In 1944, she scored her first hit with Brown, 'Sentimental Journey,' which would strike a chord over the next year with many soldiers journeying home from war. Jorden would kill himself a few years later. A repentant Jorden gave Day a brief reprieve, but he soon returned to his psychotic ways, so she began divorce proceedings. When Day discovered she was pregnant, Jorden subjected her to a series of violent histrionics, including threatening to shoot her at one point, and leaving her ostensibly 'for good.' In February 1942, Day gave birth to a son, Terry. By Bret's account, violence was not infrequent during the marriage. They married in New York in early 1941 while she was on tour, but it got off to an ominous start when, according to biographer David Bret, Jorden dragged his new wife to their hotel room and beat her up after seeing her kiss a fellow musician on the cheek. Both Brown, who took on a paternal role, and her mother discouraged her relationship with Jorden, especially when he proposed, but the 17-year-old Day insisted she only wanted to become a housewife. Around this same time, she landed a much bigger gig with the touring Les Brown and His Band of Renown. She began singing instead and, while still just a teenager, scored a job with the local dance band of Barney Rapp, who redubbed her Doris Day, after her number 'Day After Day.' She also met Al Jorden, a trombonist in Rapp's band and a temperamental character whom she disliked initially, but whom she eventually agreed to date. A tomboy in her earlier years, by adolescence she had developed a penchant for dance, but those aspirations were shelved when a car accident left her with a compound fracture of one leg and a tough 14-month rehabilitation. In spite of the family's Catholicism, her parents divorced when Doris was only 12, due to Frederick's philandering. She was born Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in the Cincinnati, OH, suburb of Evanston, to Alma and Frederick von Kappelhoff and was the youngest of three children in a troubled household.

Her résumé composed an American archetype - the pristine, bright-eyed sweetheart of America's 1950s. 1 female box-office star and the epitome of the girl next door.

Rock Hudson by David Bret