DORIS DAY

(3 April 1922 - 13 May 2019)

The American actress and singer Doris Day, who has died aged 97 from pneumonia, was one of Hollywood’s true icons. She was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff to William, a music teacher, and his wife Alma. The parents separated when Doris was still young and so she lived with her mother and older brother Paul. Wanting to be a professional dancer, Doris formed a dance act with a friend but a bad car accident scuppered her potential career so, having a good singing voice, she took music lessons and was soon touring with bands of the day. She sang with Les Brown’s Band from the age of seventeen and was discovered by Warner Bros and given a contract for Romance on the High Seas in 1948. She went on to act and sing in many more Warners musicals including Tea for Two, Lullaby of Broadway, On Moonlight Bay and By the Light of the Silvery Moon. Her big hit was Calamity Jane in 1953 with great songs including the Oscar-winning ‘Secret Love’. She also had dramatic roles in Storm Warning and The Winning Team (both with Ronald Reagan), Love Me or Leave Me with James Cagney, and Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, with another Academy Award winning song, ‘Que Será Será’ ('Whatever Will Be Will Be'). Fans will remember Doris for her series of romcoms with Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, James Garner and Rod Taylor in the 1960s. She was Oscar-nominated for Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson but didn’t win and was never nominated again, although she did win Golden Globes, Laurel Awards and Lifetime Achievement gongs from the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the American Comedy Awards and the Los Angeles Film Critics. She was also a popular singer and recording artist with many albums and hit singles to her name. She married four times: first to the musician Al Jorden who fathered her only son Terry, then to another musician, George Weidler, then to the producer Martin Melcher who left her penniless when he died, and finally to Barry Comden, a head waiter. With her four husbands and her son gone, she spent her last years working for her own Doris Day Animal Foundation. With her passing it seems that something essentially of Hollywood has now gone. Doris Day represented a time and a way of life in the movies that are just no longer there.

MICHAEL DARVELL