CLOSER TO HOME

America’s sweetheart enjoyed living up to her neighborly image in her Los Angeles abodes

Closer revisits the retro Los Angeles abodes of screen icon Doris Day.

From the time I was a little girl, my only true ambition in life was to get married, tend house and have a family,” Doris Day once shared. But she had already been married and divorced twice by her mid-20s before she was able to purchase her first home for herself, son Terry and her mom, Alma, in Los Angeles’ Toluca Lake neighborhood.

After filming 1948’s Romance on the High Seas, “I bought it for $28,000, furniture and all,” Doris, 95, who now lives in Carmel, Calif., has said. Yet it meant a lot more than a good investment: It was “the first time we were able to live together full-time,” Terry recalled. “My grandmother

and I moved out from Cincinnati. The house was cute. It was a special time for all of us.”

In 1950, Doris bought a larger house from Martha Raye for $40,000. “The place was a wreck,” she said, but Doris rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She fully redecorated the home with help from her manager, Martin Melcher, who moved there with her after they married in 1951. Said Doris, “Marty wooed me with a hammer in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.”

Her life there lived up to her childhood dream. Said Doris, “That day when we returned from our wedding trip — Terry excitedly running to the car, Alma in the kitchen preparing a welcome-home dinner — was the answer to what I had prayed for.”

Doris’ dining room had an English countryside theme. According to a report at the time, she liked yellow, printed fabrics and traditional furniture.

◀The actress (seen in her bedroom, circa 1953) was so obsessed with decor that she visited an upholsterer hours after her wedding to Martin Melcher! “I remember Marty standing there, muttering, ‘I don’t believe this is happening on my wedding day.’ ”

▶Doris moved to a ranchstyle home in Beverly Hills in 1958. Here, she entertained famous guests like Jack Lemmon, with whom she co-starred in It Happened to Jane. Doris said they got along so well because they were both “very spontaneous.”

to musician Al Jorden), ▲Her son, Terry (from her first marriage, in the late ’40s. Marty was around 6 when they moved to Toluca Lake “For the first time,” Doris adopted him after he and Doris wed in 1951. a wife and a mother.” candidly confessed,...