my favorite movie of hers was Midnight Lace with Rex Harrison... it was creepy... scary... not your typical sunshiny Doris Day movie... i also liked Young at Heart with Frank Sinatra...
"This film was chosen by Ross Hunter, the producer of her hit comedy, “Pillow Talk.” Playing the role in the film had a great effect on her physically. As the expert she is, she tried to develop a mental image of the woman she was playing and the part became very real to her. She said, “I became that woman to the best of my ability. To create the fear which the character I played had to project, I re-created the fear in myself which I had once felt in my own life. I relived it. It was painful and upsetting.” In one particular point in the emotional climax of the film, Doris has a very dramatic scene on a descending staircase. She says, “I wasn’t acting hysterical, I was hysterical, so at the end of the scene I collapsed in a real faint.” Production of the film had to be suspended for a few days. http://www.dorisday.net/midnight_lace.html
Doris, I have read, was thinking about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband and father of her only child- who beat her in the stomach and threw her across the room, almost causing her to have a miscarriage. .