Doris Day – Shaking the Blues Away
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I didn’t particularly care for this one, but a suggested next was interesting: Sway with Me w/Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. I had no idea that Sway was that old!
This is one of Day’s best films and much darker than the fluffy rom-coms she became known for later in the 1950s and early 1960s. It’s a bio-pic of Prohibition-era singer Ruth Etting with the great Jimmy Cagney being suitably scary as her problematical husband/manager the partially disabled gangster Martin “Moe the Gimp” Snyder.
The song and dance number linked above is good, but suffers from poor editing with too much of the sequence being a static wide shot to include all of the backup dancers. Intercutting some medium-distance and close-up shots of Day’s performance would have greatly improved matters.
The best singing performance in the picture is Day’s rendition of one of Etting’s signature numbers, the taxi dancer’s lament ‘Ten Cents a Dance.’ This sequence was shot much more dynamically with some nice dolly and crane work in the establishing shot and, after that, intercut medium and close-up shots at better angles than in the clip linked here. The dress Day wears in that number also shows off her formidably statuesque body to better effect than the one in the linked clip.
I have been mystified for years as to why Day is routinely omitted from lists of the sexiest actresses of 1950s and 1960s. Her body was as good as Monroe’s, IMHO, and her legs were even better.
The song ‘Ten Cents a Dance’ was, by the way – and in view of another post here a few days ago – written by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart in 1930 for a show of theirs entitled ‘Simple Simon.’ Hart was at the top of his form with this lyric. My favorite part is “butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors.” It doesn’t get much better than that.
Dick Eagleson
I have been mystified for years as to why Day is routinely omitted from lists of the sexiest actresses of 1950s and 1960s. Her body was as good as Monroe’s, IMHO, and her legs were even better.
Fully agree. But I am a leg man.
She was also a great actress.
pzatchok,
I share your proclivity. The 1950s were a Golden Age of Gams. Besides Day, there was Virginia Mayo, Rhonda Fleming, Ruta Lee, Ann Miller, Mitzi Gaynor, Leslie Caron, Debra Paget, Kim Novak, Cyd Charisse, Esther Williams, Joan Collins, Joan Caulfield, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Julie Adams, Julie Newmar and… somebody stop me!
And, yes, Day was a terrific actress as well as a top-tier singer. And a more than serviceable dancer too, despite having badly broken one of those terrific legs in a car crash in her teens and endured a long, slow rehab.
A great lady. I miss her.