Doris Day

Though best re­mem­bered today as the vir­ginal hero­ine of such light sex come­dies as Pil­low Talk and Lover Come Back, Doris Day began her ca­reer as a vo­cal­ist dur­ing the big band era. Her voice graced such pop­u­lar hits as “Sen­ti­men­tal Jour­ney” and “My Dreams Are Get­ting Bet­ter All the Time,” earn­ing her a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the most se­duc­tive singers of the 1940s. By the 1950s, how­ever, she had tran­si­tion to the screen, and her mu­si­cal out­put had changed focus to pop tunes.

Born Doris Kap­pel­hoff, in Cincin­nati, Ohio, she began to study dance at age six. At thir­teen, she won an am­a­teur con­test, and her mother de­cided to take her to Hol­ly­wood. A car ac­ci­dent along the way pre­ma­turely ended her dream how­ever. Her right leg was se­verely in­jured, and she re­turned home to re­cu­per­ate.

Liv­ing above a tav­ern owned by her uncle, Day had ac­cess to a juke­box and began to take an in­ter­est in singing. She stud­ied voice and, though still need­ing crutches to walk, won an am­a­teur con­test on radio sta­tion WLW singing “Day by Day.” Soon after, in 1939, she began per­form­ing at a local Chi­nese restau­rant on Sat­ur­day nights and mak­ing un­paid ap­pear­ances on a local radio pro­gram.

Early Band Ca­reer

That same year, after doc­tors had fi­nally switched her from crutches to a cane, band­leader Bar­ney Rapp heard Day on radio and asked her to au­di­tion. Rapp had made a na­tional name for him­self play­ing smaller ho­tels but had de­cided to set­tle down in Cincin­nati and open a club. Day, then still known pro­fes­sion­ally as Kapel­hoff, im­pressed Rapp and began singing with the band six nights a week when the club opened in April. The or­ches­tra leader found her last name cum­ber­some and changed it to Day, based on the song that launched her ca­reer.

Rapp closed his club after only a few months and began play­ing one-​nighters in the local area. Day stayed as vo­cal­ist, but the long work days took their toll, and she even­tu­ally set­tled in Chicago singing with the Jimmy James Or­ches­tra. In May 1940, she au­di­tion for Bob Crosby’s band and landed the job, join­ing them at the Black­hawk Cafe, re­plac­ing Mar­ion Mann.

Sev­eral con­flict­ing sto­ries re­volve around Day’s de­par­ture from the band. She re­mained with Crosby only two months, being let go in July. In her au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, Day in­di­cates that the band re­leased her in an ef­fort to cut ex­penses, and that Gil Rodin, the group’s man­ager, helped her land a re­place­ment job with Les Brown. Ac­cord­ing to Day, singer Bon­nie King was han­dling chores on Crosby’s radio show at that time while Day was tour­ing with the band. Day in­di­cated that King was the girl­friend of “the man who han­dled the radio ac­count.” Rodin told Day that the ex­pense of fly­ing King in each week to wher­ever the band was play­ing to do the radio show was too much, so they were going to make her their tour­ing vo­cal­ist as well.

Down Beat re­ported Day’s fir­ing and King’s hir­ing by stat­ing that the ad agency who han­dled the Camel show found Day’s salary too large, though this is at odds with Day’s ac­count as ac­cord­ing to her she wasn’t singing on the radio pro­gram so her salary shouldn’t have been an issue. Down Beat also re­ported that King had been singing on St. Louis radio at the time. Other re­ports say Day de­cided to quit Crosby after a mem­ber of the band made strong passes at her and fright­ened her, and Brown stated in an in­ter­view that he’d heard Day was dis­sat­is­fied with Crosby’s group and was ready to leave. Whichever is the cor­rect story, King re­placed Day in July 1940 and han­dled both road and com­mer­cial work.

Les Brown Years

Join­ing Brown’s or­ches­tra in Au­gust, Day felt at home. Brown’s men were as re­spectable as swing mu­si­cians could be, and she was well-​liked by all. She stayed until March 1941, when she left to marry Jimmy Dorsey trom­bon­ist Al Jor­den, whom she had first met and started dat­ing when they both were mem­bers of Rapp’s band. After leav­ing Brown she briefly sang with Joe Sanders’s or­ches­tra.

Every­one warned Day against mar­ry­ing Jor­den, but she ig­nored their con­cerns. Once mar­ried, she dis­cov­ered that he was in­sanely jeal­ous, and he began to phys­i­cally abuse her. After the birth of their son, Terry, she tried to move home to Cincin­nati on her own, hop­ing to di­vorce Jor­den once safely away, but upon find­ing out her plan he quit Dorsey and moved with her. She fi­nally man­aged to leave him in early 1943, with the help of her fam­ily.

Back on her own again and need­ing to earn a liv­ing, Day joined Boyd Rae­burn’s or­ches­tra in Chicago, singing with it in May, and later took a job as staff singer at WLW in Cincin­nati, where she per­formed on sev­eral pro­grams over the next few months. She also sang with local band­lead­ers Jimmy Wilbur and Ted Phillips. Brown asked her to re­turn, but she re­fused, not want­ing to leave her son at home. The or­ches­tra leader fi­nally con­vinced her to re­join the band in early 1944.

Day’s ca­reer didn’t re­ally begin to take off until near the end of the war. She had her first num­ber one hit with Brown’s band in April 1945 with “My Dreams Are Get­ting Bet­ter All the Time,” fol­lowed by “Sen­ti­men­tal Jour­ney” in June. The two songs helped pro­pel her into the na­tional spot­light for the first time. Re­ports that sum­mer had her leav­ing Brown for an MGM con­tract, but she did not. She fin­ished eighth in Bill­board mag­a­zine’s 1946 col­lege poll for best over­all fe­male vo­cal­ist. In the 1947 poll, she fin­ished sixth over­all and fourth in the fa­vorite fe­male band vo­cal­ist cat­e­gory. Day ranked third in the 1945 Down Beat an­nual reader poll.

Post-​Band Ca­reer

In mid-​1946, wed­ding bells once again rang for Day when she mar­ried for­mer Brown sax­o­phon­ist George Wei­dler. Wei­dler had moved to the West Coast after leav­ing the band, and Day gave no­tice to fol­low him, de­part­ing on Sep­tem­ber 15. Wei­dler’s fi­nances were mea­ger. The cou­ple lived in a run-​down trailer park in an in­dus­trial area of Los An­ge­les, and Day sup­ple­mented their in­come by work­ing on radio. While re­turn­ing to New York for a one-​month club en­gage­ment in Feb­ru­ary 1947, she re­ceived a let­ter from Wei­dler say­ing he was di­vorc­ing her. She quickly left the East Coast and re­turned to Los An­ge­les to sal­vage what was left of her life.

Though Day and Wei­dler didn’t di­vorce until 1950, his let­ter sparked Day to focus on her ca­reer. She made her first solo record­ings on Co­lum­bia in March and signed on as co-​host, along­side Frank Sina­tra, of radio’s Your Hit Pa­rade pro­gram for the fall 1947 sea­son. At­tract­ing the at­ten­tion of Hol­ly­wood, Warner Bros. of­fered her an au­di­tion for one of the leads in the mu­si­cal com­edy Ro­mance on the High Seas after Judy Gar­land and then Betty Hut­ton had been forced to leave the pic­ture. The au­di­tion proved suc­cess­ful, and she left Your Hit Pa­rade in No­vem­ber 1947 to make the film. She and Sina­tra shared the cover of Down Beat’s No­vem­ber 19, 1947, issue. She made Down Beat’s cover alone on July 29, 1948.

Day’s early solo record­ings were often quite jazzy, though her work began to soften over sub­se­quent years. Her most vis­i­ble sides from the 1950s on­ward were pop songs. Her biggest hits in­cluded “Se­cret Love,” from the film Calamity Jane, and “What­ever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)),” which she sang in the Al­fred Hitch­cock thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The focus of Day’s ca­reer shifted to Hol­ly­wood after her suc­cess­ful role in Ro­mance on the High Seas, and she starred in sev­eral mu­si­cals and se­ri­ous films over the next few years. 1958’s Teacher’s Pet, how­ever, marked a turn­ing point in her ca­reer. It was the first of what would be­come the many whole­some roles for which she is best re­mem­bered. She quickly emerged as a pop cul­ture icon, her whole­some in­no­cence the per­fect non-​threatening match for Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe’s sex­u­al­ity.

This new image was not to Day’s lik­ing how­ever. It had been the cre­ation of her then hus­band/agent, Marty Melcher, whom she had mar­ried in 1951. Melcher had begun to sign her for films that she didn’t want to make. He’d also begun to em­bez­zle from her earn­ings. When he died in 1968, she found her­self broke and on the verge of a ner­vous break­down. Be­fore his death, Melcher had also com­mit­ted her to a tele­vi­sion sit­com. The Doris Day Show ran be­tween 1968 and 1973 and was a huge suc­cess, help­ing her re­build her fi­nances. Aside from the se­ries, though, Day ap­peared on tele­vi­sion very rarely.

In 1974, Day won a $22 mil­lion judge­ment against her de­ceased hus­band’s lawyer for his role in the mis­man­age­ment of her funds. She then re­tired from show busi­ness, re­turn­ing only briefly in the mid-​1980s for the cable se­ries Doris Day’s Best Friends. She con­sid­ered a re­turn to the big screen sev­eral times, but suit­able roles were hard to come by. In 1976, she mar­ried Bev­erly Hills busi­ness­man Barry Crom­den. The cou­ple sep­a­rated in 1979 and then di­vorced.

An avid an­i­mal lover, Day spent most of her re­tire­ment pro­mot­ing and rais­ing funds for the an­i­mal wel­fare groups she founded. She do­nated much of her in­come to those causes and also at­tempted to start her own pet food fran­chise. Day lived out the rest of her life in Carmel, Cal­i­for­nia, where she died in 2019 at age 95.