While I’m on the subject of celebrity obits, I wanted to take notice of the death of Laraine Day, best known for her portrayal of Nurse Mary Lamont in the Doctor Kildare movies oppose Lew Ayres:
Laraine Day, the actress best remembered for her portrayal of Lew Ayres’ fiancee in a series of 1940s Dr. Kildare movies, has died. She was 87.
Day died Saturday at the home of her daughter, Gigi Bell, in Ivins, Utah, according to her publicist, Dale Olson. Day had moved to Utah in March after the death of her husband of 47 years, producer Michel M. Grilikhes.
The actress made more than four dozen films from the late 1930s to 1960, working opposite such luminaries as Ayres, Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum, Lana Turner, John Wayne, Spencer Tracy, Joel McCrea and Kirk Douglas.
In addition to the Kildare series, she demonstrated solid acting ability in such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s noir “Foreign Correspondent” and her personal favorites, 1943’s “Mr. Lucky” with Grant and the 1946 psychological drama “The Locket” with Mitchum.
Yet she failed to become a Hollywood superstar. Studio executives pigeonholed the dark-haired actress as “attractive ordinary” and seldom paired her with top directors who could have boosted her career.
“Let someone else be the world’s greatest actress,” she said with characteristic geniality in 1953. “I’ll be the world’s greatest baseball fan.”
The actress’ affinity for baseball came out of her second marriage, to Leo Durocher, the legendary manager of what were then the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.
Her acting career in television and the movies spanned 50 years. She appeared in two of my favorite pictures, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent and Mr. Lucky opposite Cary Grant and I’ve always thought she was underestimated as an actress, showing more breadth than the conventional ingenue parts she played might suggest, particularly in her portrayals of the mentally unbalanced young woman in The Locket and the shrewish wife in The High and the Mighty.
