52 Women I Admire
Week 4 — Doris Day
Stories help us understand ourselves and the world.
I am writing a series of blogs that focus on famous women I admire. Each article will feature a woman who I believe has made an impact on our world. The women may be alive or they may be deceased. They may be part of our current experience or they may be historical figures. They all matter in some way.
We all matter in some way.
Imperfection. Humility. Joy.
This week I’m profiling American actress Doris Day (1922–2019). To some, Doris Day may seem too happy, too naive, or too conventional to include as one of the 52 women I admire. But Doris was more than just an iconic movie star and singer from the 1950s and 60s. After her movie career, Doris Day reinvented herself as an animals rights activist. She was all about reinvention.
Doris began taking dancing lessons as a young child, and was so talented as a teenager that she was planning to move to Hollywood from her Cincinnati home. Unfortunately, tragedy struck when the car she was in was hit by a train, crushing one of her legs. Her professional dancing career ended and doctors told Doris she may never walk again.
To replace the dancing — and to pass the time during her three-year recovery — Doris began taking singing lessons. This talent, which eventually brought her to Hollywood and the movies, changed Doris’s life.
On the surface, Doris seemed to lead a pampered life, but there was more to Doris. She may have been the most popular actress and singer in the world for a time, but she also overcame: four failed marriages often full of emotional (and sometimes physical) abuse, the loss of her fortune, and both mental and physical challenges.
Despite her imperfections (or maybe because of them), Doris Day was a real person. To me, she was also a symbol of humility and joy.
Lesson #1 — IMPERFECTION
“It was the only ambition I ever had — not to be a dancer or Hollywood movie star — but to be a housewife in a good marriage.”-d.d.
Through movies and songs, Doris Day portrayed the idyllic life of mid-century America. In real life, Doris lived out the truth behind the closed doors in many of those American homes.
Doris didn’t talk a lot about the challenges in her private life. Much of the emotional and physical abuse she endured was hidden from the public until her biography was published in 1975.
That’s what I mean when I say that Doris Day wasn’t perfect. For a long time, she didn’t have the perfect life (the life she considered perfect). She never did have the perfect marriage (even though she tried to find it). What she did have was a willingness to continue moving forward despite adversity and imperfection.
If something wasn’t working for Doris, she would try something else. She would reinvent herself. “She’s really good at moving on,” her son, Terry Melcher, once said.
Lesson #2 — HUMILITY
“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.”-d.d.
Born Doris Mary Kappelhoff, for many years Doris put on the persona of “Doris Day.” When fans praised her, she would thank them, smile, blow kisses, offer hugs, but she never saw herself as the huge star she was. She saw herself as a wife, a mother, a working woman. She was humble, believing that the only reason she was paid to act and sing was because that’s where her talents were.
I admire Doris for her ability to separate the person the world saw her as with the person she actually was. Though talented and hard working, above all Doris tried to be a loving friend, mother, wife, pet owner.
In other words, she never lost sight of the importance of just being human.
That’s humility.
Doris knew that acting was her career, not her life. After making movies, Doris starred in a television series — not because she wanted to, but because she had to. Doris didn’t need additional attention from fans. She needed a paycheck. She fulfilled her TV obligations for five years. When the show ended in 1973, Doris all but left the pubic life, moving to Carmel, California, to care for neglected animals through the Doris Day Animal Foundation.
During the remaining decades of her life, Doris occasionally appeared in public, giving her fans brief glimpses into her life. But she did this for her fans — not for herself. Doris was humble to the end. Rarely complaining, always grateful for the life she lived.
Lesson #3 — JOY
“I like being happy. I want to make others happy.”-d.d.
I grew up watching Doris Day movies. The fun ones. The happy ones. (Most of them fall into these categories.) To write this blog, I went back and watched a couple of her films. I also spent some time on Google, looking for articles and video clips about Doris. What I found was a woman who longed for other people to be happy. Making others happy seemed to make Doris happy.
Doris always seemed to have smile on her face. Whether or not she was always happy, she smiled because she wanted those around her to be happy.
Despite challenges throughout her life, Doris did eventually find her true happiness. She found it when she left Hollywood and started over at mid-life by creating the life she wanted — on her own terms. That’s admirable.
Doris Day spent the last decades of her life in Northern California, joyfully caring for the four-legged creatures she loved so much.
These famous words from Doris Day best sum up her views of life: “Que sera, sera; whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.”
TO LEARN MORE
Through my research, I’ve learned that watching Doris Day movies — and listening to her music — may not be the best way to get to know her. While her movies are fun and entertaining, they aren’t really about her. I think the best way to understand Doris may be to read her biography, to explore her videos and YouTube, and to check out her websites:
