Doris Day was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff 89 years ago today. Hard to believe, isn't it? I don't know what more I could add to the great body of information there is out there about her (including her excellent memoir, Doris Day: Her Own Story), except to express my admiration for her talent and perseverance in the face of stupid marital and professional choices.

I think she's a lovely human being with a beautiful voice who has had to navigate complicated roles and a messy personal life for at least six decades. I could listen to late 1940s Doris for hours. She just melts my heart.

I first became aware of Jan Sterling in one of my favorite films, Caged (1950) starring Eleanor Parker and Agnes Moorehead. She played a dizzy inmate called Smoochie who wore cute little pigtails. I thought she was marvelous and it's been a mystery to me why she didn't get better parts after that.

She had an unworthy role in the Thelma Ritter vehicle, The Mating Season, only a year later and watching her I thought how tough it must have been to be so blonde. Apparently, she got an Oscar nomination for her role in The High and Mighty, a film I guess I should see again, because it keeps coming up over and over again.

Here she is in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents story, "On the Nose," as a compulsive gambler. And the dope who plays her husband winds up on Little House on the Prairie as the guy who runs the sawmill some 15 years later, so it all works out in the end.

Just finished watching Hard, Fast and Beautiful (RKO 1951), and yes, it's natural to think that it's the story of my life, but no, turns out to be just one of the many examples of  Claire Trevor's naturalness at playing complicated women. I absolutely love and adore her. In this particular movie she plays the ambitious mother of a budding tennis star played by Sally Forrest, who looks oddly like Ida Lupino, the film's director, in a 2nd-cousin-y sort of way. 

[Speaking of Ida Lupino, she and Robert Ryan just appear out of nowhere as spectators during one of the tennis matches played by Sally Forrest's character. It was a little unnerving. I mean, you expect Robert Ryan to sock somebody, right?] It's not a really good movie, but worth it for the sports angle and the sweetness of the boyfriend and father figures.

There's nothing Claire Trevor couldn't do, in my humble opinion. She could be cutting, sympathetic, damaged, scheming, bad, mean, sexy, and tired — but always real, human, and female. Ugh. Nobody writes for actresses like her and it's criminal. Granted, I still haven't seen her in the episode of Murder, She Wrote that Netflix tells me I can see for free, but I'm guessing she's marvelous. I'll certainly let you know.

She does show up in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (the Murder, She Wrote of the late 1950s), as an American journalist who finds herself caught up in Cold War intrigue with a hot young Jacques Bergerac, and old enemy stand-bys, Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) and John Banner (Sgt. Schultz). Don't take my word for it; just watch for yourself.

Meanwhile, Happy 101st Birthday, Claire Trevor. There was and is no one like you.

I don't know what kind of event it will be or where or how many people can physically attend, but I am throwing a dart in the wall for the 2nd Aggie Awards, and that date is: Saturday, August 13, 2011.

Why? Principally because it's Alfred Hitchcock's birthday and the man never ever won an Academy Award for direction, but also because the date is  a) far enough out in the calendar to plan something decent, b) far enough out in the calendar to forget about it altogether, and  c) on a Saturday this year.

That's the current plan, people. I shall keep you informed.

Meanwhile, in honor of Sir Alfred, please enjoy "Premonition," the second episode ever of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, starring the late John Forsythe, the current Cloris Leachman, and the ubiquitous George Macready.

Sorry about the commercials.

It's never to late to nominate the actor and actress most shamefully neglected by the Academy. VOTE NOW!