It's a Great Feeling: The Movie Warner Bros. Built to Make Doris Day a Star

In 1949 Warner Bros. built a movie out of its own stars for one reason: to make Doris Day famous. It worked. Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore watch It's a Great Feeling, directed by David Butler and starring Doris Day, Dennis Morgan, and Jack Carson. It was Day's third Warner Bros. picture, made when the studio had a big star on its hands and wanted the whole town to notice. The plot is thin on purpose: Day plays a studio cafeteria worker who wants to be in pictures, Morgan and Carson play themselves, and the film opens on the joke that no director will work with Jack Carson except Jack Carson. What fills the rest is the cameo parade. Joan Crawford reprises her Mildred Pierce dialogue and slaps both leading men. Gary Cooper gets a single word. Edward G. Robinson parodies his own gangster persona, Errol Flynn turns up as the small-town fiance, and Bugs Bunny arrives by way of Mel Blanc. Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart are conspicuously absent. The hosts are honest about the rest: forgettable songs, a dream ballet that defeats explanation, a Maurice Chevalier parody that runs long. What works is Day herself, and one quiet late number in a train lounge car. Not a good movie. A delight anyway. Also discussed: Calamity Jane, Mildred Pierce, Christmas in Connecticut, Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music. Next: Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst. Who the Hell Are We? is hosted by novelists Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore. Subscribe at melanieanded.substack.com. Notes: [email protected].