Oh the inevitable revisionist appreciation! Sometimes what is most obvious is the truth: Doris Day was a boring actress who did not make a single significant movie (other than as examples of pop kitsch). I grew up in the 1960’s and I cannot express what a delight and relief it was when Doris Day and other dreary, sanitized products of the studio system were replaced by more earthy actresses like Candice Bergen, Ali McGraw, Katherine Ross, and Jane Fonda (although I will always have a soft spot for Shirley Jones who really was as sexy as this writer thinks Doris Day was).
Doris should have accepted Mike Nichols’ offer to cast her as Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate” (it’s true!). It would have saved her career from an unremitting sequence of trite films.
There is always some idiot out there who will find that Donny Osmond really was deep, that ABBA was really as good as the Beatles, that Elton John wrote meaningful songs, that Queen was original, that Neil Diamond rocked, and that Jerry Lewis was funny. Don’t give in. Most of the time, these “artists” really were as insignificant as the more astute critics always thought they were.