Doris Day died Monday, and our longstanding pal, Hy Hollinger, died in four years ago. We regarded both with great affection, and were excited to learn that their professional paths intersected, however briefly.
The magnet — studio publicity, often more entertaining than the movie, but that’s a discussion for another day.
As our special guest — our longtime friend, veteran Hollywood trade journalist and former studio publicist Hollinger — joined us in evoking a once-upon-a-time publicity adventure he vividly recalled to his final days involving a young Doris Day (she was 24 at the time) at the very beginning of her movie career.
As we have occasionally discussed, getting newspapers to publish a studio-manufactured publicity still was a key objective back in the Forties when print media ruled the media roost. Sometimes the studios would lend their stars to inventive photo ideas dreamed up by the newspapers themselves.
This is where Hy came in, so here’s how he told it in his own words:
There’s a color photo somewhere in the archives of the New York Daily News showing me– as Santa Claus — pinning a necklace on Doris Day.
That photo was taken in late 1948, when I, as a junior publicist at Warner Bros. in New York City, escorted her to the News building to launch a promotional effort for her first movie, Romance on the High Seas.
The News photo editor wanted a shot for the Christmas issue of the Sunday magazine section. Thus, I was dispatched to Brooks theatrical costumes to be fitted with the Santa garb.
The high-spirited Doris made no fuss during the Santa Claus business. (Romance) was her first movie following a career as a band singer, including touring with the Les Brown band and entertaining the troops with Bob Hope. 
A screen test landed her a contract with Warner Bros. Nobody signed me to play Santa Claus.
The studio pulled out all stops to introduce their new movie queen. Her costars were Jack Carson (clowning with Doris in the top photo), Janis Paige and Don Defore, and the cast included such recognizable supporting players as Oscar Levant, S.Z. Sakall, Eric Blore and Franklin Pangborn.
Michael Curtiz produced and directed, Julius J. Epstein and I.A. Diamond wrote the screenplay, and Julie Styne and Sammy Cahn provided the music, including the Oscar-winning song “It’s Magic.”
Working for a movie company and playing Santa Claus way back in 1948 launched a Bronx-born hick’s career as a fringe observer of the quirks of movie stars and moguls.
R.I.P., Doris and Hy.
It’s a credit to DORIS DAY that the following year after her musical introduction with ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS, that her Warner Brothers contract placed her in STORM WARNING, her first non-singing dramatic role…
And it’s a credit to Jack L. Warner’s insight that he placed her in that radical KKK movie right at the start of her HOLLYWOOD career, as usually contract players are so often miscast in roles they’re not suited for.
But also is so often the case, great singers can be great dramatic actors as well… And Doris showed us that for sure.
Doris sets another record-5 feature films in one year (1949). The first of these was a non-musical drama about the Ku Klux Klan. Co-starring her movie Idol, Ginger Rogers, who shows that even great dancers can play drama well. STORM WARNING is the only film in which Doris dies in the end.
Jack and his team actually wanted Lauren Bacall and Doris Day to star in the film, but Bacall went to Africa with her husband Humphrey Bogart to film The African Queen. Shortly after Bacall was released from her contract at Warner Brothers.
Jack had asked Joan Crawford to play Doris Day’s sister in the film. Joan declined saying “Come on, Jack. No one would ever believe that I would have Doris Day for a sister!”
For the second time in her newly-established career as a movie star, Doris appears in the secondary lead position. Ginger Rogers stars as a model visiting her sister (Doris) in an unnamed small town. She happens to witness the beating death of a man at the hands of the KKK.
Rogers soon discovers that the whole town is controlled by this vigilante group, and that her loutish brother-in-law Steve Cochran is one of the group’s members.
D.A. Ronald W. Reagan is the man who breaks the stranglehold of the hooded terrorists — through the simple expedient of walking into one of their meetings and calmly identifying each of them by name. A mild expose’ of the Ku Klux Klan, but it is never called that by name. Day’s death at the end is the result of a shooting accident.
Of course their were other dramatic roles for DORIS DAY… LOVE ME, OR LEAVE ME (1955), JULIE (1956) and MIDNIGHT LACE (1960), but that was it.
Her manager husband Martin Melcher had mismanaged Day’s career with so many inferior comedies, usually signing her to them without her knowledge.
Alfred Hitchcock liked Doris Day’s performance in this film so much that he asked her to star in his remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH five years later.
Here’s a brief taste of DORIS DAY’s dramatic ability-
httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXlFgH3ZMK4
Keep those ‘COMMENTS’ coming…
I actually watched Storm Warning a couple of years ago and it made a very strong impression on me. It’s a film that I will never forget.