Farewell to a legend

Hollywood actress Doris Day's heyday was suffused with the shining light of post-war optimism. Her successful early days as a singer in a big band saw her become a singing star who acted in 40 films over two decades. She was the freckled, all-American girl with the turned-up nose and clean-cut looks who could sing like a dream. She got to act with all the matinee stars of the era like Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, James Garner and James Cagney. Her controlled voice and clear diction conveying such great emotion made an Oscar-winning song like Que Sera Sera (Whatever will be, will be) an all-time classic even if the words rang contrary to a young Doris' own vision of never-ending happy days. Her life story was also a warning of conmen lurking at every corner as one of her husbands and her secretary swiped and frittered away her $20 million fortune and left her in debt. She had to anchor the Doris Day Show on TV to make up.

Times change as do tastes, and Hollywood moved on from romantic stories to genres evolving with public taste and artistic imagination. It's a reappraisal of Doris Day's career and some of the daring roles she did in cocky manner to defy the conventions and sensibilities of the age that she is to be savoured more as a kind of early feminist. It's during her retired life on a vast estate with a huge number of pets that she became famous for animal welfare activism. Her experiences with pets, including her first one she was gifted while recuperating from a broken leg, had long convinced her that undying loyalty would come only from pet animals.