Culture January 1, 1

A film professor I had in college, a hard-core Jesuit who swore by Doris Day, had convinced himself that she was the greatest actress in Hollywood history. The reasoning went something like this: She 1) was conversant in all genres, 2) was an accomplished actress, singer, and dancer, and 3) projected a complex persona that was demure but with an undercurrent of feline menace. It annoyed me to no end. For any young and precious cineast, Day was not a subject for serious inquiry, as were, say, the Nouvelle Vague and Buster Keaton. But everyone who took that class—the History