Addio
There are a lot of sad dogs and cats in Carmel, California and sad horses in Murchison, TX. They all lost their best friend today. Good taste in popular music lost a friend today, the community of superb actresses lost a friend today. The world of great dancing lost a friend today. One of the most beautiful and kind women I have ever met left this place today. And I lost a friend today.
Not a close friend, really more of an acquaintance. I met her once, spoke with her over the phone many times and contributed some hefty sums to her charitable work, a passion for which I share, and I admired her tremendously for her gifts, good taste, and exceptional mentality.
She hadn't starred in a picture since 1968; was last on a television show in 1975, and made her last recording in 1985. For many years she avoided the limelight and the public, except for some that would travel to see her, call her on her birthday, and vainly hope that she'd at least make another recording.
Blonde (naturally), blue-eyed and intensely freckled, she had a voice that was a little breathy, but not in a Jackie Kennedy way; more like a slightly southern way. When she said "hi", it lasted about four seconds and you would never forget it. She was completely oblivious to her beauty and charm, never gave herself enough credit for her intelligence and wry sense of humor and, best of all, never stopped believing that people are essentially good, they just sometimes do bad things. She told me once that redemption is always possible, that everyone deserves a second chance and in her case, she added, several more and that, as Churchill supposedly said, failure is never final.
If circumstances had ever presented themselves to make it so, I would have gladly run off to an island with her. That she was forty years older than me was completely irrelevant. I've been in love but three times in my life and were it not silly to speculate, I'd like to think somewhere she was the fourth.
Then again, I've blown enough pipe dreams and had sufficient smoke blown at me, too, to still be able to separate fantasy from reality. In a faraway place, Walter Mitty gets the girl. And even manages to keep her.
She preferred riding a bicycle to driving a car, hated to fly and had a fondness for chocolate milkshakes. She drank nothing stronger than wine and sparingly at that and liked a club sandwich (with Russian dressing, not mayo). Her home was very comfortably furnished, nothing in the least bit ostentatious, with a lot of stonework. Her tastes were simple but by no means simplistic.
She didn't like talking about her marriages or her romances and she often said that all she ever really wanted was to be a happy housewife, but then again she dreamed a lot, too. She was irrepressibly unable to be a housewife.
Her acting was, according to the redoubtable Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Clark Gable, James Garner, Jim Cagney, and Cary Grant, flawless. Her dancing was athletic and still decidedly feminine, in spite of a youthful injury that nearly cost her a leg. Her singing ... well, her singing was really something else.
I initially knew her only as a light comedy actress, until a friend of hers named Frank insisted I listen to her sing. Frank counted her as one of his three or four favorite singers (along with Ella, Billie, and Peggy). So, I did what I was told and became mesmerized by the sound, burnished in tone and color like raw honey, sexy without being sultry and yet still wide-eyed. Her annunciation was perfect, she popped no consonants into the recording microphone and phrased like a master of prose. I have everything she recorded.
Her song choices sometimes reflected the frivolous fifties, and like her peers Tony Bennett, Rosie Clooney, and Perry Como, she sang some pretty God-awful tunes. But they sold like crazy for CBS and being no dummy, she went along, as long as she could also record the best from Gershwin, Porter, Cahn, Kern, Berlin, Rodgers and Hart and all the rest. She had good arrangers, most especially Paul Weston, who knew just how much string to give her so she could turn a corner with a lyric like the most experienced New York cabbie.
My favorite song of hers' is one that reflects much of what I'll call her innocent sense of knowing and discernment. That sounds convoluted, but it ain't. I was fortunate to sing this song within her earshot, but I've not sung it in twenty years. It's a beautiful song, simple and wistful.
97 years is a long time, especially if those years are sad. Her's, for the most part, were not and there are millions of beating hearts, with two legs and four, that are grateful.
Addio, dear Doris.
Not a close friend, really more of an acquaintance. I met her once, spoke with her over the phone many times and contributed some hefty sums to her charitable work, a passion for which I share, and I admired her tremendously for her gifts, good taste, and exceptional mentality.
She hadn't starred in a picture since 1968; was last on a television show in 1975, and made her last recording in 1985. For many years she avoided the limelight and the public, except for some that would travel to see her, call her on her birthday, and vainly hope that she'd at least make another recording.
Blonde (naturally), blue-eyed and intensely freckled, she had a voice that was a little breathy, but not in a Jackie Kennedy way; more like a slightly southern way. When she said "hi", it lasted about four seconds and you would never forget it. She was completely oblivious to her beauty and charm, never gave herself enough credit for her intelligence and wry sense of humor and, best of all, never stopped believing that people are essentially good, they just sometimes do bad things. She told me once that redemption is always possible, that everyone deserves a second chance and in her case, she added, several more and that, as Churchill supposedly said, failure is never final.
If circumstances had ever presented themselves to make it so, I would have gladly run off to an island with her. That she was forty years older than me was completely irrelevant. I've been in love but three times in my life and were it not silly to speculate, I'd like to think somewhere she was the fourth.
Then again, I've blown enough pipe dreams and had sufficient smoke blown at me, too, to still be able to separate fantasy from reality. In a faraway place, Walter Mitty gets the girl. And even manages to keep her.
She preferred riding a bicycle to driving a car, hated to fly and had a fondness for chocolate milkshakes. She drank nothing stronger than wine and sparingly at that and liked a club sandwich (with Russian dressing, not mayo). Her home was very comfortably furnished, nothing in the least bit ostentatious, with a lot of stonework. Her tastes were simple but by no means simplistic.
She didn't like talking about her marriages or her romances and she often said that all she ever really wanted was to be a happy housewife, but then again she dreamed a lot, too. She was irrepressibly unable to be a housewife.
Her acting was, according to the redoubtable Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Clark Gable, James Garner, Jim Cagney, and Cary Grant, flawless. Her dancing was athletic and still decidedly feminine, in spite of a youthful injury that nearly cost her a leg. Her singing ... well, her singing was really something else.
I initially knew her only as a light comedy actress, until a friend of hers named Frank insisted I listen to her sing. Frank counted her as one of his three or four favorite singers (along with Ella, Billie, and Peggy). So, I did what I was told and became mesmerized by the sound, burnished in tone and color like raw honey, sexy without being sultry and yet still wide-eyed. Her annunciation was perfect, she popped no consonants into the recording microphone and phrased like a master of prose. I have everything she recorded.
Her song choices sometimes reflected the frivolous fifties, and like her peers Tony Bennett, Rosie Clooney, and Perry Como, she sang some pretty God-awful tunes. But they sold like crazy for CBS and being no dummy, she went along, as long as she could also record the best from Gershwin, Porter, Cahn, Kern, Berlin, Rodgers and Hart and all the rest. She had good arrangers, most especially Paul Weston, who knew just how much string to give her so she could turn a corner with a lyric like the most experienced New York cabbie.
My favorite song of hers' is one that reflects much of what I'll call her innocent sense of knowing and discernment. That sounds convoluted, but it ain't. I was fortunate to sing this song within her earshot, but I've not sung it in twenty years. It's a beautiful song, simple and wistful.
97 years is a long time, especially if those years are sad. Her's, for the most part, were not and there are millions of beating hearts, with two legs and four, that are grateful.
Addio, dear Doris.
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