Wait, Did Doris Day Really Have an Affair With Sly Stone?

The thing about fame is that it opens a lot of doors to you, and things that would seem utterly inexplicable when you’re not a celebrity suddenly make a lot of sense. Why wouldn’t you own a pet monkey or sell a candle that smells like your vagina? Sure, let’s take a private jet for a 15-minute journey! If you’ve ever wondered how a weird celebrity pairing happened, it probably made all the sense in the world to the people involved, if only because being famous means the usual rules do not apply. I’m sure Elizabeth Hurley didn’t think twice about shacking up with Billy Ray Cyrus, even if it felt like an end-times omen to the rest of us. Hell, there are still people online losing their minds over Timmy and Kylie, even though that one makes perfect sense.

But what is a truly mismatched celebrity couple that defies explanation? I think I have one. Well, allegedly. How about the king of funk and America’s favourite virgin? Sly Stone and Doris Day?! Sure, why not?

By 1973, Doris Day was close to retiring. She'd been one of the biggest stars of the early-to-mid 1960s thanks to a slew of legendary rom-coms and chart-topping songs. But as the decade entered the throes of the sexual revolution, Day was seen as decidedly square. Critics dubbed her The World's Oldest Virgin because her movies seemed to prize chaste traditionalism over liberation. I think this is a somewhat unfair reading of Day's best works. In films like Pillow Talk, she is independent, career-driven, and not ready to settle for a dude who thinks he can walk all over her. Still, that wasn't what the culture needed, not when the pill had come along, and hippies were taking on Nixon. Day famously rejected the part of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate because she found the script "vulgar."

She ended the decade doing TV, not out of choice but because her husband, Martin Melcher, had signed her onto it without her knowledge. A devoted Christian Scientist, Day believed in letting the man look after the business, but after Melcher's sudden death in 1968, she discovered that he and his business partner had squandered her earnings, leaving her broke. She was the reluctant star of The Doris Day Show and several TV specials for five years.

The person who helped her through it was Terry Melcher, her only son. He had become a celebrated record producer during the ‘60s, credited with bringing the freewheeling California folk-rock sound to the mainstream through bands like The Byrds. He also played the tambourine on Pet Sounds and was a producer of the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He helped to make "Kokomo", which either makes him an icon or history's greatest monster, depending on who you ask.

Melcher spent some time hanging out with the one and only Sly Stone, of Sly and the Family Stone. He's one of the true godfathers of funk-soul fusion and the mastermind behind some of the best songs of the era. Without Stone, there's no Parliament-Funkadelic, disco, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, or Shrek end-credits dance-off. Stone was also famously troubled. The band became heavy users of cocaine and PCP. Stone used to carry a violin case filled with drugs wherever he went. Their record sales began to fall, even while they were making bona fide masterpieces like the political dark funk of There's a Riot Goin' On. Band infighting was constant. Promoters stopped booking them for shows because they became notorious for not turning up or passing out while high.

One night, while hanging out with Melcher, Stone finally met Terry's mother. Andrew Darlington, who wrote a book on Stone whose title I cannot repeat here, described their meeting.

"As she came down the sweeping stairs in her stretch-slacks and loose marine-blue blouse-top, and entered the music-lounge of Terry’s lavish Hollywood mansion, there at the piano sat a star-struck Sly Stone. He instantly began picking out the tune of “Que Sera Sera” on the keyboard and – turning on his still finely-honed charm, told her how much he loved her recording of the song. ‘I told her ‘siddown girl’’ explains Sly, ‘I showed off, she liked that. Yeah, she’s very aware. She’s very wise’. She joined Sly, part-singing and part-humming along as he played, just as she’d shared a piano-stool duet with Frank Sinatra in their ‘Young At Heart’ movie. She was famously ungrand, and a natural comedienne, but knew how to play the star when it amused her to do so. For Sly, who was struggling with the same equation, her playful artifice amused him. Her conversation was littered with elements of her blonde ditzy screen persona, she’d use an affected ‘darn it’ or a tongue-in-cheek ‘for gosh’s sake’. She referred to herself as ‘Dodo’, while things she approved of tended to be ‘darling’. Sly also saw himself as a mimic, affecting a posh English movie-accent when it amused him."

It was a very sweet meeting of pop culture opposites bonding over a moment of fanboying and music. Frankly, it's adorable. And it didn't take long for this story to be spun into a rumour that Doris Day had fallen hopelessly in lust with the debonair bad boy of funk. It must be love, right? Why else would Stone and his band record a cover of "Qué Será, Será", her signature song? It made no sense, so it had to be an affair, apparently.

Sometimes, rumours go haywire simply because they’re odd and we not-so-secretly want them to be true. Richard Gere and the gerbil comes to mind, another story too outlandish to work but a lot of sickos enjoyed the grotesquery of it. The Sly/Doris story is harmless by comparison, although there is a mean streak to the chatter, reliant on both treating Day as a frigid b*tch and Stone as a leering seducer going after the nice white innocent. Is it so hard to imagine that, sometimes, a woman just needs a hot dude who likes her to show her a good time?

Here’s another unexpected kink in this story (not that kind.) Stone claimed in a 2009 interview with LA Weekly that, during some of his visits to Melcher's house, he saw Charles Manson. Experts in the world of the Tate-LaBianca murders will be aware of Melcher’s association with Manson. Old Charlie was desperate to get a record contract and saw Melcher as his best chance at landing a deal. Melcher dabbled in the hippie scene and attended a few parties with the family, who also spent a lot of time with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. While Melcher did humour Manson and listened to some of his songs, Manson was a terrible musician, and Melcher knew his amateur three-chord grunting wouldn’t sell. Having been rejected by Melcher, Manson’s machinations with his cult grew more violent and vindictive. He targeted 10050 Cielo Drive, where Sharon Tate lived, because that was Melcher’s old house.

Stone is scant on the details in this interview – he was famously cagey and didn't like to do anything not on his own terms – he did say that he knew something was off about Manson and that Melcher was scared of the future killer. “ He knew he was going to do something to him. But I didn't know any of this.” Melcher himself always claimed that Manson never came to his house while he was there, which may have been a way for him to cover just how well he knew the man after his crimes were committed. A recent book on the Manson case alleges that Melcher was having sex with a 15-year-old Manson family member, Ruth Ann Moorehouse, and that her father, another Family member, resided at 10050 Cielo Drive with Melcher.

By the mid-'70s, with her TV show over, Day stepped away from stardom to dedicate herself to animal rights, which she remained committed to until her death in 2019 at the age of 97. Sly Stone kept working into the '70s and '80s but continued to have troubles with drugs and the law. He spent some time unhoused and ended up in a protracted legal battle to get back years' worth of unpaid royalties. He recorded new music in the 2000s and did sporadic stage work, but remained inconsistent and unreliable. He passed away last year at the age of 82, two years after releasing his memoirs. There is an excellent documentary on his legacy, Sly Lives!, directed by Questlove.

Neither Day nor Stone ever confirmed the rumours, and I’m inclined to believe the story is untrue. Day may have been married four times, but she was still a very of-her-time woman who just didn’t seem like the type to indulge in a freaky funky fling. Personally, I think she should have tried it at least once. Whatever will be, will be, after all.