Born Doris von Kappelhoff, Doris Day's teenage aspirations of becoming a dancer were crushed when she was injured in a serious auto accident at age 15. Instead of giving up entirely, the plucky Day became a singer, performing in clubs and on the radio. By the early '40s she achieved popularity singing with the Bob Crosby and Les Brown bands; by the mid-'40s she was a very successful recording star. In 1948, she made her feature film debut in Romance on the High Seas, which lead her to being cast as the eternally wholesome "girl next door" in a series of light musicals and occasional dramas. During the early '50s, Day had become the most popular female

star in the U.S. She is best remembered for playing innocent virgin to big handsome "wolves" such as Rock Hudson and Cary Grant in a series of frothy bedroom farces in the '50s; for one of these films, Pillow Talk (1959), she received a "Best Actress" Oscar nomination. In 1975, Day authored an autobiography, Doris Day: Her Own Story (1975), revealing that her life was not all sunshine and daisies; in it she discussed her unhappy childhood that included a year's hospitalization when she was 13, life on the road at 16, and her brief marriage to a psychopath at 17. In 1968, she suffered a mental breakdown and retired from films after discovering that her

recently deceased third husband, manager, and producer Marty Melcher had either mishandled or embezzled her $20 million fortune, leaving her nearly destitute. But Day quickly recovered; she then went on to star in the popular TV series The Doris Day Show. In 1974, Day sued her former lawyer, who had shared responsibility with Melcher for her fortune, and was awarded $22 million as a settlement. In the '80s she briefly hosted a cable TV show, Doris Day and Friends.

Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide