TCM Celebrates Doris Day's 100th

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the 100th birthday of Doris Day on Sunday, April 3, 2021.

Starting at noon on Sunday, TCM will show eight of Day’s films and TV appearances, including Lover Come Back with Rock Hudson and a special episode of The Doris Day Show.

“With her dreamy voice, natural self-confidence and charisma, Doris Day lit up the screen in the 39 films she made during her three decade run in Hollywood. She sang in glossy Warner Bros. musicals, starred opposite Rock Hudson in a trio of sex comedies and showcased her acting chops in a variety of serious dramas,” TCM said in their announcement.

Below is the schedule of Doris Day films and TV appearances for April 3 on TCM; all times are Eastern. You can also find the schedule at:

TCM Schedule for Today

12:00 PM On Moonlight Bay (1951). 1h 35m | Musical. A small-town tomboy falls for the boy-next-door in the years before World War I. Director Roy Del Ruth, Cast Doris Day, Gordon Macrae, [“smiling”] Jack Smith.
1:45 PM Love Me or Leave Me (1955). 2h 2m | Musical. True story of torch singer Ruth Etting’s struggle to escape the gangster who made her a star. Director: Charles Vidor, Cast: Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell.
4:00 PM Calamity Jane (1953). 1h 41m | Musical. The Wild West heroine helps bring a star attraction to Deadwood and finds love. Director: David Butler, Cast: Doris Day, Howard Keel, Allyn Mclerie.
6:00 PM Lover Come Back (1961). 1h 47m | Comedy. An ad exec in disguise courts his pretty female competitor. Director: Delbert Mann, Cast: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall.
8:00 PM Doris Day Animal Shelter Promo (1971).
8:30 PM The Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff Special (1971). 1h | Music. A lively hour of light-hearted music with Doris Day, billing herself in this special. Director: Bill Foster, Cast: Perry Como, Doris Day, Alex Barris.
9:00 PM Doris Day Today (1975). 1h | Comedy. An hour of music and light comedy with Doris Day. Director: Tony Charmoli, Cast: Rich Little, John Denver, Tim Conway.
10:00 PM The Doris Day Show (1969). The Doris Day Show presents the beloved actress-singer-animal rights leader as Doris Martin.

The Doris Day Show — On the set of the Doris Day Show (Public Domain Photo via Wikipedia)

Doris Day was born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Alma Sophia and William Joseph Kappelhoff. Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a music teacher and choirmaster. Her maternal and paternal grandparents were German; her paternal grandfather Franz Joseph Wilhelm Kappelhoff immigrated to the United States in 1875 and settled in Cincinnati which had a large German community with its own churches, clubs, and German-language newspapers.

Day died of pneumonia in 2019.

She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time” with Les Brown & His Band of Renown. She left Brown to embark on a solo career and recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.

Day became one of the biggest film stars of the 1950s–1960s. Her film career began during the Golden Age of Hollywood with the film Romance on the High Seas (1948). She starred in films of many genres, including musicals, comedies, dramas, and thrillers. She played the title role in Calamity Jane (1953) and starred in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) with James Stewart.

Her best-known films are those in which she co-starred with Rock Hudson, chief among them 1959’s Pillow Talk, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also worked with James Garner on both Move Over, Darling (1963) and The Thrill of It All (1963), and starred alongside Clark Gable, Cary Grant, James Cagney, David Niven, Ginger Rogers, Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Rod Taylor in various movies. After ending her film career in 1968, only briefly removed from the height of her popularity, she starred in her own sitcom The Doris Day Show (1968–1973).