Singer-actress Doris Day dies
The iconic star of the 1950s and ’60s, a symbol of wholesome American womanhood, was 97.
LOS ANGELES — Doris Day, the sunny blond actress and singer whose frothy comedic roles opposite the likes of Rock Hudson made her one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1950s and ’60s and a symbol of wholesome American womanhood, has died. She was 97.
In recent years Day had been an animal rights advocate, and her Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed her death early Monday at her home in Carmel Valley, California. The foundation said she was surrounded by close friends.
“Day had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia, resulting in her death,” the foundation said in an emailed statement. The foundation also said she requested “no funeral or memorial service and no grave marker.”
Day was a top box office draw and recording artist known for such films as “Pillow Talk” and “That Touch of Mink” and for such songs as “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” from the Alfred Hitchcock film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
But over time, she became more than a name above the title: She stood for a time of innocence and G-rated love, a parallel world to her contemporary Marilyn Monroe. The running joke, attributed to both Groucho Marx and actor-composer Oscar Levant, was that they had known Day “before she was a virgin.”
Day herself was no Doris Day, by choice and by hard luck.
In “Pillow Talk,” released in 1959 and her first of three films with Rock Hudson, she proudly caught up with what she called “the contemporary in me.” Her 1976 book, “Doris Day: Her Own Story,” chronicled her money troubles and three failed marriages, contrasting with the happy publicity of her Hollywood career.
She never won an Academy Award, but Day was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 by George W. Bush.
Born to a music teacher and a housewife in Cincinnati, she had dreamed of a dance career, but at age 12, she suffered a crippling accident: a car she was in was hit by a train and her leg was badly broken. Listening to the radio while recuperating, she began singing along with Ella Fitzgerald, “trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.”
Day began singing at a Cincinnati radio station, then a local nightclub, then in New York. A bandleader changed her surname from von Kappelhoff to Day, after the song “Day after Day,” to fit it on a marquee.
A marriage at 17 to trombonist Al Jorden ended when, she said, he beat her when she was eight months pregnant. She gave birth to her son, Terry, in early 1942. Her second marriage also was short-lived.
Her Hollywood career began after she sang at a 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.” She followed with Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” starring with James Stewart. She sang “Que Sera, Sera” just as the story reached its climax. The 1958 comedy “Teacher’s Pet” paired her with an aging Clark Gable.
But she found her greatest success in slick, stylish sex comedies, beginning with “Pillow Talk.” She and Hudson played two New Yorkers who shared a telephone party line. She followed with “The Thrill of It All.” The nation’s theater owners voted her the top moneymaking star in 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964.
Her first musical hit was the 1945 smash “Sentimental Journey,” when she was barely in her 20s.
Critic Gary Giddins called her “the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow-ballads in movie history.”
With movies trending for more explicit sex, she turned to television to recoup her finances. “The Doris Day Show” was a moderate success in its 1968-73 run on CBS.
Disillusionment grew in the 1960s when she discovered that failed investments by her third husband, Martin Melcher, left her deeply in debt. She eventually won a multimillion-dollar judgment against their lawyer.
Day married a fourth time at age 52, to businessman Barry Comden in 1976. They divorced in 1981.