“Miss Lachrymose”

In her very first stage appearance Doris Day wet herself. It was in her hometown of Cincinnati in 1927. She was five years old and not yet Doris Day. She was still Doris Kappelhoff and the red satin pants that her mother, Alma, had sewn for the kindergarten pageant were quick to betray her.

The rest of my essay, “Miss Lachrymose,” is in this week’s issue of the London Review of Books. (It seems the Globe is intrigued by the reclusive star as well.) You’ll need a subscription to read the whole thing, and you should get one because this issue also features a wonderful piece by Caleb Crain about the nineteenth-century novelist William Wilkie Collins who “grew up to flout English propriety by relishing sauces, wearing bright colors, living in sin, and asking nearly everyone to address him by his middle name.”

Also, to see Doris Day’s shockingly somber rendition of “I’ll Never Stop Loving You,” click here.