Julie, or Doris Has a Bad Day

Okay, I am no admirer of Doris Day; I find her music sleep inducing and suggest medically it could probably be used as a definitive cure for insomnia. Her albums are posters for 1950’s bland. As for her film career, it is spotty at best.  “Pillow Talk” is a likable romantic comedy, and in “Love Me or Leave Me,”  as real life singer Ruth Etting, she gets one of her best roles in her career, and opposite James Cagney no less!  “Midnight Lace” is a nice attempt, if not totally successful, at recreating a Hitchcock thriller atmosphere.  Then of course, there is the real Hitchcock film, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” which ranks as the high point in Ms. Day’s film career. She is wonderful in the famous Albert Hall sequence where without any dialogue whatsoever she conveys the anxiety, the tension to save her child while at the same time knowing that a political figure is about to be assassinated.