CATCH A CLASSIC
Star of the Month: Doris Day: ‘Dramas and Thrillers’
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Besides her work in musicals and comedies, Doris Day was also an accomplished dramatic actress, as tonight’s lineup of films demonstrates. First, in the mystery thriller
Midnight Lace (pictured) (1960), Day gives a Golden Globe-nominated performance as a woman who is threatened by a stalker. Rex Harrison, John Gavin and Myrna Loy costar. Next, in Hitchcock’s suspense classic
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Day and James Stewart costar as parents whose son is kidnapped while they are vacationing overseas, and they are then drawn into an assassination plot. Day also gets a chance to sing here, as she memorably introduces the Oscar-winning song “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” Then, in the film noir Julie (1956), Day plays the title character, a widow who is terrorized by her insanely jealous second husband (Louis Jourdan) and who begins to suspect that her first husband’s death was not a suicide. After this is the Oscar-winning Love Me or Leave Me (1955), a musical biopic with Day portraying Ruth Etting, a singer who, like Day, had also become a movie star. One of Day’s earliest films is next — Young Man With a Horn (1950), a musical drama in which she shares the screen with Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall. Finally, Day stars in The Winning Team (1952), a fictionalized biography of the life of major league baseball pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (Ronald Reagan).