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.

Today is the 109th birthday of Thelma Ritter, the best wisecracking maid/nurse/housekeeper/neighbor lady in motion picture history.

Her uncredited part as Sadie Dugan in A Letter to Three Wives (1949) was only her second appearance in a motion picture; the first was as a shop-weary mom dragging her son around Macy's in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which I'm sure you'll remember if you think about it.

Her third film, All About Eve (1950) earned her the first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Not bad for a gal who didn't even get into pictures until she was my age. In total, she was nominated six times:
     *  All About Eve (1950)
     *  The Mating Season (1951)
     *  With a Song in My Heart (1952)
     *  Pickup on South Street (1953)
     *  Pillow Talk (1959)
     *  Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

...and never won. NEH-VAH. [Which reminds me,nominate your favorite scandalously neglected star for this year's Aggie Awards.]

Thelma Ritter did a lot of television work in the 50s and early 60s, including a turn as a busybody with a dangerous secret in "The Babysitter," on the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

There is a lovely filmography and tribute to Thelma Ritter here on The Film Experience Blog, but for possibly the best impersonation I've ever heard and a great review of With a Song in My Heart, please watch Episode 9 of Tired Old Queen at the Movies.

And if you haven't had enough, I stumbled across her briefish appearance as the New York co-host of the 1954 Academy Awards — a fabulous year for Oscar — On the Waterfront, Rear Window (with, oh, Thelma Ritter in another great supporting role), and Country Girl, with Bing Crosby as an alcoholic...not the biggest stretch for him artistically, from what I understand.

Some YouTube angel posted the entire event. I present the section with Bob Hope's opening monologue (sorry, no host can touch him) and Thelma Ritter, glammed up, slightly nervous, and terribly sweet.