Vocalist and screen actress Doris Day, a freckle-faced buttercup blonde with a sunny smile that radiated wholesome good cheer, embodied the healthy girl-next-door zeitgeist of 1950s Hollywood. The decade marked the fall of the Hollywood musical and Day, with her pleasing personality and distinctive voice, huskily emotive yet pure and on-note, helped to prolong the genre's demise. Thanks largely to her infectious presence, a series of mostly anodyne musical films attracted bobby-soxers and their parents alike during the otherwise somber era of the Cold War and McCarthyism.

Doris Day

Behind the smile, however, Doris Day's life was marked by much unhappiness endured, remarkably, away from the glare of publicity. She was born Doris von Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 3, 1924, the daughter of German parents who divorced when she was eight. She pursued a dancing career from an early age, but her ambitions were...