One of the most popular stars of the fifties and sixties, at one time she was paid the highest-ever recording advance by Columbia and was regularly in the chart of Top Ten Film box-office Stars, Day’s intriguing voice was too often masked by Mitch Miller’s bright and bouncy productions, just as her screen career was deformed first by the tomboy image she was saddled with and later by being presented as America’s perpetual virgin. Nonetheless, her recordings which include seven million-sellers and numerous international hits and films are far better and more varied than their reputation might suggest.

Trained as a dancer, Day turned to singing following an accident at the age of fifteen and joined Barney Rapp’s band as featured singer in 1940. After a name change she joined the Bob Crosby band and then the Les Brown band with whom she scored her first million-seller in 1945’ ‘Sentimental Journey’.   
   Her 1947 duet with Buddy Clark, ‘Confess’, produced a second. Then, in a typically Hollywood fairy tale story, following a performance at a party given by Sammy Cahn, she was given the female lead in ‘Romance on the High Seas’ as a replacement for Betty Hutton.
   That film produced the song ‘It’s Magic’ and a screen career that included some forty films. Among these were ‘Young Man with a Horn’, ‘Calamity Jane’, that produced the tremulous ‘Secret Love’; the superior ‘Love Me or Leave Me’; Hitchcock’s ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’, which included ‘Que Sera, Sera’, and ‘Pillow Talk’.
   Away from Hollywood, Day’s recording career was masterminded by Columbia’s head of A&R, Mitch Miller, until the sixties when her son, Terry Melcher, best known for his work with The Byrds, took over as producer. She remained highly popular, but after the advent of rock ‘n’roll she never sold records in the same quantities, her last big hit was the song entitled, ‘Move Over Darling’.