IKON: This week Fallon Gold writes about her love for Doris Day and reveals that for America’s Miss Apple Pie life wasn’t always so sweet

Say the name Doris Day and for most of us it will bring to mind a massive toothy smile, ultrablonde bubble-bobbed hair and the most glowing, happy girl-next-door Hollywood ever saw. As Wham! sang in their one annoying song, ‘The sun shines brighter than Doris Day’. Her image and the abundance of colourful, camp movies she starred in make her a gay icon. Her real life makes her a queer one.

Although Doris spent most of her career playing grinning, often singing, frustrated virgins who get their man in the end, her life was anything BUT sunshine and buttercups. It may shock people to learn that Doris Day’s life story is one of the most tragedy-struck, awful, painful tales that came out of showbiz. And we know this because she told her saga of success and woe.

Her son, Terry Melcher, convinced his mum to work with a ghost-writer to write a book and show the world what she really went through. Terry himself had an extraordinary story. A record producer, he turned down Charles Manson and it was Melcher that The Manson Family were looking to exact revenge on when they murdered Sharon Tate and her friends. Terry and Doris had to have bodyguards for years after that.

But back to Doris. As a kid she wanted nothing more than to be a dancer. Teenage Doris Kappelhoff won a competition to go to Hollywood to train with a top dance teacher. The night before she was due to go, the car she was in with friends was hit by a train. Her leg was broken in a gazillion places and she had to wear a cast for a year. Bye bye dance career. As if that wasn’t enough, the day before she was due to have the cast finally taken off she decided to do a one-legged dance routine to Tea For Two. Her crutch slipped from under her and she broke that leg in multiple places all over again.

As a girl-singer-with-a-band she married a horribly abusive guy who held a gun to her belly while driving a car and then chucked her down the stairs because he didn’t want her to give birth to Terry. She had a string of awful relationships including a husband who made a load of bad deals (and got her into some appalling movies) and, when he died, left her bankrupt and in massive debt. There’s more to DD’s tragic life story (illness, more bad love affairs, death of her son) but we don’t want to depress the sunshine out of you all.

Cuz there’s great stuff about Doris. As well as exposing all of this sadness, her memoir reveals that ‘America’s Virgin’ loves sex. She talks about sex frequently and candidly in her book in a way that most stars of her generation would never had dared to in their own autobiographies. You’ll never look at Doris Day’s apple-pie smile in the same way again.

We love that Doris loves sex.  We love that she stuck by Rock Hudson when the world found out he had AIDS. And we love that he called her Eunice and she called him Ernie. We love that she’s a crazy dog lady who gave up her movie star career to save animals. And we love that she appears in public on her birthdays looking like our nan.

But – it’s basic, we know – we really, really do love her for the movies. There’s the ultra-queerness of Calamity Jane: every butch gal’s and butch-loving gal’s dream. And, I mean, whip crack away, right? We adore her films with Rock Hudson. Sure they’re pretty much the same story told over and over but they are told so well, so colourfully (we want her apartments and every single outfit). And the chemistry between her and pretending-to-be-straight-pretending-to-be-gay Rock is the product of one of the best movie-partnerships ever. Watch Pillow Talk and tell us she’s not gold. We even love those awful films she made in the 60s that are barely watchable if it weren’t for the fact that they decided to dress her as a primary colour mod cartoon. Then there’s that voice. Smoky, sexy, beautiful and perfect. If you want to old-school pull, put on the jazz album she made with Andre Previn. No need to thank us.

We won’t hide our love for the Doris Day image or the Doris Day tragic-life-story. We will shout it from the highest hills and even tell the goddamn golden daffodils. Put on her music, stick on one of her films, read her book, and have a very Doris Day, darlings.