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Laraine Day

Laraine Day

Birthday: 1920-10-13 | Place of Birth: 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.​

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

1975
Murder on Flight 502

as    Claire Garwood

1960
The 3rd Voice

as    Marian Forbes

1954
The High and the Mighty

as    Lydia Rice

1950
The Woman on Pier 13

as    Nan Lowry Collins

1948
My Dear Secretary

as    Stephanie 'Steve' Gaylord

1947
Tycoon

as    Maura Alexander Munroe

1945
Those Endearing Young Charms

as    Helen Brandt

1945
Keep Your Powder Dry

as    Leigh Rand

1944
The Story of Dr. Wassell

as    Madeleine

1943
Mr. Lucky

as    Dorothy Bryant

1942
A Yank on the Burma Road

as    Mrs. Gail Farwood

1941
The Bad Man

as    Lucia Pell

1941
Unholy Partners

as    Miss 'Croney' Cronin

1940
Foreign Correspondent

as    Carol Fisher

1940
And One Was Beautiful

as    Kate Lattimer

1940
My Son, My Son!

as    Maeve O’Riordan

1939
Sergeant Madden

as    Eileen Daly

1939
Arizona Legion

as    Letty Meade (as Laraine Johnson)

1939
Tarzan Finds a Son!

as    Mrs. Richard Lancing

1938
Painted Desert

as    Carol Banning