#a stranger passing away at 100 years old can't be defined as a tragedy

[jobethdalloway]

Howdy, y’all. So, I’ve been listening pretty much exclusively to Doris Day since her passing earlier this week. Accomplishing this has been easy because not only is so much of her music available online, but I have hours’ worth in my own collection. While I love a great many styles and great many singers, I believe hers is my favorite voice of the previous century. I have a lot of happy memories tied up in that voice. 

It seemed appropriate to post this here because I think a lot of you started following this blog in the first place because of a fic I wrote way back when, called Calamity Jane Meets Dr. Isles, Medicine Woman. All I really took from the real Calamity was her badass nickname, and tbh I think Doris Day’s biopic is probably in the same boat. But she plays a snarly, subversive, cool chick in her own way. I absolutely loved this movie when I was a kid - brought on, I think, because the Annie Get Your Gun revival soundtrack was a staple in my family’s home (Bernadette Peters! Still love it!!), and my mom found this movie at the library and thought I might like it, too. 

My own CJ has a lot of Doris’ Calamity in her. Also, for any of you who read Are You Lonesome Tonight?, this is the song Jane and Maura listened to in bed together. It’s a ballad that Calamity ostensibly sings about Wild Bill Hickok, but the film makes it veeeery easy to interpret queerly as a love song for the movie’s other leading lady. That’s why I knew I had to include it in that fic. I know that as much as any queer woman who watched R&I (or other subtextual shows in the ‘90s onwards), those who saw Calamity Jane in the ‘50s also saw themselves.