Doris Day was one of the most popular actresses and singers of her day, but she also spent
a large chunk of her life dedicated to animal welfare activism.
She got her start in show business as a big band singer back in the late thirties.
With Les Brown & His Band Of Renown, she achieved commercial success by 1945 with two number
1 recordings, My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time and Sentimental Journey.
After recording those two hit singles, Doris left Brown and his outfit behind to embark
on her own solo musical career and went on to record more than 650 songs between 1947
and 1967
Doris Day began her film career during Hollywood's Golden Age first appearing in the 1948 film
Romance on the High Seas.
After establishing herself as a star player, she appeared in dozens of films across many
genres, including comedies, thrillers, dramas, and musicals.
In the 1950s and 60s, Doris Day had become America's most beloved box-office sweetheart.
Some of her standout roles included parts in films such as 1953s Calamity Jane, 1956s
Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much, and 1959s Pillow Talk.
The latter of which saw Day performing alongside Rock Hudson and earned her an Academy Award
nod for Best Actress
After ending her Hollywood film career in 1968, Doris went on to star in her own television
sitcom, The Dorris Day Show, which ran from 1968 to 1973.
Dorris Day was suitably awarded and honored for her many career achievements.
In 1989, for example, she was awarded the prestigious Golden Globe Cecil B. Demille
Award for her lifetime achievement in cinema.
Later in 2004, Day was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest honor that
a civilian can achieve in the US.
A few years later, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her prolific decades-spanning
musical career.
Sadly, despite the fact that she was one of the most accomplished stars of the 20th and
early 21st centuries, she spent her final days in reclusion, reportedly being ruthlessly
manipulated by the people around her.
Day died on May 13, 2019.
Since then, a major rift has formed between her family and friends, who accuse each other
of mistreating her.
Join FactsVerse as we attempt to determine what really happened to Doris Day during those
fateful final days of her life.
If you consider yourself a Doris Day fan, this is one video that you don't want to miss.
Doris Day: A Conservative Icon
Doris lived to 97 and spent the remainder of her final years at her home in Carmel,
California.
Throughout her career in Hollywood and working in the music industry, she was a very unique
star.
She could be effortlessly charming and was a wholesome feminine figure who embodied the
idealized woman of the late 50s and 60s.
She was both virginal and sexy at the same time.
She was focused on her career but was still very domestic, elegant, and widely approachable.
What she managed to accomplish by presenting an uncomplicated, almost mythical image of
womanhood was something that no other star at her time did quite as well.
Doris was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1922.
When she was a child, she trained as a dancer but later found success as a recording artist,
first singing at local nightclubs and on radio programs before finding work with swing orchestras
when she was in her early to mid-20s.
When she was a late teen, she started working with the previously mentioned band leader
Les Brown.
In 1945, when Day was 23, she released her first hit single Sentimental Journey.
By the mid-1940s, Day had already appeared as a singer in several movies.
Director Michael Curtiz cast her in his 1943 film Romance on the High Seas because he thought
that her freckles made her appear like an all-American Girl – and just like that,
her film career had begun.
For a period between 1960 and 65, Day was the biggest box office draw in the nation.
During these years, she picked up a Golden Globe award in addition to four other Golden
Globe nominations, an Academy Award nod for her 1959 appearance in Pillow talk, and two
Grammy nominations for Best Female Pop performer.
After quitting the film industry in 1968 and shifting her focus to working with animal
charities such as The Doris Day Animal Foundation, Day remained an ever-popular figure with the
public and frequently made guest appearances on talk shows and variety programs throughout
the remainder of her life.
To this day, Day's run in iconic postwar-era movies continues to shape and influence women's
fashion and lifestyle choices.
While that might be difficult to believe at first, Doris Day's appeal largely had to do
with her fresh voice and vibrant personality.
She cited Ella Fitzgerald as one of her biggest influences as a vocalist, and her vivid persona
and energy shined through even in her earliest roles.
What made her distinctive among her Hollywood peers was how she presented an alluring image
of sexual purity.
She exuded innocence and was rarely ever sexually provocative.
Even in her more evocative films, Day still mages to evoke a combo of sex appeal and chastity.
It was this delicate balance that Doris always managed to keep in check that made her such
an enticing star.
While she had the opportunity to play more dramatic parts, she almost always turned down
more nuanced roles, instead focusing more on rom-coms.
Every one of Day's romantic comedy roles had a very characteristic and unwavering formula
that was concocted to reward her virginal characters for holding out for marriage.
Whether she was starring opposite to leading men like Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, or Clark
Gable, the story was always the same.
Through her charm, she always managed to convince these roguish characters to give up their
Playboy lifestyles and propose to her instead.
This formula resulted in rather titillating scenarios to play out while always stopping
short of becoming overtly sexual.
So, in a way, Doris Day became this symbol of conservatism during a time that was defined
by the counterculture's hedonism.
For the viewing public that wasn't quite sold on the rapidly changing sociopolitical climate,
she was an ever-present return to form – a reassuring dose of old-timey values in the
face of a sexually promiscuous and indulgent youth who had grown tired of the prim and
proper.
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Off-Screen Doris' Life Was Far Less Idyllic
Doris Day's personal life was not anything like the idealized image of womanhood and
marriage that she came to represent.
She even came to resent this image, at one point telling a biographer that her wholesome,
girl-next-door, virginal persona was more make-believe than any film part that she ever
played.
Throughout her life, Doris dealt with many difficult relationships that often turned
violent, abusive, and controlling.
Her first husband, a musician that she had a child with, Day described as a physically
abusive and manipulative psychopathic sadist.
Her subsequent three marriages were likewise tumultuous.
When her third husband, Martin Melcher, who controlled her finances, died in 1968, he
left her with $500,000 in debt.
Doris' Final Days Were Rife With Controversy And Abuse
Doris Day's only grandkid, Ryan Melcher, posted on Facebook that Bob Bashara - Day's business
manager - had forbid him from seeing his notoriously reclusive grandmother in the months leading
up to her death.
Ryan's father, Doris' son Terry died in 2004.
What's strange about him is the fact that he never publicly spoke about his famous mother.
Ryan further claimed that Bashara had fired several individuals that sat on the board
of Doris' animal rescue organization and had swapped them out with several members of his
family instead.
Beyond that, several people that were close to Day painted a grim picture of her final
days as well.
One of her former employees told The New York Post that she had spent the majority of her
last ten years of life either in her bedroom or in her kitchen.
She reportedly hardly ever used the rest of her house and wouldn't want to talk about
anything other than her dogs or fan mail that she had received.
One person who frequently swapped letters with Day was life-long fan Mike Devita, who
had written and received over 500 pieces of correspondence with the star in which they
had exchanged extremely personal details of their respective lives.
The last letter that he received from Day was in April of 2019.
According to Devita, Day was a very trusting person who was constantly manipulated throughout
her life – especially by her husbands.
According to him, she was always looking for the father figure that she never had.
When Doris was 10, she discovered that her dad, who worked as a music teacher, was engaged
in an affair with the mother of her best friend.
Accordingly to Devita, that experience profoundly affected her.
So later on when she was abused by her various husbands, it was like having a hot iron stuck
into her heart.
Her first husband, Al Jordon, beat her while pregnant with their son, Terry.
After that marriage ended in divorce, Day married saxophonist George Weldler who became
highly jealous of her fame.
After divorcing him, Day married producer Marty Melcher, who notoriously squandered
her fortune, leaving her with less than nothing when he died.
In her final years, Doris had very few friends.
Fortunately, those close friends she did have still were there for her for the most part
up until she died.
But her family was all but absent from her life and after Terry, her son, died in 2004,
she was left was a tremendous amount of emotional pain.
Bashara, a vet by trade, joined Day's animal welfare foundation 20 years before her death.
He quickly became her business manager and head of her foundation.
As soon as Doris' began experiencing cognitive decline, he allegedly seized the opportunity
to make drastic changes to the organization that bore her name without fully consulting
her.
Shortly after making her final public appearance at an event for her foundation in 2014, Day
went into reclusion.
In the final years of her life, the only people that surrounded her in her life were people
she hardly even knew – primarily caregivers.
Her grandson, Ryan, said that he only found out about Day's death via social media.
He further admitted on Facebook that he hadn't gotten a chance to spend much time with her
since his childhood, mostly because of his father's nasty divorce from his mother, Jacqueline
Carlin.
He was invited to dinner after Terry died, but when he showed up, Bashara blocked him
from seeing his grandmother.
While Doris clearly wanted to reconnect with her grandson, Bashara, who had become her
gatekeeper, wanted access to her all to himself.
At the time of her death, Day had a net worth of $4.5 million dollars.
According to Bashara, Day had specified that she wanted her fortune to go to the Doris
Day Animal Foundation, the organization he is now in control of.
While that seems to be in line with Doris' lifelong devotion to animals, it also obviously
raises a few eyebrows, given Bashara's involvement with the organization and his past behavior
towards Doris' family members.
Doris Day's legacy will likely live on a lot longer than most stars' will.
She was a public figure who demanded respect and was highly revered by her legions of fans.
Do you consider yourself a Doris Day fan?
If so, what are some of your favorite memories of the late star?
Let us know in the comments section down below.
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