Rent movies starring Doris Day Buy The Doris Day Collection Vol. 2 Doris Day in My Dream is Yours.

"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," is a quip often attributed to Groucho Marx, but its actual provenance is more likely with not-made-like-that-anymore curmudgeon Oscar Levant, who actually did know Day prior to virginity, as it were. He costarred with Day in her first film, 1948's Romance on the High Seas, in which Day plays a cute, sassy, and not necessarily virginal singer named Georgia Garrett. Levant plays her highly smitten accompanist. Romance was made a good ten years before Day's virginity was established, in a series of sex comedies — Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, etc. — in which her prim characters resisted the changing times by refusing to put out for Rock Hudson. (I know, I know...) In the interim, Day was one of the biggest stars of Warner Brothers' not-quite-silver age, the post-war period wherein, under the façade of a peacetime conformity, all sorts of social and aesthetic turmoil was starting to roil.

That's just one reason Day doesn't always get her due as a performer, and it's also a reason that Warner's new box, The Doris Day Collection Volume 2 isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea. In a way it's a more consistent set than the first, which mixed Day's highest highs — Love Me or Leave Me, which electrifyingly teams her with James Cagney, The Pajama Game, featuring the galvanic and forward-looking choreography of Bob Fosse — with some cringeworthy lows — the dishwater-dull Please Don't Eat The Daisies, and the sitcom-looking The Glass Bottom Boat, which was to be the nadir of once-inspired comic auteur Frank Tashlin's career until the unspeakable The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell.

Here we have a six studio products in a row, three directed by the ever-reliable Michael Curtiz (Romance, I'll See You In My Dreams, and My Dream Is Yours). The films are replete with the sort of leading men that were not understood prior to, and have not been understood since, the 1950s (Dan DeFore, Jack Carson, Gordon McRae); all at very least tuneful and pleasant. In short, the sort of thing that would have made me puke blood 25 years ago. What can I tell you? I've gained detachment over the years. I was also happy to see I'll See You In My Dreams in the set. This is a 1951 biopic of early 20th century lyricist Gus Kahn, who penned scads of still-classic songs such as "It Had To Be You," "Carolina in the Morning," and "My Buddy," starring Danny Thomas as Kahn and Day as his wife and sometime collaborator Grace LeBoy Kahn.

One of Gus Kahn's granddaughters was an old running buddy of mine, and her dad Donald (who's depicted at the ages of 3 and 8 in this picture) would regale us with great showbiz stories on his trips to New York. (Here's an interview with Donald and others about Gus Kahn's life and work.) The Kahn family apparently became pretty friendly with Day — my pal invariably and perkily referred to Day as "Grandma" whenever her name came up. The picture itself is a decent showbiz saga/heart-tugger and features the unusual sight of Day in blackface. (She's doing a minstrel show act that takes place in the last days of WWI, which is a better excuse than "I'm not a bad person...") My Dream is Yours, on the other hand, features the unusual sight of Day in a bunny suit.