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