Western Morning News (15/Nov/2007) - Obituary: Laraine Day
(c) Western Morning News (15/Nov/2007)
Actress featured in many MGM films during golden age of Hollywood
Laraine Day, a popular actress who appeared in almost two dozen MGM movies during Hollywood's Golden Age, died on Saturday aged 87.
Never a major star, Ms Day was relegated to what she called "B+ movies" at MGM from 1939 to 1945.
Ms Day captured roles in A movies only when she was loaned to other studios. In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock borrowed her to star with Joel McCrea in the spy thriller Foreign Correspondent.
Ms Day played a nurse, Mary Lamont, seven times in the Dr Kildare films. "After seeing me in so many Kildares, I was naturally the only one who could play a nurse and knew the proper instruments," she once said.
Starring Lew Ayres as Dr Kildare and Lionel Barrymore as Dr Gillespie, the chief of surgery, the Kildare films were tremendously successful both in America and in the UK.
One of eight children, including a twin brother, she was born Laraine Johnson in Roosevelt, Utah, to a prosperous Mormon family. Her great-grandfather, three of his six wives, and a few dozen of his 52 children had been early settlers in San Bernardino, California. The Johnsons followed two of their older sons to the area when Ms Day was nine years old.
She started her film career with a bit part in Stella Dallas (1937). She was signed by MGM in 1939, and her name was immediately changed; the studio already had a Rita Johnson under contract.
Her performance in My Son, My Son! in 1940 led theatre owners to pick her as an outstanding new actress, and Life magazine called her "a major young Hollywood personality".
She also had a long career acting in television, from performing on Playhouse 90 in the 1950s to guest appearances on Murder, She Wrote in the 1980s.
Ms Day's survivors include three daughters, a son, her twin brother, Lamar, and numerous grandchildren.
