Doris Day (born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time” with Les Brown & His Band of Renown. She left Brown to embark on a solo career and recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.
One of the biggest film stars in the 1950s–1960s era, her film career began during the Golden Age of Hollywood with Michael Curtiz‘s Romance on the High Seas (1948), with Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore, and Oscar Levant. Other films made with Curtiz include My Dream Is Yours (1949), with Jack Carson and Lee Bowman; Young Man with a Horn (1950), with Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Hoagy Carmichael, and Juano Hernandez; and I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951), with Danny Thomas, Frank Lovejoy, Patrice Wymore, and James Gleason.
Collaborations with filmmaker David Butler include It’s a Great Feeling (1949), with Carson and Dennis Morgan; Tea for Two (1950), with Gordon MacRae and Gene Nelson; The Lullaby of Broadway (1951), with Nelson, S.Z. Sakall, Billy De Wolfe, Gladys George, Florence Bates, and Anne Triola; April in Paris (1952), with Ray Bolger, Claude Dauphin, Eve Miller, George Givot, and Paul Harvey; By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), with Gordon MacRae and Leon Ames; Calamity Jane (1953), with Howard Keel and Allyn Ann McLerie.
Other notable films of the early 1950s include Roy Del Ruth’s The West Point Story (1950), with James Cagney and Virginia Mayo; Stuart Heisler’s Storm Warning (1951), with Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, and Steve Cochran; Lewis Seiler’s The Winning Team (1952), with Reagan and Frank Lovejoy; Jack Donohue’s Lucky Me (1953), with Robert Cummings, Phil Silvers, Eddie Foy Jr., Nancy Walker, and Martha Hyer; Gordon Douglas’s Young at Heart (1955), with Frank Sinatra, Gig Young, Ethel Barrymore, Alan Hale Jr., and Dorothy Malone; Charles Vidor‘s Love Me or Leave Me (1955), with Cagney and Cameron Mitchell.
Films in the mid to late 1950s Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) with James Stewart, Brenda de Banzie, Bernard Miles, Christopher Olsen, Daniel Gélinc, and Reggie Nalder; Andrew L. Stone’s Julie (1956), with Louis Jourdan and Barry Sullivan; George Seaton’s Teacher’s Pet (1958), with Clark Gable, Young, Mamie Van Doren, and Nick Adams; Gene Kelly‘s The Tunnel of Love (1958), with Richard Widmark, Young, Gia Scala, Elisabeth Fraser, and Elizabeth Wilson; and Richard Quine’s It Happened to Jane (1959), with Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs.
Day’s best-known films are those in which she co-starred with Rock Hudson; Michael Gordon’s Pillow Talk (1959), with Tony Randall, Thelma Ritter, and Nick Adams; Delbert Mann’s Lover Come Back (1961), with Randall, Edie Adams, Ann B. Davis, and Donna Douglas; and Norman Jewison’s Send Me No Flowers (1964), with Randall, Hal March, Paul Lynde, Edward Andrews, Patricia Barry, and Clint Walker. For Pillow Talk, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Other films in the 1960s include Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960), with David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, and Spring Byington; David Miller’s Midnight Lace (1960), with Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy; Delbert Mann’s That Touch of Mink (1962), with Cary Grant, Young, and Audrey Meadows; Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962), with Stephen Boyd, Jimmy Durante, and Martha Raye; The Thrill of It All (1963), with James Garner, Arlene Francis, Reginald Owen, ZaSu Pitts, and Carl Reiner; and Move Over Darling (1963), with Garner, Polly Bergen, Thelma Ritter, Fred Clark, Don Knotts, Chuck Connors, Edgar Buchanan, Pat Harrington Jr., and John Astin.
Later films include Do Not Disturb (1965), with Rod Taylor; Frank Tashlin’s The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), with Taylor, Arthur Godfrey, Dick Martin, Dom DeLuise, and Paul Lynde; Caprice (1967), with Richard Harris, Ray Walston, Edward Mullhare, Jack Kruschen, Lilia Skala, Michael J. Pollard, and Irene Tsu; Andrew V. McLaglen’s The Ballad of Josie (1967), with Peter Graves, George Kennedy, Andy Devine, William Talman, and David Hartman; Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968), with Patrick O’Neal, Robert Morse, Terry-Thomas, Lola Albright, and Jim Backus; and With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), with Brian Keith, Pat Carroll, Barbara Hershey, Alice Ghostley, and George Carlin.
After ending her film career in 1968, only briefly removed from the height of her popularity, she starred in her own sitcom The Doris Day Show (1968–1973). In 1989, she was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2008, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award as well as a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. In 2011, she was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award. Also in 2011, she released her 29th studio album My Heart which contained new material and became a UK Top 10 album. As of 2020, she was one of eight record performers to have been the top box-office earner in the United States four times.
Each review will be linked to the title below.
(*seen originally in theaters)
(**seen rereleased in theaters)
- Romance on the High Seas (1948) – directed by Michael Curtiz
- My Dream Is Your (1949) – directed by Michael Curtiz, with an animated sequence directed by Friz Freleng
- It’s a Great Feeling (1949) – directed by David Butler
- Young Man with a Horn (1950) – directed by Michael Curtiz
- Tea for Two (1950) – directed by David Butler
- The West Point Story (1950) – directed by Roy Del Ruth
- Storm Warning (1951) – directed by Stuart Heisler
- Lullaby of Broadway (1951) – directed by David Butler
- On Moonlight Bay (1951) – directed by Roy Del Ruth
- I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951) – directed by Michael Curtiz
- Starlift (1951) – directed by Roy Del Ruth – cameo as herself
- The Winning Team (1952) – directed by Lewis Seiler
- April in Paris (1952) – directed by David Butler
- By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) – directed by David Butler
- Crime Wave (1953) – directed by André De Toth – uncredited voice cameo
- Calamity Jane (1953) – directed by David Butler
- Lucky Me (1954) – directed by Jack Donohue
- Young at Heart (1955) – directed by Gordon Douglas
- Love Me or Leave Me (1955) – directed by Charles Vidor
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) – directed by Alfred Hitchcock
- Julie (1956) – directed by Andrew L. Stone
- The Pajama Game (1957) – directed by George Abbott & Stanley Donen
- Teacher’s Pet (1958) – directed by George Seaton
- The Tunnel of Love (1958) – directed by Gene Kelly
- It Happened to Jane (1959) – directed by Richard Quine
- Pillow Talk (1959) – directed by Michael Gordon
- Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960) – directed by Charles Walters
- Midnight Lace (1960) – directed by David Miller
- Lover Come Back (1961) – directed by Delbert Mann
- That Touch of Mink (1962) – directed by Delbert Mann
- Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962) – directed by Charles Walters
- The Thrill of It All (1963) – directed by Norman Jewison
- Move Over, Darling (1963) – directed by Michael Gordon
- Send Me No Flowers (1964) – directed by Norman Jewison
- Do Not Disturb (1965) – directed by Ralph Levy & George Marshall (uncredited, did some filming when Levy fell ill)
- The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) – directed by Frank Tashlin
- Caprice (1967) – directed by Frank Tashlin
- The Ballad of Josie (1967) – directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
- Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) – directed by Hy Averback
- With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) – directed by Howard Morris
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