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marantzo
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 7:57 pm Reply with quote
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I don't know what connotations you're talking about, but Bancroft was perfect. Doris Day in that role wouldn't have got to me in the least, because I wouldn't have found her alluring in the least.

I thought Rosemary's Baby was almost funny in its depictions and wouldn't care who played what, it was dumb.
Joe Vitus
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:16 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
The Graduate is about the rejection of the materialist/California lifestyle the Doris Day sex comedies embodied, and a rejection of those movie's squeaky-clean-pretending-to-be-naughty Pillow Talk version of sex. It would have been savage satire.

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marantzo
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:27 pm Reply with quote
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Oh, that's what it was about?
marantzo
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:28 pm Reply with quote
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Double post for some reason.
Joe Vitus
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:58 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
marantzo wrote:
Oh, that's what it was about?


Mike Nichols thought so. But what does he know, if you disagree with him?

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marantzo
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:02 pm Reply with quote
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No, I'm just glad you explained what it was all about.
carrobin
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:31 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
That does put a different spin on what the film was supposed to communicate. I can sort of see what Day would have been like in the role. But somehow it's still hard to imagine her seducing Benjamin.
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marantzo
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:05 pm Reply with quote
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It would have been a different movie and stretch one's credibility. Doris Day would have been badly miscast and they were lucky that she didn't play the role. She wouldn't be up to the task anyway. The result would be silly.
billyweeds
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:21 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Anyone who says Doris Day couldn't have played Mrs. Robinson obviously hasn't really examined how good an actress she could be. Seldom has a Hitchcock scene had quite the emotional heft of the sequence in The Man Who Knew Too Much where Jimmy Stewart feeds Day the sedatives and then tells her their son has been kidnapped. Her fight to stay awake and be an active participant in finding their son is extraordinary acting.

Likewise, she was (deliberately, as Gary himself implies) unsavory in Love Me or Leave Me, turning what might have been a bland bio into something quite gritty and involving. Cagney, of course, had a lot to do with that, too--but he himself was quoted as saying he only performed with two actresses in his life that he would call "great." One was Laurette Taylor, the original Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. The other? You guessed it. Doris Day.

Day would have been superb in The Graduate IMO--not as alluring as Bancroft, but a lot more hard-edged and self-interested. Nichols could have led her to an Oscar. That and her non-casting as Nellie in South Pacific, the role she was born to play, rank as two of the top casting shoulda-beens.

And anyone who likes musicals at all should check out her wonderful performances in The Pajama Game and Billy Rose's Jumbo, the two lighthearted roles which for me constitute peaks greater than the Rock Hudson comedies she's best known for.

Just as a side note: I heard from one of Day's family-by-marriage members that she was far from a "day" at the beach in real life. In fact, she sounded like quite the classic bee-yotch, which (assuming that were true) makes her ability to come across so sunny on screen even more of an achievement.
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marantzo
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 9:00 am Reply with quote
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Oh yeah, I know that DD is the opposite of the characters she usually portrayed. I'm not sure when I knew this but it was when I was quite young. Probably from the movie mags we used to have at our house and Confidential of course. And Levant's claim that he knew her before she was a virgin pretty well summed it up.

She was tops in those musicals without a doubt. I still don't think she would have been nearly as effective of Bancroft in that role. She just doesn't exude eroticism. And I don't think the movie would have been far less popular, though possibly it would have got a big audience because, "Doris Day plays the middle aged predatory, adulteress vamp." Something like "Garbo Speaks".

If I remember correctly, you didn't much care fore The Graduate, Billy. I liked it very much. That may be why we disagree so much about having DD as Mrs. Robinson.
Earl
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:34 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 09 Jun 2004 Posts: 2621 Location: Houston
R.I.P. Geraldine Ferraro

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bartist
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:21 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
I can't imagine Doris Day as Mrs. Robinson. No matter how great her acting chops.


On an unrelated note, I recently learned that Sandra Bullock is NOT Jewish.

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carrobin
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:23 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Doris Day might be a bitch, but I always had an affection for her because of her love for animals. She may not have campaigned for them the way Betty White and some others do, but she spoke up often enough to make it clear.
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marantzo
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 3:18 pm Reply with quote
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bartist wrote:
I can't imagine Doris Day as Mrs. Robinson. No matter how great her acting chops.


On an unrelated note, I recently learned that Sandra Bullock is NOT Jewish.


Who said that she was?

On another related note, while looking up information about Mitzi Gaynor the other day, I found out that she is Jewish. Never knew that.
billyweeds
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 6:27 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
carrobin wrote:
Doris Day might be a bitch, but I always had an affection for her because of her love for animals. She may not have campaigned for them the way Betty White and some others do, but she spoke up often enough to make it clear.


Same here. Well, sometimes it takes a bitch to love a bitch. Razz
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