Mega Genius and Doris Day

Doris Day, the 2008 "all time" top female box-office star, and Mega Genius^®

Doris Day is a legendary American singer and Hollywood box-office superstar. In 1950, U.S. service members in Korea voted Doris Day their favorite star. She was one of the most prolific actors of the 1950s and 1960s, when she became, by far, the top female motion picture star in America. Nearly a half-century later, Quigley Publishing Company’s 2008 International Motion Picture Almanac (the bible of Hollywood) lists Doris Day as still the “all time” top female box-office star. (That “All Time Number One Stars’” list pegs Tom Cruise at number one and Doris Day at number six.)

At age 21, Doris’ first hit musical recording was “Sentimental Journey,” in 1945. It was followed by many others, including “Everybody Loves a Lover; “ “It’s Magic;” “Teacher’s Pet;” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered;” “If I Give My Heart to You; “ “When I Fall in Love;” “Lullaby of Broadway;” and “Secret Love,” from her 1953 musical film Calamity Jane, which won the Academy Award for “Best Original Song.”

Her 41 films, with such co-stars as Clark Gable, David Niven, Jack Lemon, James Stewart, Cary Grant, and Frank Sinatra, include On Moonlight Bay; By the Light of the Silvery Moon; Tea for Two; Young at Heart; Love Me or Leave Me; The Thrill of it All; The Pajama Game; The Tunnel of Love; and It Happened to Jane.

In 1959, 1961, and 1964, she starred in a series of extremely popular movies with Rock Hudson: Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and Send Me No Flowers.

In 1989, Doris Day received the Golden Globe’s Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She declined to accept an invitation to be a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2008, she was honored with a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in Music.

When Doris starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 motion picture The Man Who Knew Too Much, she tried to avoid singing “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera),” which she did not think was well written. When the studio pushed her, she reluctantly recorded it in just a single take, and then told a friend of the composer, “That’s the last time you’ll ever hear that song.”

Instead, it won an Academy Award for “Best Original Song,” highlighted the sound track of her films Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and The Glass Bottom Boat, and won out as the theme song for her television series, The Doris Day Show. It is still more closely associated with her than any other song.

Doris Day has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

At age 84, Doris lives a very private life, in Carmel, California, with her pet dogs, which she feels are more kind, loving, and humane than many humans.

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