl (Allyson, unlike Day) couldn’t pretend, and it’s a very big reason why she went on to become one the biggest female stars in post—World War II America. 

Another difference is whilst Allyson got along well with James Stewart in their romantic film trilogy, Doris did not want to work with James Stewart, a Hitchcock favourite. Such was her determination to have her way that she overrode Marty Melcher and provisionally agreed to do another film with Howard Keel–a remake of Clare Luce’s The Women, which George Cukor had directed in 1936. Doris was to have attempted the Shearer role–that of mild-mannered Mary Haines whose husband is having an affair with vampish Crystal Allen, formerly played by Joan Crawford and now assigned to Joan Collins. But Melcher would not hear of this. Taking a leaf out of Marty Snyder’s book, he forbade Doris to sign the contract (the part of Mary went to June Allyson, while Leslie Nielson took over from Howard Keel), and told her to accept Hitchcock’s offer and get along with James Stewart. 

To a certain extent their antagonism comes across on the screen and maybe Hitchcock planned this to get better performances out of his stars–the fact that they felt uneasy working together contributed to their on-screen tension. Angry over Hitchcock’s treatment of pets, Doris Day wandered around the pens and paddocks with a bottle of Jack Daniels, toasting each and every one and promising them a better life until she could scarcely stand on her feet, all the while ‘yelling more expletives than a legionnaire on dockside leave.’ Doris also made it clear that had there been another child, she would not have wanted Marty Melcher to be the father.

While she was incapacitated, Melcher was approached by director Rudolph Mare, who wanted Doris to star opposite diminutive actor Alan Ladd and William Bendix in The Deep Six. This centred round a Quaker naval officer (Ladd), who is reluctant to enlist to fight in World War II because of his religious beliefs. Mare was told that Doris would never appear in such a film owing to her religious beliefs and the part was given to the lesser-known Dianne Foster. Doris, who had always admired and wanted to work with Ladd, was said to have hit the roof. On the other hand, June Allyson not only would co-star with Ladd in The McConnell Story (1955), they would develop romantic feelings for each other. Doris renewed her recording contract with Columbia for a staggering $1 million per film. Her husband Marty Melcher negotiated an additional $50,000 for expenses that he promptly pocketed. Later they paid $150,000 for a ‘modest’ exclusive home in Beverly Hills on North Crescent Drive. When her estranged father passed away, Doris Day nonchalantly said to the press: ‘I never go to funerals,’ ‘I mourn the passing of someone dear to me in my own way. I don’t approve of public grief.’ But for her father, there would be no private grief either.  

Among the roles that she declined was that of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, a role that eventually went to Anne Bancroft. In her memoirs, Day said that she had rejected the part on moral grounds, finding the script "vulgar and offensive." She had a reputation for being difficult and wasn't especially well-liked in Hollywood. Even Audrey Hepburn thought Doris seemed self-absorbed and dumb after the studio arranged for the two to have lunch. If you watch some of her interviews, you can see that Doris was no walk in the park. She didnt really have a strong loving relationship with her son, Terry Melcher. She always looked to him as an advisor figure. When older, Doris had a scarce relationship with her only living relative, her grandson Ryan.

Even though he apparently never made his intentions known to Doris Day, Ronald Reagan talked about the possibility of proposing marriage to Doris to his friends George Murphy, Dick Powell and June Allyson. Reagan even went so far as to discuss with George Murphy the business angle of such a liaison. “I didn’t want to become Mr. Jane Wyman, but I’m thinking over being Mr. Doris Day, as I move into middle age. The roles are already drying up. I could be very aggressive, get the best movie deals for her, the best recording contracts. I’d make a great manager for her.” On the set of It’s a Great Feeling (1949), Reagan met the film's director David Butler. Reagan soon learned that Butler also had developed an unreciprocated crush on Doris Day.

June Allyson's Thou Swell (Connecticut Yankee) number with the Blackburn Twins was one of the highlights of Word and Music (1948), although the high spot is reserved for “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” danced by Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen. Even grumpy New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote in his December 10, 1948 review: "To be sure, there is much that is appealing—specially to us reminiscent folks—about certain of the musical numbers that sit like islands in the swamp of the plot. It is pleasant to hear Betty Garrett, for a starter, sing “There’s a Small Hotel” or to watch little crinkle-faced June Allyson head a big production rendering of “Thou Swell.” 

Frank Sinatra had been given preferential treatment for a long time by MGM. Look at the finale of the Jerome Kern Juke-Box musical Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) when he sings Old Man River. No singer had gotten such a luxurious set-up in the history of movie musicals. Then Sinatra made an unfortunate remark about a former mistress of Louis B. Mayer (Ginny Simms) and Mayer was through with him. Mayer had fallen off a horse and sprained an ankle. Sinatra said Mayer had fallen off of Ginny Simms. That comment raced through MGM like a wildfire. No wonder LB Mayer kept casting Peter Lawford in musical leads when Sinatra was more talented. At one point Sinatra was pencilled in for Lawford’s part in Easter Parade (1948). Mayer thought there was no way Sinatra could have been cast as a football hero in Good News (1947), starring Peter Lawford and June Allyson. In The Good Old Summertime (1949) was also originally planned for Frank Sinatra and June Allyson, which starred instead Van Johnson and Judy Garland. When Sinatra co-starred with Doris Day in Young at Heart (1954), he said Doris was "the most remote person" he'd known.

In the strong literary voice and narrative constructed or her by A. E. Hotchner, Doris Day recounted her marriage to Martin Melcher, a well-meaning but domineering former agent who "managed" his wife's career until he died in 1968 of heart failure at 52. Feminist author Carolyn G. Heilbrun wrote that "an autobiographical subject's papers will often reveal a confident, hard-driving, ambitious woman of the type that is totally denied in the same woman's memoirs." Day herself saw Pillow Talk as the turning point toward a more grown-up, contemporary persona. The script, she recalled, offered "very sophisticated comedy, high chic, the leading lady an interior decorator, a lady very much tuned into the current New York scene. The plot, for 1959, was quite sexy.... clearly not the kind of part I had ever played before." Pillow Talk would win Doris Day her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, the only one of her career. 

Doris Day never found her ideal romantic partner in real life and she even sounds a bit jealous when she pronounced in Photoplay magazine (August 1953): "Dick Powell is one of the most intelligent, nicest and richest men in Hollywood. Did a tall, beautiful, madly-dressed doll get him? No, Dick belongs to a wonderful gal with a sense of humor and a big heart, June Allyson." One of the most telling differences is that Doris Day didn't really love Marty Melcher; whereas June Allyson in her memoirs acknowledges the opposite, that Dick Powell was the love of her life, and she was certain his husband loved her.

Jonathan Rosenbaum (December, 2023): Christmas in July (1940) is an undervalued satire. For all the rising popularity of Preston Sturges as a master writer-director of screwy, satirical farces, his second feature continues to be one of his most neglected, even though its story about winning a contest to furnish a brand of coffee with the best advertising slogan is among his most memorable. In fact, the office clerk (Dick Powell) who believes he’s won the contest with his own slogan (”If you can’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk”) is actually the victim of a hoax concocted by his fellow workers. But after he runs off and spends a fortune purchasing gifts for himself, his fiancée (Ellen Drew), and his neighbors, believing that he’s struck the jackpot, his coworkers grow increasingly reluctant to inform him about their prank. This manic comedy has a great deal to do with the desperate fantasies of opulence developed during the Depression, with especially fragrant moments of eloquence and bluster. —Sources: "Doris Day: Reluctant Star" (2009) by David Bret and "June Allyson: Her Life and Career" (2023) by Peter Shelley