Doris Day @ 100: 'With Six You Get Eggroll'

Team Experience has been celebrating Doris Day for her Centennial. 

by Nathaniel R

Most careers peter out. Not so with Doris Day's. The most bankable actress of the first half of the 1960s chose to wrap it up at the first real sign that her popularity was waning. Her last top ten of the year hit was the bizarre comedy The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) but her last film, a blended family comedy called With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), was also a hit albeit not as big as her usual successes. The 1960s were tumultuous on all fronts including ideas about sexuality. The media became snide about Day, infamously dubbing her "The World's Oldest Virgin".

In retrospect, with only anecdotal history to go on, it's fascinating that Doris Day was supposedly rejected on these grounds when Julie Andrews, the box office queen of the second half of the 1960s, was not exactly a repudiation of the Day persona; sunny, funny, wholesome, short-haired musical blonde whose chemistry with male co-stars was undeniable but hardly horny...

The 1970s were on the way and a new wave of stars including Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Catherine Deneuve, Barbra Streisand, who were all exploding in the back half of the 1960s would be a truer about face. These actresses were sexually charged, exuded intelligence, and were sometimes thorny and confrontational onscreen. Mark Harris's classic Oscar book "Pictures at a Revolution" insightfully cites Natalie Wood as an actress that was the exact right age to be "New Hollywod" but was actually Old Hollywood through and through. In a way, though, we think of Liz Taylor as the bridge between the Hollywoods, or rather the prophesy of one era giving way too another. Taylor was always Too Much (part of her appeal, naturally) too sexy, too controversial, too heightened, too defiant for her heyday. The best insult that's actually a compliment ever was the Vatican damning her for her "Erotic Vagrancy" in the early 1960s. Her persona, if not quite her intense glamour, fits smoothly into the 1970s if you think about it.

But back to Doris, whose centennial is this very day!

Look at the crazy mixed messaging from the taglines !!! Is this a cringe comedy or a feel-good comedy?

While the culture around the movies and movie stars was rapidly changing, cinema is always a few years behind major turns. It takes time for movies to get made and for a behemoth dream factor to notice that the times have already changed. Still, it's not strictly true that Day was passé by the late 60s, since her films were still popular and they do reflect the changes that were happening, if a Disneyfied version of them. We use Disneyfied figuratively here since her final film  at 46 years of age, With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), came from the now forgotten studio National General Pictures (whose library was bought by Warner Bros in the 1970s).

With Six You Get Eggroll is a essentially a romantic comedy which morphs into a family comedy by the end. It's about a widow (Doris Day) who is mother to three sons who begins a romance with a widower (Brian Keith) who has one daughter (future Oscar nominee Barbara Hershey's film debut at 20). The middle age singles.liked each other (platonically!) before their spouses died and when they meet again several years later they hit it off. Their whirlwind romance doesn't go over well with their children and the second half of the picture is mostly them deaing with the fallout of trying to blend their families. 

Barbara Hershey in her film debut (!) gets prickly with her dad's girlfriend Doris Day

You can see the DNA of many of the RomCom and MomCom queens that came after Day in her winning performance which exhibits quite a lot of range given the material. There's a lot of Meg Ryan's sunny but wistful cuteness, a bit of Diane Keaton or Terri Garr's frazzled energy (but as rare flourish rather than baseline), some of Sally Field's earnestness, a tiny pinch of both Julia Roberts tartness and Reese Witherspoon's girlboss formidability, and a huge heap of Sandra Bullock's effortless charisma with acting choices that alternate between broad and so minimalist that you wonder, in the latter case, if she's doing anything at all and then you find yourself completely won over anyway. It's an endearing magic trick. What's more, as history proves, skill at Romantic Comedy is a very specific gift that not every movie star actress has.

Day has a lot of fine moments in this initially grounded comedy that grows increasingly sillier as it goes.The story arc is easy to see coming, but Day (and the always reliable if less movie-star dazzling Brian Keith) make a winning team. Day varies it up scene-to-scene with multiple colors to her moods. She gives this widow a full personality but doesn't let this clutter but rather assist and inform the punchlines. Her skillfull work also accounts for the dramatic undertow of two lonely people who are happy to have found each other but aggravated and even a little impatient with the children don't share their happiness.

Divorce rates climbed all throughout the 1960s and 1970s, peaking by 1979-1981

1968 and 1969 are a really interesting couple of years for movies and TV in terms of depicting romance and families. The movies begin to reflect new American realities. Blended families, which you never see in earlier movies, were suddenly a topic. Divorce began to skyrocket in the mid 1960s and didnt level off until the 1980s. The movies sanitize the new cultural eality so that both parents are widowed rather than divorced but the end result is the same.

With Six You Get Eggroll had the misfortune to open a few months after Yours Mine and Ours, a Lucille Ball comedy which is also about a widow and widower hitting it off and blending their (very large) families. Yours Mine and Ours was a big hit so Eggroll had to settle for runner up status but it was a success, too. One year later the  sitcom The Brady Bunch would premiere on television (though it was already in the works before those two pictures were released) as the first sitcom about blended families. The only "update" to the sudden trend within the seminal sitcom was that Mrs Brady's former marriage was never addressed. This was a compromise because the creator of the show wanted her to be a divorcée and the network wanted her to be a widow (less controversial!) and they could never come to an agreement. 

Now about that infamous 'Worldest Oldest Virgin' tag. We've always thought it overblown and unfair since Day's films were just following the social norms of movies at the time. The only trouble was that her star persona wasn't complicating or counteracting that the way some of her peers at the time did; Shirley Maclaine, Natalie Wood, and especially Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor gave off sexual-being vibes even in the cases when individual films were sexless. But projecting sexlessness on to Day isn't accurate either. Day often had chemistry with her romantic co-stars. And she and Keith have believable sexual chemistry in With Six You Get Eggroll whether they're just looking too intently at each other or embracing. There's even the hoary gag of a champagne bottle pop suggesting an orgasm (Keith makes a mess all over Day) which is immediately followed by the stars cuddling by the fire in seeming post-coital bliss. In one really funny line delivery late in the movie Day destroys a too-flirtatious neighbor who is after her new husband.

In fact, compared to mainstream family movies of the 2020s With Six You Get Eggroll is comparatively horny. Day and Keith are always sneaking off to spend time together. We even see them in bed together. In one chaotic scene Day's boys discover a man in her bed. Day sheepishly flashes her new wedding ring as punchline (the new couple has just eloped). In the end, this was still an innocent Doris Day comedy but it's a good one to cap off a legendarily sunny career. 

previously
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Pillow Talk (1959) 

Comments

[joel6]

This is far from an essential in her canon outside of it being her last film but considering the rough trio of films that preceded it (three of her worst) Eggroll was a good choice for her cinematic swan song. She does have a nice chemistry with Brian Keith and the movie is loaded with quality performers. Overall a pleasant time passer.

She wasn't quite done with show biz. After her louse of a husband Marty Melcher died unexpectedly the same year this film came out she discovered he had committed her to a television show without her knowledge which she reluctantly followed through with. She had little choice since she also discovered at the same time that Melcher and her lawyer had embezzled and squandered all of her money and left her deeply in debt. She was eventually able to recover some of her losses and found the series a balm during the stress of the trial as well as the very real threat to both her and her son Terry Melcher's safety from the Manson family following the murder of Sharon Tate.

The series itself is a standard one, though oddly the format changed every year of its five year run, made tolerable by Doris's sunny charisma and good supporting players.

[Mr Ripley79]

This was a fascinating read as i'm not a huge Doris Day fan so was nice to hear your thoughts on her retirement from films.

I have always wondered why at certain points audiences top loving a star they previously adored,sometimes they can come back and some times not.

I'm thinking due to an actress obsession about the rise and fall of Julia Roberts and then the 97 comeback,,Winona Ryder,Demi Moore,Whoopi and Sharon Stone after 95 all there films flopped,Meg Ryan in the early noughties all her films flopped and Cameron Diaz in about 2010 who has done her won Doris Day thing and retired.

Cher and Bette Midler had massive late 80's success then the 90's brought Bette just an Oscar nom a flop kids film which has gained status as a cult film and Cher simply stopped.

Meryl from 88 to 94 not that the work isn't good,all the 80's ladies couldn't get a hit Lange,Field,Spacek only Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn remained semi successful.

[rrrich7]

Nathaniel thanks for this. Love your writing!

Doris was always AOK with me, but Brian Keith was one of my favorite crushes. I was just becoming a tween and a teen in the 1960's, so you can understand when I say "my cup runneth over".

[Martin]

My dear Nathaniel, I was so pleased to finally read your thoughts on this multitalented golden era movie star.
What a fabulous writeup, and a wonderful tribute ! I was somehow never sure if she was really liked or appreciated by thefilmexperience.
Doris was for me (together with Grace Kelly, Burt Lancaster and Cary Grant) the first movie star crush I had as a kid. She opened up my heart ...- to fall in love with films in general and movie making. It's a fascination I can hardly describe or sometimes only emotinally understand but Doris Days grounded naturalism mixed with heightened comedic timing played a big part in it.

Claudio found the perfect words: "The effortlessness she radiates in comedies twists itself into something close to naturalism when adapted for a dramatic text. Doris Day feels disconcertingly modern."
That is somehow the reason why I think her dramatic work is actually her best - the real gemstone and surprise in her career. Sad we could not discover a couple more films where she was challenge by a good director like in the glossy grand gaslighter "Midnightlace", "Love Me Or Leave Me" (love to read your thoughts on both) or with Hitchcock.

Fascinating career of someone who seemed to just be there and feel into it. She never felt ambitious like a Kidman but worked so hard. Day was so good - yet you always thought she would be really happy doing just something else...

By the way - one of her finest work is also the teaming with fabulous Jack Lemmon "It Happened To Jane" - a rainy Sunday afternoon sundae!
Thanks for the joy guys !
Love reading more on DD100 x