She's more of an actress, and an icon, than you think. And there's plenty of proof this week when the perennially underrated Doris Day gets a different kind of Turner Classic Movies salute.
TCM usually offers a once-weekly dose of its Star of the Month. But for April, it's a weeklong festival -- a Monday-through-Friday nightly marathon of Day. Its 28 movies are divided into genres, in all of which mid-century America's favorite blonde (sorry, Marilyn) proves herself adept.
Day started as a band singer in the 1940s, and Monday's TCM intro spotlights her early movie musicals, from the late '40s and early '50s, in outings like first-up The Lullaby of Broadway (8 p.m. ET).
Tuesday's TCM slate (on Day's birthday, April 3) collects the kind of light romantic comedies that made her Hollywood's top box-office draw for four years between 1960-1964. Day stars opposite favorite leading man (and lifelong friend) Rock Hudson (Lover Come Back at 8 p.m. ET), then Cary Grant (That Touch of Mink at 10 p.m. ET) and James Garner (Move Over, Darling at midnight ET).
Day gets dramatic on TCM Wednesday night (April 4) with the thriller Midnight Lace (8 p.m. ET), the Klan expose Storm Warning opposite Ronald Reagan (10 p.m. ET), and the baseball saga The Winning Team (11:45 p.m. ET).
TCM's Thursday collects yet more comedies, including her 1960 hit Please Don't Eat the Daisies (8 p.m. ET).
But Friday's got the juice. Day does her best dramatic work opposite James Cagney in the abusive backstage showbiz story Love Me or Leave Me (8 p.m. ET) and Kirk Douglas in the moody jazz tale Young Man With a Horn (10:15 p.m. ET).
Not that there aren't some obvious quibbles with TCM's festival selections. Where's Pillow Talk, arguably the quintessential Day/Hudson rom-com? Or Day's Hitchcock flick, The Man Who Knew Too Much? And what about her final big-screen comedy, 1968's With Six You Get Eggroll?
We could also complain there's no Doris herself -- but, now turning 90, Day hasn't made public appearances in two decades. At least we get her voice in a TCM career reminiscence they've been running as an interstitial, recalling the joys of working with Hudson, Cagney and Jack Lemmon, among others.
No deep introspection there -- yet that seems as it should be. Day always did radiate that girl-next-door simplicity -- deceptively, as it was later argued by film historian Molly Haskell, among other latter-day admirers of Day's ostensibly pre-feminist films.
Take a look at Doris Day on TCM, and see what you think.