page_title: Doris Day
section_title: Early career (1938–1947)
hierarchical_section_title: Doris Day / Career / Early career (1938–1947)
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Doris Day, Aquarium, New York, N.Y., ca. July 1946.
context_page_description: Doris Day was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. 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 was one of the biggest film stars in the 1950s-1960s era. Day's film career began during the Golden Age of Hollywood with the film Romance on the High Seas. She starred in films of many genres, including musicals, comedies, dramas, and thrillers. She played the title role in Calamity Jane and starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much 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.
context_section_description: While recovering from her car accident, Kappelhoff started to sing along with the radio and discovered a talent she did not know she had. "During this long, boring period, I used to while away a lot of time listening to the radio, sometimes singing along with the likes of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller", she told A. E. Hotchner, one of Day's biographers. "But the one radio voice I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and I'd sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words."
  Observing her daughter sing rekindled Alma's interest in show business, and she decided Doris must have singing lessons. She engaged a teacher, Grace Raine. After three lessons, Raine told Alma that young Doris had "tremendous potential"; Raine was so impressed that she gave Doris three lessons a week for the price of one. Years later, Day said that Raine had the biggest effect on her singing style and career.
  During the eight months she was taking singing lessons, Kappelhoff had her first professional jobs as a vocalist, on the WLW radio program Carlin's Carnival, and in a local restaurant, Charlie Yee's Shanghai Inn. During her radio performances, she first caught the attention of Barney Rapp, who was looking for a female vocalist and asked if she would like to audition for the job. According to Rapp, he had auditioned about 200 singers when Kappelhoff got the job.
  While working for Rapp in 1939, she adopted the stage surname "Day", at Rapp's suggestion. Rapp felt that "Kappelhoff" was too long for marquees, and he admired her rendition of the song "Day After Day". After working with Rapp, Day worked with bandleaders Jimmy James, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown. In 1941, Day appeared as a singer in three Soundies with the Les Brown band.
  While working with Brown, Day recorded her first hit recording, "Sentimental Journey", released in early 1945. It soon became an anthem of the desire of World War II demobilizing troops to return home. The song continues to be associated with Day, and she re-recorded it on several occasions, including a version in her 1971 television special. During 1945–46, Day (as vocalist with the Les Brown Band) had six other top ten hits on the Billboard chart: "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time", "'Tain't Me", "Till The End of Time", "You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart)", "The Whole World is Singing My Song", and "I Got the Sun in the Mornin'".  Les Brown said, "As a singer Doris belongs in the company of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra."  (Aljean Harmetz (2019). "Wholesome Box-Office Star and Golden Voice of 'Que Sera, Sera' ". "The New York Times."  p. 1 )
caption: Day at the Aquarium Jazz Club, New York (1946)
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