Actress Laraine Day dies at 87

LOS ANGELES - Laraine Day, who appeared in nearly 50 films including the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Foreign Correspondent," has died. She was 87.

Day died of natural causes Saturday at her daughter's home in Utah where she moved following the death of her husband of 47 years, producer Michel M. Grilikhes, earlier this year, said publicist Dale Olson.

Day starred opposite Joel McRea in 1940's "Foreign Correspondent" and also appeared in such films as "Mr. Lucky," "I Take This Woman," "The Story of Dr. Wassell," "My Dear Secretary" and "The High and the Mighty." She appeared in her last movie "The Third Voice" in l960, the year she married Grilikhes.

In 1951, Day became one of television's first female talk-show hosts in "The Laraine Day Show."

Day penned the memoir "Day With Giants" in 1951 about life with baseball manager Leo Durocher, to whom she was married from 1947 to 1960, a period in which she was sometimes called "The First Lady of Baseball."

Durocher died in 1991, and Day was present in 1994 when Durocher was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Day's first husband was singer Ray Hendricks.

Born Laraine Johnson, she changed her birth name and first won fame as Nurse Mary Lamont in the film series "Dr. Kildare," starring Lew Ayres. *