The following is an interview with Doris Day from the January 1996 edition of OK! Magazine. I hope that it is of interest to all non UK visitors who did not get a chance to buy the magazine originally.
The husky voice is unmistakable as it sings: `Life is a bowl of cherries. You work, you save, you worry so, But you can't take your dough, When you go, go, go.' The tempo is smooch-slow suggesting romance, a log fire, a glass of wine; the phrasing elegant, the strings lush.
It's from Doris Day - The Love Album, a collection of ballads believed lost for ever but recently found. From 1959 for eight years Doris Day was one of the top 10 box office stars and this album, her first release for many years, began it's journey to the record stores in 1967. Doris has lived several lifetimes since then, all of which we talked about during a long day in the pristine beauty of the place she has called home for the past 16 years.
When we met for lunch at the Quail Lodge Country Club, California, she looked the same freckle-faced, outdoors girl who appeared in those relentlessly upbeat comedies opposite Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable. It's hard to believe she's 72.
Doris is delighted the album has finally been released, but the story of how it went missing in the first place revives bitter memories for her. `I recorded it just before I started the film With Six You Get Egg Roll in 1968. But while I was making the movie my husband, Marty Melcher, started getting ill. He was losing weight and I kept saying, "Are you OK? How do you feel?" 'When we finished the film, he went to bed and that was it, he died.'
Her voice falters as she recalls her third husband's death and the terrible secrets exposed afterwards.
`Suddenly, I discovered I had been contracted to do a TV series I knew nothing about and hadn't agreed to.' Worse, it emerged that Melcher and her business manager had been systematically bleeding her dry.
Doris found herself a widow, deeply in debt and committed to contracts signed without her knowledge. `It was awful,' she says quietly. `I was really, really not very well when Marty passed away and the thought of going into TV was overpowering. But he'd signed me up for a series. And then my son Terry took me walking in beverley Hills and explained that it wasn't nearly the end of it; I had also been signed up for a bunch of TV specials, all without anyone ever asking me. So, with all that going on, it was no wonder my album was forgotten.'
Most stars of her stature, of course, would simply have hired an expensive lawyer and got themselves out of such a contract in about as long as it takes to say, `Your honour , but that isn't the Day way. `With me,' she explains, `a deal is a deal. There was a contract. I didn't know about it; I never wanted to do TV, but I gave it 100 per cent anyway. That's the only way I know how to do it.'
But then, Doris Day is no prima donna - she's the ultimate professional and always honours her commitments. She has worked since the age of 16, singing with bands, becoming her family's main breadwinner.
'She has the highest integrity of anyone I know,' says her businessman/record producer son, Terry Melcher, 53. This big, bluff clone of his mother lives with wife Jacqueline, a former fashion model, and 12 year old son Ryan, on the other side of the mountain from Doris's estate.
`Recently, she turned down $1 million to do one diet food commercial,' said Terry. 'It would have been four hours work and they were going to come here to do it, but she said, "I've never had a weight problem and I don't use the product. It wouldn't be honest." For her, it was that simple.'
After her TV series, Terry suggested it would be a great idea if Doris recorded again: She didn't want to go back into the studio but recalled that some songs she had loved and recorded in the Sixties had never been released. `I wonder what happened to The Love Album,' she said.
It was the First Terry had heard of the tapes; in 1968 he'd been working at Apple Records, the Beatles' recording studio in London. He mounted an all-out detective operation to track down the missing music and finally uncovered it in a Hollywood vault. `I thought he'd never find it and the songs would be lost forever,' says Doris.
Melcher set to work resurrecting the music. He had the master tapes transferred to a digital computer format and, using the latest technology, was able to work miracles with the songs, which included For All We Know, Are You Lonesome Tonight? and Let Me Call You Sweetheart.
`Capital Records had done wonders with improving the quality of Nat King Cole's recordings and so I went to them and used their equipment on Doris's tapes,' Terry explained.'
Her son has never let Doris down but, sadly, she hasn't had such luck with her four husbands. At 22, she married husband number one, Al Jorden, who was a trombonist with the band. As she found out, he was also a schizophrenic sadist who beat her even while she was pregnant.
After their divorce, she married saxophone player George Weidler. That marriage caved in when her success eclipsed his. The treachery she discovered after her husband of 17 years, Marty Melcher, died in 1968 made her wary of making another mistake.
`My first three marriages had all been unhappy and I vowed that, should there be a fourth, I would live with the man first,' said Doris before she married restaurant-chain owner Barry Comden. Despite this wise precaution, she parted from husband number four within four years.
That was back in 1981 and there has been no sign of another husband. Her attitude to these setbacks can be summed up in the words of one of her hits, Que Sera, Sera. Doris is a survivor and she's surviving very well.
As she takes me on a tour of her world today, it's a million miles from the glitz of Hollywood and the film factories where she spent so many years. And it's packed with love and caring, not only for family and friends but for all the creatures who can't care for themselves.
The Doris Day Pet Foundation finds homes for unloved animals and promotes neutering and spaying. The Doris Day Animal League lobbies for laws against using animals for unnecessary testing of household products and cosmetics. And then there's the Cypress Inn, the beautiful Spanish-style hotel Doris bought with her son and another partner eight years ago. It is located in the centre of Carmel, California, where her pal Clint Eastwood used to be mayor.
The first thing Doris did when she became a partner was reverse the hotel's 59-year-old `no pets allowed' policy and ask staff to order special food and beds for the pet guests. At the hotel's reception desk, a photo album contains mementos of satisfied four-footed customers, while the name and telephone number of a friendly vet is always at hand.
This is no ordinary hotel. I saw four elegant ladies perched on stools sipping martinis. In their laps sat their dogs lapping at their own drinks and dining on hors d'oeuvres held out to them by the urbane and somewhat bemused bartender.
Upstairs in the comfortable bedrooms, dogs and cats sleep along-side their masters and mistresses in dog and cat beds. On the way to your room at night, each door you pass elicits a friendly woof. As they check out, it's a toss-up as to who looks more content - the humans or the pets. 'I love this place,' said one hotel guest as he checked out with a hand-some Dalmatian. `If it wasn't for this hotel, I'd never leave home.'
These are among the most pampered pets in California - almost as privileged as the inhabitants of another corner of the Carmel Valley, a 15-minute drive from the hotel. Here, on 11 of the most beautiful wooded cliff top acres in the world, overlooking a magnificent golf course, in a series of exquisite redwood cottages, each prettier than the one before, live Doris's faithful friends - her dogs, cats and birds.
No animals on earth are better cared for. Her estate is breathtaking - the perfect country home with roses, ancient oaks and verdant green lawns. Inside her home, huge rock fireplaces, each big enough to burn a tree in, warm rooms that are graciously furnished with country antiques, silver, china and crystal, overstuffed chairs and comfortable sofas. Here, the animals have the run of the place, greeting visitors with much wagging of tails. Doris rarely leaves them. `I don't like to travel. I think people who travel have a restlessness and I'm not restless,' she says.
The day at the ranch starts early. In fact, it often starts in the wee small hours when Doris does her rounds to make sure the animals are comfortable. The more fragile among them may get a snack made in the little kitchen in. Doris's bedroom wing, where bathroom cabinets contain tins of cat food rather than the expensive cosmetics you expect.
Only when she's sure each animal is comfortable does she go back to bed. She often spends the rest of the night listening to the talk radio she loves, particularly the more conservative commentators. `I'm very political,' she says. `It's my favourite thing.'
Her love of animals was not always appreciated by some of her neighbours - even though her entire property has a security fence, high electric gates and full-time security guards. But even though the whole ranch is screened from neighbours by high trees, there have still been some complaints made about Doris's brood.
From time to time the American scandal sheets erroneously question her sanity and accuse her of behaving like a bag lady patrolling the streets of Carmel looking for strays. But perhaps the best proof that she is saner than most is the fact that she shows absolutely no need for the Hollywood limelight which some of her contemporaries appear to crave.
`Maybe without performing there isn't much of a life for them,' she says sagely. `If they can't do that any more, life becomes dull. Well, my life is anything but dull. I'm so busy, they'd never believe everything I do.'
Her days are dedicated to caring for `her children', a task in which she's aided by four housekeepers who help cook - but not for Doris (`I would never have a cook'). No, they're there for the dogs. The food is prepared in a special kitchen, but nobody does the actual feeding except Doris herself. And it doesn't come out of a can.
As she says: `Anybody can feed them canned food. We don't want that. Today, they're having turkey loaves - ground turkey with eggs and wholewheat bread, lots of garlic, some onion, fresh tomatoes - and then we bake it. Then brown rice and vegetable soup made with chicken broth and noodles. For dessert, they have cookies made from oats and sunflower seeds with juice from the liver cooked for the cats.'
When not feeding her family, she's writing letters to politicians, urging them to stop the testing of products on animals. Though her `handlers' often wish she wasn't quite as outspoken as she is, she has no hesitation in confirming that she believes the convicted killers crowding America's jails should be allowed to volunteer for product experiments instead of animals.
`I should think they'd want to do it, to give back to society what they have taken from it. I should think it would make them feel better. I would volunteer if I'd done something so horrendous like those people on death row. Anyway, it's stupid to test on animals. They are not like us.'
Currently, her energies are directed towards setting up Spay Day USA, a national event conceived and sponsored by the Doris Day Animal League to help eliminate the growing problem of pet overpopulation. `Do you know that 10 or 12 million dogs and cats are put to death in the USA each year, simply because there aren't enough homes for them?' she says. `That's almost one quarter of all pets in the country. It's a national shame. But we're doing something about it.'
Doris's Pet Foundation is always looking for homes for dogs and cats whose owners can no longer care for them, and the Foundation also raises money to pay for vaccinations, food, medical care and other services for people who could not otherwise afford to keep their pets. She gets a lot of help from celebrity pals, including Kirstie Alley; Shari Belafonte, Rosemary Clooney, Peter Falk, Howard Keel and Martina Navratilova.
It's tempting to surmise that after the disappointments and betrayals she has endured, it's easier to love animals than people. `Well, I love my friends,' she says, `but I have been "bitten" by many people. I just think 'we're all here together, animals and people, and they have taught me such a lot; they are loyal and joyful and they are so grateful. Even if you holler at them, and I do, the dogs never get mad. I think people could learn from that.'
For Doris, who has worked hard since she was a teenager, these are the best of times, spent at home on her magnificent estate with her family and friends and animals. But the scripts for films, TV and theatre continue to come. `If I find the right one, I'll consider acting again just to take a break. I've never worked so hard,' she laughs. `I think making a movie might give me some free time!'
And she's proud, she says, of the Hollywood legacy she's left behind. `I particularly loved the comedies. I really enjoyed making those films, and I enjoy them better than some of the movies they're making today.
`I think those comedies were very moral. I think things stink now. I'm not interested in seeing people in bed having sex. I think it's just sick and I'd never do that even if I was 25 years old and my career depended on it,' says the squeaky-clean woman who was known in Hollywood as the `professional virgin'. One wit said of her: `I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin', and she was once dubbed `the only virgin who's been married four times'.
Despite the ups and downs in her life, Doris seems to have discovered the prescription for contentment. `There were times when I wasn't always up,' she admits. `Everything could be calm and peaceful, then the next day the bottom dropped out. What can you do? Moan and groan and feel sorry for yourself? No, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you get on with life.'
As a devout Christian Scientist, she says she follows the edict: `Gratitude is riches - complaint is poverty.' She's delighted that Terry found The love Album but not because of the fame or money it may bring, which means nothing to her. `I'm glad to share this part of my life. I recorded constantly between films and these are my all time favourites. I hope everyone enjoys them.'
Making her audience happy has always meant a lot to Doris Day.