Doris Day, a former dancer who became a singer and an actress

I heard about her death by chance, watching the television that was broadcasting two of her films, simultaneously. Doris Day is gone, and another important icon from the glorious Hollywood of the past disappeared with her.

Doris Day was born in Cincinnati, United States, April 3, 1922: her real name was Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff. She was the daughter of the famous German pianist and organist William Joseph Kappelhoff and of Alma Sophie Kappelhoff.

As a child Doris showed a great artistic talent, even if, in the beginning, it looked like her career should have been focused only on dance. At only 12 years old Doris signed her first contract as a dancer. Unfortunately, in 1937, a car accident put an end to a profession she had just begun in the dance world.

After the bad accident Doris went back to Cincinnati where, with the help of her father, she began, this time, to take care of her singing gift. Doris started her career as a singer at a local radio station and later she joined the Barney Rapp’s Dixieland Orchestra, where she revealed all her skills. It was in this period that she took on the artistic name of Doris Day, inspired by a song she always loved to sing, Day by Day.

In the late 1940s, while performing in a small New York club, film director Michael Curtiz, who was in the audience, noticed young Doris and, finding her voice very beautiful, offered her a role in his film "Romance on the High Seas" (1947).

After that film, which was very successful, her production company, the Warner, offered Doris Day a 5-year contract; the contract, however, was interrupted in 1955, when she gave up her commitment with Warner to switch to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In the meantime, however, she had already made popular films such as "My Dream Is Yours" (1949), "It's a Great Feeling", directed by David Butler, and "Young Man with a Horn", also with Michael Curtiz.

Once again with film director David Butler she played in other films: "Tea for two" and "West Point Story". In 1951 she acted in a third film entitled "Storm Warning", but this time under the direction of Stuart Heisler.

Her other important films were "Pillow Talk", "Calamity Jane", "Love Me or Leave Me", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "Teacher's Pet", "The Tunnel of Love", "Please Don't Eat the Daisies "," Midnight Lace "," Move Over, Darling ".

After having made so many films, television series with great public’s response, a couple of albums and having been the typical American "girl next door", Doris Day gave the final farewell to the scenes: she did it in 1986, after having shot the last episode of the TV series "Doris Day's Best Friends".

Years after her retirement from artistic activity, Doris Day continued to receive numerous awards and recognitions for her long career.

In 2011 she returned, for the last time, to release an album, "My Heart".

Doris Day has died today, May 13, 2019, at her home in California.

Doris Day worked with famous actors such as Clark Gable, James Stewart, David Niven, Cary Grant, James Cagney; she had also important directors like Michael Curtiz and Alfred Hitchcock. Some of her films like "The Man Who Knew Too Much" became icons in the history of Cinema: "The Man Who Knew Too Much", a film where she sang, in a dramatic scene, the famous song "Que Sera Sera".

She had been defined "The girl next door", and they had proposed her like this: a symbol of the simple woman, the good girl, the good daughter, wife and American mother, all stars and stripes.

And, of course, she never did anything to deny this "dress" they had sewn on her. However, she had a deep, sincere friendship, to which she was faithful, against all prejudices, for her colleague Rock Hudson, who later died because of the AIDS he had contracted because of his homosexuality.

Doris Day’s son should have been at the party in the villa of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, on the day Charles Manson carried out the bloody massacre of Bel Air: it seems that the main objective of Manson should have been him, the son of the "girl next door". But Doris Day convinced her child not to join that damn party; and I wonder if it wasn't really a hint suggested to Doris Day by some inner omen.

(All image rights are property of the author)

Doris Day sings “Que sera sera”, in the film “The Man Who Knew Too Much”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_91hU6LDjoA