Doris Day Collection

Doris Day
(1922 – 2019)

Actresses and Singer (1924-Present)

Life is not fair, and Studio Publicity Departments were more interested in creating a profitable image than spreading the truth. Doris Day was presented to the public as the virginal girl next door. G.I.s thought her pin-up represented the kind of girl they wanted to fight for and come home to, forgetting that it was simply a posed picture. Groucho Marx, a good friend of Doris Day, quipped that he knew her "before she was a virgin".

The blonde beauty was born Doris Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1922. Her grandparents were all born in Germany, and her father was a music teacher and choirmaster. Little Doris loved to dance and was doing quite well in her ballet lessons. An automobile accident in October 1937 severely injured her right leg. While convalescing in the hospital, she began singing along with Ella Fitzgerald on the radio and Doris made an important discovery; she could sing, and she could sing well.

Her mother hired a voice teacher for Doris after she was released from the hospital, and her first professional gigs were singing on the air over WLW Cincinnati and singing at a local Chinese restaurant. Her radio appearances caught the attention of bandleaders, and one of the first to hire her, Barney Rapp, convinced her to change her name to Day because Doris Day was easier to get on a marquee than Kappelhoff.

After Rapp, Doris sang with Bob Crosby's band before landing with Les Brown and His Band of Renown. She began recording with Brown, and their release of "Sentimental Journey" in 1945 became for WWII troops coming home from overseas and settling into the post-War prosperity. Traveling with a Jazz Band was not something "good girls" did. She married Rapp's trombonist, Al Jorden, in 1941 but left him after he beat her while she was eight months pregnant. Her son was born, and Doris married a second time in 1946 to saxophonist George Weidler, but that marriage lasted barely three years.

In 1947, Doris rejoined Les Brown's outfit. Les and his Band of Renown were going into their second year with The Bob Hope Show, so Doris became a part of Hope's gang. She also joined Hope for several USO Tours. Doris married film producer Martin Melcher in 1951, and Melcher began acting as her manager. In the spring of 1952, CBS ran The Doris Day Show, and Les Brown was the bandleader on her program. Through the Fifties, Doris became more and more active in films, and her movies made her records more popular while her music made people want to see more of her movies.

During the Sixties, Ms. Day kept her virginal reputation by starring in a series of romantic comedies with Rock Hudson and Tony Randall, including Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Don't Eat the Flowers (1964). The man-and-woman relationships in these films were very much of the fully clothed, each-with-a-foot-on-the-floor-on-separate-sides-of-the-bed sort. The sexual revolution seemed to pass by Doris Day films, but it was OK because she was making a lot of money. Except, it turned out that she wasn't.

Husband and manager Martin Melcher passed away suddenly in April 1968, and the funeral was barely over when Doris began to realize that not only had Melcher squandered her savings, but she was also deeply in debt to the IRS for back taxes. To add to the insult, Melcher had committed her to a series on CBS TV. The Doris Day Show lasted for five seasons, 1968 to 1973, but the format and even the premise of the show changed from season to season. The biggest change came with the opening of the fourth season in conjunction with the CBS "rural purge". Doris's character had been a widowed mother of two, a city girl with a ranch north of San Francisco. After the purge, Doris became a swinging single career woman, most of the old cast disappeared, including her sons, with no explanation given.

After The Doris Day Show went off the air, Doris essentially gave up acting. She remained active with TV music specials and a talk show from 1985-1986, but she began dedicating more time and effort to supporting The Doris Day Animal Foundation. When her friend Rock Hudson was outed as a closet homosexual who had contracted HIV/AIDs, Day remained by his side in support of her friend. This was a time when many people believed that they could contract the disease simply by holding hands with an AIDs patient.

It is rumored that Day was in talks with her Carmel, California neighbor Clint Eastwood in 2015 to appear in a film he was going to direct, but the project never got off the ground. Doris granted a rare interview to Hollywood Insider on April 4, 2019, just a day after turning 97, where she promoted the work of the Doris Day Animal Foundation and discussed her life and work. Her health was considered quite good, considering her age, but in May she contracted pneumonia. She passed away on May 13, 2019, surrounded by friends.  

Two Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame have been placed dedicated to Doris Day, one at 6278 Hollywood Blvd for contributions to Recording, and the other at 6735 Hollywood Blvd for Motion Pictures.

This collection of recordings is a sampling of her singing talents and guest appearances in various shows including the Bob Hope Show, Guest Star Radio, Railroad Hour, and volume two includes recordings of her own show, The Doris Day Show.