Born Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, her music career began when she joined Les Brown's band at the age of fifteen, having been advised by band leader Barney Rapp to change her name, and soon having her first hit, Sentimental Journey, in 1945, continuing with a string of successful songs including My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time, Till The End Of Time, You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart) and I Got The Sun In The Morning. She went on to become one of the most popular recording artists of the 50s and early '60's, recording hundreds of songs and having hits including Love Somebody, It's Magic, A Guy Is A Guy and Secret Love.
Her film career began in 1948 with the comedy musical Romance On The High Seas, co-directed by Michael Curtiz and legendary musical choreographer Busby Berkeley, and co-starring Jack Carson, which who she became romantically involved, followed by films in a similar vein including My Dream Is Yours and It's A Great Feeling (both '49) and both co-starring Carson, before appearing opposite Kirk Douglas in the music world drama Young Man With A Horn ('50), and receiving strong reviews. The same year she appeared alongside James Cagney in The West Point Story, before making five features in 1951, beginning with the surprisingly hard-hitting racial murder drama Storm Warning, opposite Ronald Reagan and her own childhood hero Ginger Rogers, then continuing with the musicals Lullaby Of Broadway, On Moonlight Bay, I'll See You In My Dreams, and Starlift, for which she was top-billed for the first time.
Her popularity, projecting a wholesome, virginal girl-next-door image, had her making twenty-four films through the 1950s, and was cemented with films such as Calamity Jane ('53), co-starring Howard Keel, Young At Heart ('54) and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much ('56), in which she sang Que Sera, Sera, written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, and which became one of her signature pieces, going on to win the Best Original Song Oscar, although many years later Day would admit the song wasn't actually one of her personal favourites, but she could see why other people liked it so much.
More hits came with The Pyjama Game ('57), based on the successful stage musical and co-directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen, and '59's hugely popular Pillow Talk, a romantic comedy which paired her for the first time with Rock Hudson, going on to appear together in the comedy romances Lover Come Back ('61) and Send Me No Flowers (64), the two becoming close friends, but when Hudson died of Aids in 1985, Day claimed never to have known he was gay. She continued to work regularly through the Sixties, making fourteen features, the highlights including Please Don't Eat The Daisies ('60); Move Over, Darling ('63) which provided another memorable theme song; That Touch Of Mink ('64), co-starring with Cary Grant, and the comedy thriller Caprice ('67), opposite Richard Harris, but she complained she was no longer getting the best scripts, describing the comedy Where Were You When The Lights Went Out? ('68) as the worst thing she had even done in her career, intending to retire from the screen after her next film, With Six You Get Eggroll, made in the same year.
While her professional life was exemplary, her personal life was more complex. Her first husband, Al Jorden, a trombonist in the Les Brown band, was a violent alcoholic, and the couple divorced after two years of marriage in 1943, shortly after the birth of Day's only child, Terry. In '46 she married musician George Weidler, but the union lasted less than a year. In 1951 she met and married movie producer Martin Melcher, her son taking Melcher's surname, but when Melcher died unexpectedly in 1968 she was horrified to find that he, who had also acted as her manager, had both bankrupted her through unwise investments she hadn't known about, and, also without her knowledge, negotiated a multi-million dollar deal with CBS to launch The Doris Day Show later that year, despite she vowing never to make a TV series. With the contracts signed and needing the money, she went ahead with the series, which was a ratings hit, running for five seasons. She sued the investment advisor who had handled, and lost, most of her money, and was awarded a $22 million settlement against him. Her fourth and final marriage was in 1976, to restaurateur Barry Comden, ended in 1981.
Although retiring from the screen, she was first choice to play the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate ('67), but turned the role down, it going to Anne Bancroft, and was also originally wanted for the role of Jessica Fletcher in TV's Murder She Wrote, but declined, saying she hadn't acted in more than a decade.
Having been interested in animal welfare from a young age, after the death of a pet dog, in 1971, she co-founded Actors And Others For Animals, and in 1978 the Doris Day Pet Foundation, now renamed the Doris Day Animal Foundation, a non-profit charity devoted to animals and owners who are in need of help and assistance. In 1995 she originated the first Spay Day USA, offering free or reduced-rate spaying or neutering of pets, an annual event which is now run by The Humane Society of the United States, into which Day's Foundation merged. She also opened, in 2011, the Doris Day Horse Rescue and Adoption Center, in Murchison, Texas, help abused and neglected horses.
Making nearly forty features in her screen career, Doris Day was Oscar-nominated only once, for her role opposite Rock Hudson in the 1959 rom-com Pillow Talk. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.
In a 2014 interview she said that despite the troubles in her private life, 'All I ever wanted in my life was to get married, have kids, keep house and cook, and even though I did all these things, I still ended up in Hollywood. It was a great trip. I've had an amazing life and wonderful times. And I'm happy!', adding later 'Would you believe I'm still offered scripts and projects all the time? Every once in a while I think about working again, but they don't make the kind of movies I made anymore! It's a different world'. She had previously said that, contrary to her on-screen image, she truly believed every young couple should live together before marrying - 'The young people have it right. What a tragedy it is for a couple to get married, have a child, and in the process discover they are not suited for one another! If I had lived with Al Jorden for a few weeks, God knows I would never have married him. Nor would I have married George Weidler. But I was too young and too inexperienced to understand any of this. Now my heart was busted and I had lost my way'.
She is survived by her grandson, Ryan Melcher. Her son, Terry, who became a famous and successful music producer, died in 2004.