Laraine Day
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.
Fotos
Filme (51)
Return to Fantasy Island
1978 · Mrs. Grant
Murder on Flight 502
1975 · Claire Garwood
The 3rd Voice
1960 · Marian Forbes
Swiss Family Robinson
1958 · Frannie (Mother)
Rendezvous in Black
1956 · Florence Strickland
Three for Jamie Dawn
1956 · Sue Lorenz
Toy Tiger
1956 · Gwendolyn Taylor
Prima Donna
1956 · Laraine Day
The Final Tribute
1955 · Joyce Carter
Too Old for Dolls
1955 · Marge Ramsay
The High and the Mighty
1954 · Lydia Rice
The Woman on Pier 13
1950 · Nan Lowry Collins
Without Honor
1949 · Jane Bandle
My Dear Secretary
1948 · Stephanie 'Steve' Gaylord
Tycoon
1947 · Maura Alexander Munroe
The Locket
1946 · Nancy
Those Endearing Young Charms
1945 · Helen Brandt
Keep Your Powder Dry
1945 · Leigh Rand
Bride by Mistake
1944 · Norah Hunter
The Story of Dr. Wassell
1944 · Madeleine
Twenty Years After
1944 · (archive footage)
Mr. Lucky
1943 · Dorothy Bryant
Journey for Margaret
1942 · Nora Davis
The Glass Key
1942 · Nurse (uncredited)
Mr. Gardenia Jones
1942 · Joanne
Fingers at the Window
1942 · Edwina 'Eddie' Brown
A Yank on the Burma Road
1942 · Gail Farwood
Kathleen
1941 · Martha Kent
Unholy Partners
1941 · Miss 'Croney' Cronin
Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day
1941 · Nurse Mary Lamont
The People Vs. Dr. Kildare
1941 · Nurse Mary Lamont
The Bad Man
1941 · Lucia Pell
The Trial of Mary Dugan
1941 · Mary Dugan
Dr. Kildare's Crisis
1940 · Nurse Mary Lamont
A New Romance of Celluloid: The Miracle of Sound
1940 · Self
Dr. Kildare Goes Home
1940 · Nurse Mary Lamont
Foreign Correspondent
1940 · Carol Fisher
Dr. Kildare's Strange Case
1940 · Mary Lamont
And One Was Beautiful
1940 · Kate Lattimer
My Son, My Son!
1940 · Maeve O’Riordan
I Take This Woman
1940 · Linda Rodgers
The Secret of Dr. Kildare
1939 · Mary Lamont
Think First
1939 · Marjorie (Margie) Smith
Tarzan Finds a Son!
1939 · Mrs. Richard Lancing
Calling Dr. Kildare
1939 · Nurse Mary Lamont
Sergeant Madden
1939 · Eileen Daly
Arizona Legion
1939 · Letty Meade (as Laraine Johnson)
Painted Desert
1938 · Carol Banning
Border G-Man
1938 · Betty Holden (as Laraine Johnson)
Scandal Street
1938 · Peg Smith (as Laraine Johnson)
Stella Dallas
1937 · Girl at Soda Shop / Train Passenger (uncredited)
Serien (22)
Murder, She Wrote
1984 · Constance Fletcher
Airwolf
1984 · Amelia Davenport
Hotel
1982 · Mrs. Kupchak
Fantasy Island
1978 · Mrs. Cummings
Love Boat
1977 · Vera Simpson
The Sixth Sense
1972
Medical Center
1969
The Name of the Game
1968 · Grace Jellicoe
The F.B.I.
1965 · Helen York
Burke's Law
1963 · Lisa Cole
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
1962 · Ruth
The New Breed
1961 · Vivian Cowley
Checkmate
1960 · Amnesiac Woman
Pursuit
1958 · Kathy Nelson
Screen Director's Playhouse
1955 · Laraine Day
Climax!
1954 · Ellen Parker
Letter to Loretta
1953 · Carol Potter, Karen McCall, Sara Lewis
General Electric Theater
1953
Schlitz Playhouse of Stars
1951 · Mrs. Lorenz
Lux Video Theatre
1950 · Sophie, Charlotte Vale, Louise Howell, Lynn, Claire Brandon, Lydia, Phyllis Dietrichson
Your Show of Shows
1950
What's My Line?
1950 · Self