Customer Reviews

Considering Doris Day

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Tom Santopietro's new book, "Considering Doris Day" is a sincere, thoughtful and relatively concise look at the career of the lady who is the top-ranked female box-office star of all-time.
For years pundits have had a field day mocking Day or belittling her tremendous contributions to the entertainment industry. Most of them have probably never seen a Day film or listened to one of her hundreds of recordings. Had they, they would be forced to reevaluate their insipid remarks.
Throughout the years there have been many books written about Doris Day. Some have been entertaining and enjoyable while others have been either re-hashes, promoting falsehoods and misconceptions or just plain bad. A few have read like extended versions of stories from a bygone era that might have appeared in Photoplay, Modern Screen or Motion Picture. Thankfully Mr. Santopietro's book is a nice opening act for what promises to be the definitive book about Miss Day, the long-awaited "But Not For Me" due out in 2008 and written by David Kaufmann.
Doris Day has had an astounding career by any definition.
From the early 40's when her professional career started, as a big band singer, through nearly 40 films between 1948 and 1968, through a hit series, some classy television specials and a warm-hearted talk show promoting animals in the mid 80's, she has excelled. Whether the story was a musical, comedy, biography, drama, suspense thriller, western - Miss Day was able to play every role with an effortlessness that defied convention. "Considering Doris Day" looks at the remarkable film career and the astounding popularity Miss Day achieved, topping the polls year after year and turning a profit with almost every title.
In the recording field she was, for a while, the "Queen of Columbia", turning out Gold Record after Gold Record and making even some titles that defy description seem enjoyable. One could only wish that she'd had the chance to work with some other musical talents that might have enabled her to deviate from the well-plowed rut that Columbia big-wig Mitch Miller seemed to place her in. Nevertheless, some of her 1960's recordings are masterworks and her phrasing, intonation, breath control and warmth are still like fresh air in an era when female singers in particular seem to feel that louder and more shrill is better.
Mr. Santopietro sheds some new light on Day's many accomplishments and while his book may not be the eye-opening tome that Kaufmann's promises to be, it is certain to open some eyes and force a reevaluation of Miss Day's durable career.
If nothing else, after reading the book, some of the naysayers may actually run out and rent a Day film or listen to a Day tune and find themself quite impressed with the lady's incredible talents.
There's a lot of "Day-light" contained on the pages of this book and I would venture to say that reading it is time well spent.

After a glowing beginning, where he praised Doris Day to the heavens, Santopietro then proceeds to trash every movie she ever made. He picks them apart and when he gets finished there is not much left of any role she played.

I think he forgot that her movies were made almost 50 years ago, when audiences were not always looking for references to gays, and hidden meanings. My three favorite movies "Pillow Talk" "Lover Come Back" and "Send Me No Flowers" were ripped to shreds, and although I've seen all these movies many times, I don't see what he sees. He sees homosexual overtones in the least little look and nuance. I know there were homosexual overtones in both "Pillow Talk" and "Lover Come Back", but they were not hidden. But when he managed to see homosexuality in "Send Me No Flowers" I knew he was stretching to make his point.

Also, he had trouble keeping the character names straight. In "Pillow Talk", Doris Day's character was Jan Morrow. He is correct in her name on pg. 121, but on pg. 157, he calls her Jan Gordon. And strangely, he seems puzzled as to why Doris's character in "Send Me No Flowers" was so helpless, when her character in "On Moonlight Bay" was able to "fix cars with ease." What did one have to do with the other? She was acting, for gosh sakes!

I especially don't care for the way he tells the reader what the audience was thinking while watching Doris's movies. I've seen most of her movies, and I sure wasn't thinking what he seems to believe viewers were thinking. He seems to be a mind reader. He spent most of the book finding fault. A big waste of time.

I cannot add anything that the other reviewers have not covered. All I can say is that this analysis of Day's marvelous career is marred considerably by the author. He thinks he's being objective but he comes off with the same things in practically every review he does of Day's movies......that the Warner Bros. films were innocuous, hokey and contrived (hello!!!....they were a form of escapism Mr. Santopietro...they weren't art.....they were entertaining and wholesome...just like Day herself!!) He finds gay overtones in many of Day's films (probably because he's gay himself....nothing wrong with that...I'm gay myself....but to say that "Calamity Jane" was full of lesbianism (never mind the Day/Hudson pictures where he proceeds to do the same thing with Hudson)is downright stupid. Its like he wants Ms. Day herself to be gay.



He trashes her television series to no end and rarely finds anything good to say about it. Again, the series may not have been "classic" but it wasn't bad.



These are Mr. Santopietro's opinions of course. Some will agree with him, others will disagree with him. His style of writing varies between competent and mediocre. The book is a one-note analysis of Doris Day's career. She deserves much better. Oh, Mr. Santopietro, if you're reading this I thought "Julie" and "Midnight Lace" were great films (showing Day's versatility and she certainly deserved an Oscar nomination for the latter!!). And I found "Pajama Game" and "Jumbo" two of her least entertaining vehicles. I also thought "Lucky Me" was entertaining and I happen to enjoy Ms. Day's trademark "eye popping, energy, and bounce" something that seems to annoy you.

When I told an 85-year-old friend that I was reading Doris Day's biography, she said, "I always wanted to be like Doris Day."

Doris Day (yes, she's still alive) was born on April 3, 1924 and was 83 spring p 2007. She started as a singer and became associated with big bands, traveling with them around the country. And by 18, she was a single parent of son Terry, divorced from his abusive father, also in a big band.

The author (who also wrote a definitive work about Barbara Streisand--The Importance of Being Barbara) details Doris Day's movies, starting in 1948 when she was 24. She made 17 movies under Warner Brother's contract--sometimes up to three a year. In some she was allowed to sing and dance, using her pitch-perfect voice. Some movies were drama. She could do comedy, drama, sing and dance with the best of them.

In her prolific signing career, she recorded more than 600 songs from 1948 to 1967. She did not get to choose what movies she would do--because of the studio contract system-but as Doris Day would often say: A deal is a deal.

After leaving Warners in 1954, she starred in many more movies. Alfred Hitchcock directed a very believable Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Whatever she did, she did her best. So what happened that she quit in 1968 after making more than 40 movies? After doing a TV show until 1986, she just disappeared from public eye. Some say the sexual revolution, women's rights and role changing made her kind of movies passe.

The author recapped her career nicely at the end of the book, giving an overview of her talent, successes and vast work. Ask most women of a certain age which Doris Day movie they loved the best, and they might mention Pillow Talk or the one co-staring James Garner, where she went through the car wash with the convertible top down. Doris Day was everywhere for many years--and we loved that she sang, danced and acted her way into our hearts. If we admired Doris Day, I image the men in our lives envied her many leading men.

Her life, loves and her son Terry play a big role in the book--and of course her many years of animal rights advocacy.

Armchair Interviews says: If you loved Doris Day's public life, and want to know more about her private life, this book is for you.

This book discusses the music, movie and tv career of Doris Day. It is not really a biography.

I was most interested in reading the author's sometimes very descriptive re-telling of Doris Day's movies - when they worked (The Thrill of It All) and when they didn't (Midnight Lace, Caprice, etc). Having seen practically all of Day's movies, I could easily relate and agree with Tom Santopietro's analysis but this made the book, for me anyway, a bit redundant. I kept hoping for insight into Doris Day but was left hanging as the author himself said more than once after a questionable career choice - what was she thinking? Well, we are none the wiser with this book.

Doris Day is usually described as a busy, hard working, talented professional who did not succumb to the dark side of Hollywood life and who maintained a spiritual if somewhat passive outlook on life. What drove her through her long and very successful career even after she had gained the pinnacle of her success? We all know the story about her husband Marty Melcher making the deals but she was the one who had to do all the work preparing and performing. Did she ever get tired of it all during the early 60's and want out?

I look forward to a future book on Doris Day, a talented nice girl in a brutally competitive business.

For Doris Day fan's there is not much new in this book which is really more of a dissection of every song, movie and television show Doris ever did. The author raves on and on about how wonderful Ms. Day was (is) and how talented, how real, etc. He then proceeds to break down every aspect of every thing she has done (show business wise)into an overly detailed personal critique. How bad the script was for each movie, how silly the co-stars, how bad the director was, how stupid the songs! Somehow the whole thing is unbalanced. It would be better to read Doris' own autobiography. There are very few interesting antecdotes in this overly opinionated volume. I gave it a 3 because there are some great pictures (though not many) and there is a complete listing of recordings, movies and television apearances along with awards statistics...a great deal of research went into it as well as a great deal of personal opinion.

A really fun read - very informative as well. Tom Santopietro examines the music, film and television career of this true legend and convinces even the most skeptical critic of what a great artist she was. His style is amusing. His insights are spot on. He calls her recording career second only to Ella Fitzgerald's and actually made me want to go out and buy a number of the recordings. His anaylsis of her movies was objective yet complmentary. Highly recommended -- entertaining, informative and makes you realize how great Doris Day actually was.

I do think Tom Santopietro is a flavorful writer. I'm a journalist and journalism teacher and editor and I've had a separate life in the music business and, Lord oh Lord, the terrible reporting and writing I've seen. Santopietro isn't terrible and is often quite delicious to read. And he's bright. But, as with his Streisand appraisal, everything here has been said before somewhere else and his meager quotes from Day herself come from the few sentences she spoke on a PBS documentary and published sources. I'm not sure that's a problem as Day never has been much of a commentator on her films or her music or her art. I think that is a consequence of her having always been a natural, instinctive talent with a strong honest streak. But in truth any of hundreds of Day fans could have written this book. That's not to take away from the fact Santopietro actually DID it and has gotten great reviews for it but I'm still wondering how--unless I'm missing something--he never noticed that the song "The Glass Bottom Boat," which he loathes, consists of new lyrics to the great standard "Soft As the Starlight," one of Day's great recordings. The great Day book is still down the road.--Wayne Brasler, University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, wbrasle@ucls.uchicago.edu.

I've been a Doris fan for more than 50 years, since I saw her film "Calamity Jane" when I was nine. I too, think she is underappreciated and was a unique singer. But Tom's writing here needed some good editing. How many times need he tell us that she had a great figure, that she followed her vocal coach's advice to sing each number as if it were to only one person, that Warner Brothers musicals were not put together as well as MGM's, that her combination of tomboyish sensuality was irresistable, that she put her business affairs in the hands of a husband who eventually made enough bad decisions to impoverish her and tarnish her artistic opportunities? He reviews every film in too much detail, seeing homosexual hints in the plots of nearly all of them. Many of his criticisms and praises are right-on, but oh, so repititious and pretentious. He analyzes most of her two-minute single vocal releases in detail that takes four minutes to read. I learned a lot I did not know about Ms. Day by reading this, but instead of it being a joy to savor, it became a chore to finish, because the tone and style of his narrative got almost obnoxious. She deserves a book like this, just not this one, even though the author adores the star as much as I do.

The book is an extensive critique of Ms Day's work including her films, recordings, and television appearances. I don't believe he missed a film or an album of hers, and he has a great appreciation for Ms Day's remarkable talents. After so many years of reading compliments that are left-handed or almost apologetic, it's great to read the opinion of one who truly knows the wonderful contributions Ms Day has made throughout her illustrious career. I recommend this book to all Day fans and to those who are interested in knowing more about the wonderful contributions Ms Day has made to the entertainment world, as well as her tireless work as an animal advocate.