A broken leg turned teenage dancer Doris Kappelhoff into Doris Day
In October 1937 a Cincinnati teenager heading to her own going-away party was badly hurt when the car she was riding in hit a freight train. Her right leg was broken, and with it her plans to dance professionally in Los Angeles. Stuck at home, she sang along to Ella Fitzgerald on the radio.
Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff was the daughter of German-American parents, her father a music teacher and choirmaster. As a girl she toured dance competitions with a partner, Jerry Doherty, and had a dancing contract lined up before the crash. During her recovery her mother arranged lessons with the teacher Grace Raine, who was so impressed after three sessions that she offered three a week for the price of one. Day later credited Raine above anyone else for shaping her style.
Within months she was singing on WLW radio and in a Chinese restaurant. Bandleader Barney Rapp, who claimed to have auditioned about 200 singers, hired her and in 1939 suggested a new name, partly because Kappelhoff was too long for a marquee and partly because he liked her version of 'Day After Day'. With Les Brown's band she recorded 'Sentimental Journey', a No. 1 in 1945 that became an anthem for returning servicemen.
Hollywood came next, almost reluctantly. Songwriters Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn recommended her for Romance on the High Seas, and she admitted to director Michael Curtiz that she had never acted. He cast her anyway, reportedly deciding that her freckled face gave her a wholesome, girl-next-door American look. Films followed at a remarkable pace, including Calamity Jane and Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which she introduced 'Que Sera, Sera'. Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson brought her only Oscar nomination.
Between 1960 and 1964 she was the top box-office draw four times, a feat matched among actresses only by Shirley Temple. One small mystery lingered almost to the end: for most of her life Day gave her birth year as 1924, until the Associated Press found a certificate showing 1922 as she turned 95. Later she devoted herself to animal welfare, founding her own animal foundation.
Source: Doris Day
