Doris Day

Love Me or Leave Me was one of Doris Day's greatest, and least likely, successes. Coming out of a string of light movie musicals, she turned in a dramatic performance in this film biography of singer Ruth Etting. She looked nothing like Etting and made no attempt to sound like her, either. But since Etting's recordings of the 1920s and '30s were long out of print and she made only a few films, that was less of a problem than it would have been for a performer whose voice and appearance were better preserved and available. The film was a popular and critical success, but the soundtrack, consisting entirely of Day's renditions of Etting signature songs like the title tune and "Ten Cents Dance," plus a couple of newly written songs, was a blockbuster, spending months at the top of the charts and becoming far and away the best selling of the relatively new 12" LPs of 1955. Day was given a chance to sing something different from the novelty-dominated contemporary material and often second-rate screen songs she had been assigned up to this point, and she reveled in the opportunity. The 1993 reissue, the first release in true stereo, added three bonus tracks, two of which were previously unreleased alternate takes marred by buzzes and the third the Percy Faith-backed studio version of one of the film's new songs, Sammy Cahn and Nicholas Brodszky's "I'll Never Stop Loving You," which became a hit single for Day but had not previously appeared on the soundtrack. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide