Teacher, Teacher

Now that I've been this new job for more than half a year, I've started to realize how curious it really is.

Ten Tips on Stardom

1.  Have an instinctive understanding of exactly how to hit your key light - something that never failed the Divine Josephine, even when the spotlight was all she had...

2.  Let Joan Blondell be your guide:  always have a positive approach to your grueling glamour regimen (and never, ever be seen without eye makeup, bangles, pumps, and, when situationally appropriate, an adoring attendant).

3.  Develop a trademark expression; extra credit if it can be variously read as vulnerable and alluring at the same time.  You may not hit the heights that Marilyn reached in no small part thanks to hers, but you have to start somewhere...

4.  Equally, however, you mustn't neglect the more ferocious aspect of divalicity; nothing so incites the fans to adoration as an affect just this side of disdain.  Dame Joan, despite an off-stage attitude of almost superhuman cosiness, was no slouch in this regard on stage.

5.  Never pass up an opportunity to let the boys in the stills gallery have a little fun.  If you can't face the prospect of yet another Arbor Day photo spread, at least don't hesitate to show off your hobbies, however implausible.  I don't for a moment believe that Mary Boland was a devoted ping-pong enthusiast, but it made a nice snap for the weekend rotogravures, no?

6.  However, never forget that glamour is job one.  Audiences forgave Lana everything for the better part of four decades, just because she could so reliably give that look.  It takes practice, kids, especially when you're balancing as much off stage as our Miss Turner here.

7.  Keep good company.  Peers and counterparts always make good press - that's why Jerry was almost always seen with one or preferably more of his girls...

8.  ...and at a certain point, cultivate the next generation.  Joan was smart enough to know that she could get away with that hat as long as she was standing next to the ravishing young Mr. Chamberlain.  Do you suppose she's goosing him even as the picture was snapped? (On a side note, I always think of this particular expression of Joan's as her "Mommie's had her vodka" look - it's her own special version of "Keep it together, Minnelli," as you can practically see the self-will that it's taking to keep her upright.)

9.  Never forget that you're Queen of the Lot, even if that lot is only Universal.  It takes a special moxie to wave at your minions and drive your own personal go-kart, but Doris takes it all in stride.

10.  Finally, and when all else fails - endure.

Hip Hooray...

...for Doris Day!  America's Last Professional Virgin* is 89 today.  After yesterday's tempestuous blonde, her milder allure seems deceptively serene, no?

She's seen here in a mod moment that makes it hard to believe she started her climb to the top in '39.  It took a decade of band-singing and touring to get into pictures, and then another few years as a known but unremarkable star, mostly in minor period musicals, before she really registered and sailed out of the fifties and through the mid-sixties (a very different decade, after all, then the few years that followed) as the Toppest of the Top.  Her brand of dressy, frothy comedies - sparked with endless innuendo, not about sex, but rather its absence - may seem paleolithic today, but they enchanted audiences in their day, still have their rewards - and allowed her to walk away when decided that she no longer felt like keeping up with the kids.

When you look at what can happen to even the biggest ladies when they try to hang on too long, more and more it seems like it's the ones who give it up early who have the better deal.  Despite an at-times messy private life, Day seems to have few reason for regret and much to be pleased about, were she to look back on her birthday at the long, long road from Cincinnati to Hollywood.  I hope she has a lovely day.

* Oh, wait.  America's LPV until, at random and at various points, Brooke Shields, Miss Diana Spencer (up to the moment she walked back up the aisle, at least), Britney Spears, and Justin Bieber to name a few.  Sometimes I think the Massive Social Changes that supposedly dethroned Our Doris weren't all they were cracked up to be...

In the Clinch

I don't know about you, but I had no idea that Ginger Rogers and Doris Day felt so strongly about one another.

Breaking Theatre News!

From London comes an exciting update: the next star to get the jukebox-musical treatment will be the one and only Miss Doris Day.

Yes, it's true. A regional theatre in the UK will soon be the proud home of A Sentimental Journey, a look at the life and hard times of cinema's Leading Professional Virgin. Personally, we've always preferred Doris's early musicals, things like It's a Great Feeling and On Moonlight Bay, over her now better known glossy romcoms. She had a sauciness that somehow got lost in the midst of all that Not Having Sex.

I'm going to go with the hunch that this particular moment from Doris's 1951 epic I'll See You in My Dreams (a biopic of semi-legendary songwriter Gus "Makin' Whoopee" Kahn) will go undramatized, if only so that the Mill Theatre in Sonning, Oxfordshire remains untorched.