United States

In this romantic, dramatic, song-filled piece of gaiety, Doris Day and Ol' Blue Eyes are paired together for the first time. Sinatra's talents are given full scope as the cynical, melancholy musician set beside the youthful vitality of the ever refreshing Doris Day. The three Tuttle sisters are delighted when a dashing young song-writer comes to live with them, and all promptly fall in love with him. Further complication arrives in the shape of pianist Barney Sloan - undernourished, self-pitying, rebellious but not totally unlovable…

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OPPOSITION OF THE STARS

Both Doris Day and Frank Sinatra seem to have known great reversals and set-backs during their careers. But more than that, both have courageously fought their way back to the top.
America's virgin, 'Miss Goody Two-shoes', showed herself in her biography Doris Day: Her Story as a woman far removed from the eternally bright-eyed tomboy of her screen image. At fifteen a car accident forced her to abandon her budding career as a dancer, at sixteen she went on the road, married a 'psychopathic' musician at seventeen, and at twenty-two was embarking on a second marriage knowing that it was a mistake. Her third marriage to her manager, Marty Melcher, lasted seventeen years, but when he died in 1968, she discovered that he had either mismanaged or embezzled her entire life's fortune and committed her to a television series she did not want to do. But she pressed on and made The Doris Day Show a resounding success, won the court case against her former family lawyer and was awarded $22 million damages.
Although Sinatra's life does not yet appear to be quite the same relentless catalogue of disasters, there is no doubt that he has known hardship. The son of an Italian immigrant fireman, he began as a copy boy on a local paper, organised a singing group, The Hoboken Four, and by the early forties he was known as 'The voice' and commanded a huge following among American teenagers. In 1952 his vocal chords abruptly haemorrhaged. The voice was gone and MCA, the giant talent agency, dropped him. It looked like the end of the road. He fought back, making his comeback without singing a note in a 1953 film called From Here To Eternity, for which Columbia paid him an insultingly low fee. Sinatra won the Academy Award that year as best supporting actor, and in 1955 was nominated for an Oscar for his Portrayal of a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm. His voice returned better than ever and, with proven ability as an actor, he began to move into the superstar league as an entertainer.
A man sometimes criticised for suspected contacts with the underworld and personal arrogance, Sinatra has also the reputation for sudden open-handed generosity and kindness. Ethel Barrymore, the 'grande dame' of American actresses, had a birthday during the filming of Young at Heart and Sinatra threw a surprise party for her. Doris Day clearly felt some irritation with Sinatra - he continually turned up late on the set, and he banned her husband Melcher, from the whole seven mile set. He also insisted that the ending of the film be changed from the original version, in which John Garfield as the piano player died. Yet even she tells the story of how at the party, Frank took a man to task for throwing a box of Kleenex at her across the set. The box struck her lightly on the forehead. Frank grabbed the man by his collar and holding him up, ignoring Doris's protestations that she was not hurt, delivered a lecture: 'You don't throw things at a lady, you understand?…You bring the box, you creep, and you offer a Kleenex - you got that? You offer a Kleenex!

Cara Chanteau
© BBC MCMLXXXII