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Laraine Day

Laraine Day

Actor · 1920 – 2007 · 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.​

Movies24

  • Movie7.0

    Foreign Correspondent

    1940 · 463 votes

  • Movie5.9

    The High and the Mighty

    1954 · 90 votes

  • Movie7.2

    Mr. Lucky

    1943 · 49 votes

  • Movie5.6

    Tycoon

    1947 · 20 votes

  • Movie6.7

    The Glass Key

    1942 · 135 votes

  • Movie6.3

    The Locket

    1946 · 47 votes

  • Movie6.4

    The Story of Dr. Wassell

    1944 · 24 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Tarzan Finds a Son!

    1939 · 109 votes

  • Movie6.8
  • Movie4.8

    My Son, My Son!

    1940 · 6 votes

  • Movie5.8

    Murder on Flight 502

    1975 · 18 votes

  • Movie5.7

    Fingers at the Window

    1942 · 18 votes

  • Movie6.8

    Stella Dallas

    1937 · 101 votes

  • Movie8.0

    Twenty Years After

    1944 · 2 votes

  • Movie5.7
  • Movie6.5
  • Movie6.1

    My Dear Secretary

    1948 · 26 votes

  • Movie5.9

    The Bad Man

    1941 · 5 votes

  • Movie6.1
  • Movie5.3

    The Woman on Pier 13

    1950 · 27 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Keep Your Powder Dry

    1945 · 8 votes

  • Movie7.0
  • Movie6.7

    Dr. Kildare's Crisis

    1940 · 6 votes

  • Movie4.8

Series21

  • TV7.0

    What's My Line?

    1950 · 29 votes

  • TV6.3

    The Love Boat

    1977 · 199 votes

  • TV7.5

    Murder, She Wrote

    1984 · 471 votes

  • TV7.9
  • TV7.0

    The Name of the Game

    1968 · 13 votes

  • TV6.8

    Hotel

    1982 · 26 votes

  • TV7.6

    Airwolf

    1984 · 497 votes

  • TV5.6

    The F.B.I.

    1965 · 25 votes

  • TV3.8

    Climax!

    1954 · 12 votes

  • TV6.3

    Burke's Law

    1963 · 12 votes

  • TV6.4

    Medical Center

    1969 · 14 votes

  • TV7.3

    Your Show of Shows

    1950 · 4 votes

  • TV4.8

    Checkmate

    1960 · 8 votes

  • TV7.7

    The New Breed

    1961 · 3 votes

  • TV7.0
  • TV6.6

    Letter to Loretta

    1953 · 7 votes

  • TV6.7

    Lux Video Theatre

    1950 · 7 votes

  • TV6.3

    The Sixth Sense

    1972 · 10 votes

  • TV6.8
  • TV7.2
  • TV8.0

    Pursuit

    1958 · 1 votes