1920-10-13 ( 104 years old ) in Roosevelt, Utah, USA
Laraine Day, born La Raine Johnson, was a major movie star of the 1940s and '50s. Raised in Utah as part of a prominent Mormon family, she came to Hollywood as a young woman, and made her film debut with an uncredited role in Stella Dallas. Before she was famous she also played the birth-mother of Tarzan and Jane's adopted son "Boy" in Tarzan Finds a Son. Her break came in 1939, with the wildly popular "Dr Kildare" sequels. Day played Kildare's nurse and love interest in the third through ninth Kildare movies, until her character married the doctor in Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day. As Mrs Kildare, she was written out of the next, and last, Kildare feature.
In 1942, she starred with Ayres again in the underrated axe murder melodrama Fingers at the Window. Over subsequent decades, her memorable films included the flashback-within-flashback-within-flashback drama The Locket, the gangster comedy Mr Lucky, and the campy paranoia piece I Married A Communist. She was among the all-star passengers in the overwrought airliner-in-peril drama The High and the Mighty, and in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent it was Day who encouraged Joel McCrea to give his stirring report of the air raid at the film's climax Hitchcock's thinly-veiled plea for America to enter World War II. When television became a viable income source, Day found the small screen more inviting and less time-consuming than making movies, and she became primarily a TV actress. She had a 15-minute series of uplifting vignettes called Daydreaming with Laraine, and another 15-minute daily celebrity chat show called The Laraine Day Show. Married to New York Giants manager Leo Durocher, Day became one of TV's first female sports reporters when she hosted Day with the Giants, an early 1950s baseball talk show with Giants' players that aired on New York City's Channel 11. Her last film was a low-budget thriller, The Third Voice, in 1960, but she continued taking occasional guest roles on TV series Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Murder, She Wrote, etc. through the mid-1980s. Following her retierment she spent the remainder of her life active in the Mormon church, Republican politics, and various charity related work. Upon the death of her third husband Michael Grilikhes in March 2007 she moved back to her native Utah where she died that November at age 87. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, CA.
Movies
Return to Fantasy Island
1978-01-20
Murder on Flight 502
1975-11-21
The 3rd Voice
1960-03-05
Swiss Family Robinson
1958-10-12
Three for Jamie Dawn
1956-07-08
Toy Tiger
1956-06-29
Prima Donna
1956-02-01
The Final Tribute
1955-11-16
Too Old for Dolls
1955-02-24
The High and the Mighty
1954-07-03
The Woman on Pier 13
1950-06-15
Without Honor
1949-10-26
My Dear Secretary
1948-11-05
Tycoon
1947-12-27
The Locket
1946-12-20
Those Endearing Young Charms
1945-06-19
Keep Your Powder Dry
1945-04-01
Bride by Mistake
1944-07-26
The Story of Dr. Wassell
1944-07-04
Twenty Years After
1944-01-01
Mr. Lucky
1943-07-01
Journey for Margaret
1942-12-17
The Glass Key
1942-09-08
Mr. Gardenia Jones
1942-05-29
Fingers at the Window
1942-04-22
A Yank on the Burma Road
1942-01-29
Kathleen
1941-12-18
Unholy Partners
1941-11-01
Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day
1941-08-22
The People Vs. Dr. Kildare
1941-05-02
The Bad Man
1941-03-28
The Trial of Mary Dugan
1941-02-14
Dr. Kildare's Crisis
1940-11-29
Dr. Kildare Goes Home
1940-09-06
Foreign Correspondent
1940-08-16
Dr. Kildare's Strange Case
1940-04-12
And One Was Beautiful
1940-04-05
My Son, My Son!
1940-03-21
I Take This Woman
1940-02-02
The Secret of Dr. Kildare
1939-11-24
Think First
1939-09-08
Tarzan Finds a Son!
1939-06-16
Calling Dr. Kildare
1939-04-28
Sergeant Madden
1939-03-24
Arizona Legion
1939-01-20
Painted Desert
1938-08-12
Border G-Man
1938-06-24
Scandal Street
1938-02-11
Stella Dallas
1937-08-06
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