Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've been watching a couple of Doris Day movies on TCM. They were terrible except for her and her singing, so last night we pulled out our "The Man Who Knew Too Much" DVD, to admire her performance in a very good film of Hitchcocks'. She is amazing, and makes Jimmy Stewart look like a jerk. We root for her, and it's her intelligence and instinct that solves the mystery. She was sunshine itself, and yet they paired her with romantic leads that didn't appreciate her, like Jack Carson in those early films and Rock Hudson at the apex of her career. I do find chemistry between her and Howard Keel in "Calamity Jane", but mostly we're just glued to her, and the rest of the cast doesn't count. My mother had that blond, cornfed look, and she was often compared with Doris Day, Virginia Mayo and Mitzi Gaynor. The body was the same, and the legs perfect. My mother was what you call striking. The actors I just mentioned weren't beautiful, but they had energy and sparkle. Unless they smiled, they were ordinary, but the grin transformed their faces. Like Doris Day, my mother's outfits were impeccible, fitted to her body like a glove, and she had the matching shoes and handbag. She had a suit of soft yellow wool she had made herself, as she did most of her clothes, that was so exquisite I saved it after she died until the moths got it. My mother never had a hair out of place. It was the era of monochrome blond, so it was a blond clearly not found in nature, but my mother was faithful to her yearning back to being a towhead as a child. Her hair darkened after two kids, and she rectified that at the salon she frequented. Nowadays, women have highlights and it looks sunkissed and natural, but back then the craft hadn't been refined. Being a blond in my mother's era meant glamour and heads turning. I miss her whenever I see Doris Day. Though my mother couldn't carry a tune, so it was all about the look.