The vultures are circling.
When a celebrity reaches a certain age, their death begins to be anticipated by those looking to sustain themselves off of the innards of their legacies. This species is known as Book Publishers.
They're populating the skies right now, optimistically circling a presence as well-preserved, probably, as they come, even at age 83: no less than the fresh-faced Doris Day, currently the subject of two new biographies.
The most ballyhooed of the pair is Tom Santopietro's Considering Doris Day - as the title suggest, less a detailed chronicle of Miss Day's life and times than a critical re-examination...or at least, that's the way it presents itself.
But like a lame disguise in one of Doris' films - the kind a man dons to get close to her or test her - it's a ruse easy to see through.
No Film Studies-trained intellectual is Santopietro. He casts a critical eye upon Miss Day only for long enough to write a readable and insightful introduction - an act he follows with a film by film analysis of her life's work written in disappointing everyman-ese. One expects revisionism applied with light studiousness; what one gets is something akin to a restaurant -set dissertation by an unapologetic fan.
Even as a biography plain and simple, it's a disappointment. This may be the only book on a major star I've ever come across that's almost entirely devoid of research. What we ordinarily read such books for - anecdotes about the stars and directors of the era, tidbits about the making of the films, formative experiences explaining the subject's true character - are excluded here. All we get is what has long been public knowledge. There is nothing new on the Hollywood that shaped Doris, nor on her long movie career, nor on her broken marriages or infamous life-savings lawsuit.
About the only thing this book does that no other book on Miss Day has attempted is offer an extensive look at her singing career; half of this tome is taken up by a full analytic catalogue of Doris' warm, spunky warbling. It's noble and long overdue, but strikes a note of inflated importance; Santopietro firmly maintains that Doris Day is one of the greatest, most versatile singers of the twentieth century, second only, in his humble esteem, to Ella Fitzgerald. Uh...well...there's no doubt that the woman remains underrated, but when you consider the complete canon of that period - from Bessie Smith to Annie Lennox - it kind of makes your eyes explode in sudden wideness, like the big screen version of Doris hit by a cocktail party come-on.
Okay, okay, we`ve talked enough about lack of perspective. Perhaps we`ll endeavor to provide some. Doris Day was a great light comedienne, a good but not great singer, and, by all accounts, a decent-hearted soul who deserved better than to be held in contempt by the Baby Boomers for incidentally personifying Republican-based wholesomeness.
Is that enough to make her worthy of biographical attention? Absolutely. Of unrelenting inflation? No.
Still, there is no doubt, as she continues to fade into the last rays of the sunshine which she so perfectly personified, that more books romanticizing the reputation of Miss Day will find their ways on to bookshelves.
Oh well...que sera, sera!
