Not Fade Away

DORIS DAY

American star of the ’50s and ’60s (1922-2019)

DORIS Kappelhoff never held any ambitions of being a singer, much less a movie star. She’d begun as a dancer in her native Cincinnati, but leg injuries sustained in a car accident put paid to that. Listening to the radio during her recuperation, she became entranced by Ella Fitzgerald, after which she took singing lessons and discovered a natural talent.

Changing her name to Doris Day, she scored two US chart-toppers with bandleader Les Brown in 1945: “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time”. They heralded the beginning of a hugely successful solo career that stretched into the mid-’60s, with Andy Williams declaring her voice “so fresh you could smell it”.

Day’s musical endeavours frequently crossed over into her film work. Both “Secret Love” (from Calamity Jane, 1953) and “Que Sera, Sera” (The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956) won Academy Awards. Her emergence as a major Hollywood actress had also come about through circumstance, after Judy Garland