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Washington Post | ×
Photo of Doris Day on the set of her television program The Doris Day Show. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Doris Day, a singer and actress who personified wholesome American womanhood in the 1950s and 1960s - memorably as the chaste but chased after love interest in sex farces with Rock Hudson and Cary Grant, died May 13 at her home in Carmel Valley, Calif. She was 97.
The Doris Day Animal Foundation announced her death, saying she had recently contracted pneumonia.
Despite Day s perpetually sunny image, her life was marked by periods of physical, emotional and financial abuse. Her first husband beat her, her second couldn t stomach her success and her third cheated her out of her hard-won fortune. By the time of her death, she had long retreated from show business and had gained renown for her work in animal welfare. In 2004, when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation s highest civilian honor, the award cited her influen