I have been a fan of Doris Day since I was about 10 years old after seeing her in “Calamity Jane” at a theater in Indianapolis. As I got into my teens I began reading and buying movie magazines to learn all I could about the lady I admired so much.
Once in a while her religion came up in articles about her, but ever so rarely. I knew she was raised Roman Catholic in Cincinnati, as was I. It seemed that after her father divorced her mother when Doris was quite young; religion wasn’t mentioned in articles. After two unsuccessful marriages Doris met Martin Melcher and they married on her birthday—April 3, 1951. Marty was Jewish, but had become a devout Christian Scientist several years before they married. Shortly after their marriage, Doris became a Christian Scientist.
When I was 23 years old I first met Doris in October 1967 at Bailey’s Bakery in Beverly Hills, thanks to friends I met through the Doris Day Fan Club in London. I was working as a reporter for The Indianapolis News (afternoon newspaper in Indianapolis), but was there as a fan only and not a reporter.
In March 1968 I moved to Los Angeles to be with my DD friends and accepted a job with the May Company in Public Relations. On weekends my roommate, Mary, and I would ride our bikes to Bailey’s Bakery. We would often meet up with Doris, who rode her bike to the little bakery to visit with Hilda Turner, the manager, who was a close friend of hers.
At the bakery, Doris was not the movie star: she was just “the girl-next-door” who visited with customers and graciously talked to us at length. Once in awhile the topic of religion came up. She knew Mary and I were Catholic. It didn’t matter: we were always interested in what Doris thought and we hung on to every word. Sometimes Doris would share some of her Christian Science views. We were fascinated and listened intently.
In early 1970 I was in a car accident and broke both legs and my right arm. For a couple of months I didn’t get out much, but when I did Mary drove me to Bailey’s Bakery where we could visit with Doris who was on hiatus from filming her hit TV show at CBS. Doris had given me a copy of Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, because, she said, she thought it might help me through this time.
I remember vividly one day meeting up with Doris. I had just gotten word that my father had a heart attack while in Chicago on a visit with my Mom. He was in the hospital and my Mother was so worried about his condition. She wanted us to turn to prayer.
Hilda Turner came over to our table and asked Doris “What do you have in there?” as Doris was reaching into her purse. It was a copy of Science and Health. Doris said she read it all the time.
“When we are in a creative state of consciousness, we are pure enough to dwell in the Garden of Eden which is the state of desireless-ness, contentive-ness. That’s really something to arrive at.” I didn’t know it at that time, but have been told that this is a “California variant” of Christian Science, which is the Christianity of Jesus taken “full out” and practiced as a science. Several offshoots, some “off the wall,” have sprung up.
She began talking about Mary Baker Eddy. She had given me a book to read. She remarked about how much Mary Baker Eddy did from nothing. “It just shows what you can do with faith.” I’ll reconstruct the conversation as best I can recall it:
She told me with admiration that God picked out an obscure, little frail lady. She was from New Hampshire. God picked her up. She wondered if I was reading a chapter in the book on her life.
I told her I was at the part where her second husband, a dentist who seemed to be something of a bounder, left her.
“Oh Lord, what she went through,” Doris said. She could sympathize with her. She then said, I think, something about ratty men and praised Mrs. Eddy, telling me that founding a religion was an incredible thing for a woman, especially in that day and age.
“If you didn’t stick to what the religions were, you were a witch. And trying to get a new thought started for a woman was very difficult .”
Doris told me that if I ever went to Boston, I needed to see the church she built. The Mother Church. She and Marty went there in 1958. She said it had grown, with a huge office building and reflecting pool but that they had never gone back. And the newspaper, she said, The Christian Science Monitor is the 2nd best newspaper in the world. She never said what the first was.
I took some notes.
Doris: There is nothing good, There is nothing bad. No matter what the appearance is, no matter what seemingly is going on, if we think we see, we have to know it is not good or bad. All is. When we begin to realize that our body is the temple of the Living God, we place it at God’s disposal to use as He chooses, And then, our body become an instrument for God. Take your whole body into your mind and realize, you don’t have a good or a bad body, a young or an old body. In and of itself, it has no intelligence, knows nothing, doesn’t know about disease or health. It doesn’t know about time or calendars. Unfortunately, the human eye does and because, the human body changes, The body knows nothing about seasons, whether it is winter or summer, good weather or bad, but unfortunately, we do and because of that the body reflects whatever we accept in our minds. We accept that when we sit in a draft we are going to get a kink or a chill. She said that dogs don’t know that. Dogs sleep outside and she referred to Bambi (one of her eleven dogs), who on the day before this time was in her pool and when she came out it was freezing outside. “Know what she did? She stretched out on the lounge soaking wet and loved it. Animals just don’t know if it is good weather or bad. They just are,” she said.
Then she gave me a schedule of religious programs to listen to on Sunday morning and I wrote it down:
8:00 – Oral Roberts – on TV
8:30 – Kathryn Kulhman and she had some suggestions for 9 :30
10:00 – Dr Robert Schuller from the Crystal Cathedral
“That will fill up your Sunday morning and you will be ready for the week.”
I have never forgotten that conversation, long ago in a bakery with Doris.