Oscar Levant may have been a sharp, erudite wit but his famous quip about Doris Day - "I knew her before she was a virgin" - is way off base.Doris, to the best of my knowledge, never played a virgin. The closest she came was her miscast, virgin-like working girl in Delbert Mann's foolish yet strangely watchable "That Touch of Mink," in which she frets and frets over Cary Grant's attempts to seduce her.
In the best of her films, she played spirited, independent working women - "feminists," when we had yet come up with that word - who routinely gave men a difficult time. "Love Me or Leave Me." "The Pajama Game." "It Happened to Jane." "Teacher's Pet." "Please Don't Eat the Daisies." "The Ballad of Josie." And especially "Lover Come Back," in which she spends most of the film telling off Rock Hudson in no uncertain terms. ("Lover Come Back" airs on Turner Classics Sunday, June 29th at 4 p.m., est.)
She gives him what-for.
That's when she isn't doing her inimitable slow burn.
Hudson plays a self-satisfied sexual opportunist in "Lover Come Back" (also directed by Delbert Mann) and while the sexual part certainly annoys Doris's character, it's his character's lazy unprofessionalism that really offends her and sets her off.
No, Doris was never a virgin. She was a tough professional. And a real woman.
She was also - always, invariably - a lot of fun. The battle of the sexes was a natural, effortless romp when she was around.
(Artwork: Doris Day - reliably, deceptively, bubbly)
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