A couple of weeks ago as I was going through the TCM movie line up I
accidentally noticed "Romance on the high seas". A late 1940's movie,
the description said this was Doris Day's very first movie. So I watched
it.
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| Doris on the high seas |
One of the fondest memories I have of my own
childhood is how I used to rush home to watch the "Doris day show" week
after week. Dubbed in Farsi, and probably being aired a decade or so
after it was aired in the US in the 60's, the Que sera sera theme song
and her platinum blond hair (that's what it looked like on black and
white TV) simply captivated me. I fell in love. I truly did. I used to
day dream about meeting her at her office, on the movie set, and somehow
strike a conversation and make her see how I was the man for her. It
didn't matter that I was seven or eight and she was in her late 40's,
that I was in Tehran and she was in LA, that I spoke Farsi and she
didn't. It didn't matter that she was from an era gone by. To me it
seemed completely realistic for us to be in love, and maybe even co-star
together. The series was translated as "The world of a woman" in
Persian. I followed every episode, watched every romantic comedy she
acted in with Rock Hudson and convinced myself that someday I will find a
way to let her know how I feel about her. "I was so smitten, that
though I'd never written any poetry" I thought maybe it's time I should.
It was magic. Even today it feels so every time I watch one of her
movies.
Many stars since have come and gone, but for me
she remains the one and only. Cuter than Meg Ryan, prettier than Kate
Hudson, sweeter than Rachel Weisz, lovelier than Thea Leoni, she was the
only woman in my world. And to this day, with her in her late 80s I
still believe she was the one who got away. Never far from imagination,
every now and then I go back to the time I'd rush yo do my homework and
eat my dinner early so I could watch her show. I become eight again.
Escaping from my dreary school, unfriendly schoolmates and endless home
works I did not want to finish, my world sheds its colours and
everything turns into a black and white movie with her smiling in the
opening scene.
The world being what it is I feel sad I'll
never get a chance to tell her how she made me escape reality and dream,
that I'll never get a chance to tell her that the impression she made
on me lasts to this very day. And yet, with all impossibly stacked
against me I insist and persist. So Doris, wherever you are, however old
you are, I love you, I still love you like when I was eight.
