Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

It was a huge pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interview to meet up via Zoom with Tamar Jeffers McDonald, an expert on Doris Day. Tamar is Reader in Film and Head of the School of Arts at the University of Kent. We learn that she dropped a copy of her book Doris Day Confidential: Hollywood, Sex, and Stardom to Carmel, California, for Doris Day to read and Tamar talks about how a few years ago she bought a broach that Day wore to the 1960 Golden Globes. Tamar discusses how she always imagined that she would have been an academic but in a different discipline and we discover that she used to work for the Victorian Society. We find out that Tamar’s and Doris Day’s families came from the same places in America and we learn how Tamar built up her academic credentials. We talk in detail about Pillow Talk and the question of Doris Day’s character’s alleged virginity, and we move the discussion to the theme of gaslighting. We also discuss the parallel careers – and Manichean opposites – of Day and Marlon B