He cheated on Doris, knocked her around and humiliated her in public. He seemed to have a need to exert masculine power. According to those who knew her, Doris Day actually wore her bruises with pride.įrom the time of their first date, Jorden was bad news. She subsequently described him as one of the glummest personalities she had ever met, but she stuck with him all the same.Īll her life, Doris - like Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Joan Crawford and many other stars - was to attract mean and moody types with whom she had (and, by all accounts, enjoyed) a sex life where passion constantly merged into violence. It was she who broke the ice, asking him if he would not mind collecting her each evening and then dropping her home after the show. This was 1940, and Doris Kappelhoff sounded too Jewish and was too long for the billboards. It was bandleader Barney Rapp who gave her the name that would earn her worldwide celebrity. 'Not to be a dancer or Hollywood movie star, but to be a housewife in a good marriage.' Sadly for Doris, though she was to be a wife four times, she would never have a good marriage - largely on account of her own bad choices in men. 'It was the only ambition I ever had,' she said. She would spend the rest of her life yearning for an unattainable family idyll. After learning what was happening, Alma threw him out and they were divorced. But he wasn't very disciplined when it came to his own love life and embarked on a string of affairs - one of them with his wife's best friend.ĭoris would hear them having sex in the room next to hers, and cry herself to sleep. Both her parents were Catholics and her father, Frederick, a music teacher, was a strict disciplinarian.

She was made aware of the harsh realities of sexual relationships early. Yes, Doris might have been just 16, but she was already far from naive when it came to men. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.

Rock Hudson by David Bret