Screen legend Doris Day dies
Doris Day, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1950s and 1960s, has died, aged 97. An animal rights advocate in her later years, she had recently contracted pneumonia.
Doris Day – the actress and singer whose comedic roles opposite the likes of Rock Hudson made her one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1950s and ‘60s – has died at the age of 97.
The star’s Doris Day Animal Foundation yesterday confirmed her death from pneumonia at her California n home, saying she had been surrounded by close friends.
With her lilting contralto, wholesome beauty and glowing smile, Day was a top boxoffice draw and recording artist known for come dies such as Pillow Talk and That Touch of M ink, as well as songs like Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera) from the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Over time, she became more than a name above the title. Right down to her cheerful, alliterative stage name, she stood for a time of innocence, a parallel world to her contemporary Marilyn Monroe.
Day herself was no Doris Day, by choice and by hard luck. Her 1976 tell-all book Doris Day: Her Own Story chronicled her money trouble sand three failed marriages.
Although mostly retired from show business since the 1980s, she still had enough of a following that a 2011 collection of previously unreleased songs My Heart hit the top ten in the UK. Born to a music teacher and a housewife in Cincinnati, Day dreamed of a dance career, but at age 12 broke her leg badly when she was in a car which was hit by a train
Her Hollywood career began after she sang at a Hollywood party in 1947. After early stardom as a band singer and a stint at Warner Bros, Day won the best notices of her career with 1955’s Love Me or Leave Me. But she found her greatest success in slick, stylish sex come dies, beginning with her Oscar-nominated role in Pillow Talk in which she and Hudson played two New Yorkers who shared a telephone party line.