Actress Laraine Day dies in Utah at 87
For 13 years she was popularly called "the first lady of baseball" for her marriage to Leo Durocher, the Hall of Fame manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.
Her death, at the home of her daughter, Gigi Bell, was announced by her publicist. She had moved to Utah in March after the death of her third husband, the producer Michel M. Grilikhes, to whom she had been married for 47 years.
Never a major star, Day was relegated to what she called "B(plus) movies" at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She was almost the victim of an ax murderer in "Fingers at the Window" (1942), was married to a traitor in "Yank on the Burma Road" (1942) and served as the intrepid newspaper publisher Edward G. Robinson's girl Friday in "Unholy Partners" (1941).
Day captured roles in A movies only when she was loaned to other studios. In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock borrowed her to co-star with Joel McCrea in the spy thriller "Foreign Correspondent." She was loaned to RKO to play the virtuous society girl who reforms a draft-dodging, gambling ship owner (Cary Grant) in "Mr. Lucky" (1943). And Paramount borrowed her at the request of the director Cecil B. De Mille to play the steadfast nurse at the side of Gary Cooper's heroic doctor in "The Story of Dr. Wassell" (1944).
Paramount had signed Day to a six-month contract at $150 a week after she graduated from high school in 1937. According to an oral history Day taped for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1997, her contract was dropped after she tested for a three-line part in the De Mille film "The Buccaneer." Not only did the director turn her down for the role, she said he also told Paramount that she had no talent and should be dropped.
By the time De Mille was planning a movie based on Dr. Corydon Wassell's rescue of a dozen wounded American sailors during the first days of World War II, Day had played Nurse Mary Lamont seven times. "After seeing me in so many Kildares, I was naturally the only one who could play a nurse and knew the proper instruments," Day said.
Starring Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare and Lionel Barrymore as the chief of surgery, Dr. Gillespie, the Kildare series was tremendously successful. "Kildare, Maisie and the Andy Hardy pictures were the bread-and-butter pictures for MGM," Day said in her oral history. "Through those three series, they could afford Garbo and Crawford and Shearer, and they could make the big pictures."
Years after "good, marvelous, true, honest" Nurse Lamont was hit by a truck while rushing to buy furniture on her wedding day, people would stop Day on the street and ask, "Why did you die, Mary Lamont?"
Recent comments
She was beautiful dressed in white, where we often saw her in the Los...
CB | Nov. 13, 2007 at 8:31 a.m.
- Funds for new courthouse approved 1:48 a.m.
- Godfrey vetoes Ogden budget 1:48 a.m.
- Odd Fellows Hall move 1:47 a.m.
- 2 country groups to perform 1:47 a.m.
- Rumor has Boozer with Bulls 1:20 a.m.
- Jazz in back of line for free agents 1:19 a.m.
- Okur signs two-year extension 1:18 a.m.
- Marion to Mavs, Stackhouse to Griz 1:16 a.m.
- Price for redistricting plan challenged 1:04 a.m.
- Basketball campers learn service 1:02 a.m.
- Rumor has Boozer with Bulls
- Stadium of Fire flag burning was fake
- Jazz in back of line for free agents
- Okur signs two-year extension
- Restaurant destroyed by fire
- Jazz won't meet Lopez on Europe trip
- A primer for the 6th Potter film
- Blazers may offer Millsap a contract
- AK will not play for Russia this summer
- MWC, WAC rushed into BCS
- Bronco collecting a galaxy of recruits
138 - Letters: Palin mistreated
136 - Teachers struggle with district cuts
134 - Blazers may offer Millsap a contract
122 - Rumor has Boozer with Bulls
82 - Fairness of BCS debated
81 - Moon landing: Let's hear from you
73 - Chaffetz eyes challenging Bennett
72 - Services bids farewell to Jackson
70 - Letters: Time for a revolution
69
Through the years, I've always raised eyebrows whenever I tell people...
The recent Poly camp in Bountiful opened the eyes of recruiters to at...
Blazers get the unbalanced trade they seek while not signing Millsap away...
Ricky Bobby - THE JAZZ DO NOT WANT TO TAKE BACK EQUAL SALARIES. They want to...
Despite the fact that logging has all but stopped in the pacific northwest...
My understanding of what FAIR is trying to do, is to provide well thought out...
Jazz will resign Milsap. If they don't it will be ahuge mistake. First off,...
I was waiting for it to be burned on the big metal structure right by the...
Hey Ute fan... the Utes had a good season. And keep throwing that BCS bowl...
Tyrus Thomas is in the last year of his contract too so what is the point for...
CougarKeith, people don't know how to properly retire the flag, what they did...
It is just talk but since it was brought up: IF we can get Prizbilla &...


