Susan Wloszczyna

USA TODAY

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this report misstated Doris Day’s birth year. She was born in 1922.

Whether God-given or Clairol-tinted, all Hollywood blondes are not created equal.

Take the bombshell blitz of the ’50s and ’60s. Marilyn Monroe was the alpha goddess, while Grace Kelly was the class act. Bringing up the shapely rear were vampy Kim Novak and campy Jayne Mansfield.

But existing on a more approachable perch was Doris Day. Her brand of beauty came sprinkled with freckles. She was one of us and we loved her for it.

The versatile singer, actress, TV star, animal activist and radiant icon of sunny, funny femininity died early Monday at age 97 at her home in Carmel Valley, California.

"Day had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia, resulting in her death," the Doris Day Animal Foundation announced in a statement.

The foundation said she was surrounded by close friends at the time of her death.

Though she stepped away from show business years ago, the cult of Doris remains loyal. Day is a pop-music fixture, and not just because of her own glorious run as a big-band chanteuse or for such signature tunes as "Que Sera, Sera" and "Secret Love." She’s been referenced in numerous lyrics, from "Dig It" by The Beatles to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!

'She was the world's sweetheart':Doris Day mourned by celebrities following her death

Her long-lasting friendship with a closeted Rock Hudson, particularly in the ’80s while he grappled with the effects of AIDS, elevated her status among gay fans.

Yet her name may require Googling for some millennials, as Day made her last film, the 1968 family comedy "With Six You Get Eggroll," when she was a mere 40-something. And, with a near Garbo-esque desire for privacy, she halted her acting career in 1973 after her popular TV series, "The Doris Day Show," completed a five-season run.

Her retirement left Hollywood a bit dimmer, but Day had the good sense to realize her frothy appeal couldn't hold up in the face of the Vietnam era’s seismic shifts in sexual decorum and social mores.

Still, no actress today could match Day’s staying power as she became the first female since Shirley Temple to rule the box office, a reign that roughly ran from 1955 to ’65. She made 39 films, including such disturbing melodramas as 1960’s "Midnight Lace." But her most enduring legacy is likely to be her sex comedies – "Teacher’s Pet," "Pillow Talk," "Lover Come Back," "That Touch of Mink," "Move Over, Darling" – that pitted her against such formidable foils as Cary Grant, James Garner, Clark Gable and, most memorably, that hunky Hudson.

At her best playing ambitious career gals in perfectly accessorized designer suits, the perpetually pert actress came to epitomize pre-liberated womanhood, never a prude but not quite ready to toss out her girdle either.

The settings changed, but rarely the basic situation: He wanted to bed, she wanted to wed and the audiences were duly seduced as Day and her leading man batted double entendres back and forth like a badminton birdie. Sample dialogue from 1959’s "Pillow Talk," which co-starred Hudson and earned Day her only Oscar nomination:

Hudson: “Look, I don’t know what’s bothering you, but don’t take your bedroom problems out on me.”

Day: “I have no bedroom problems. There’s nothing in my bedroom that bothers me.”

Hudson (cooing sarcastically): “Ohhh, that’s too bad.”

There was more to Day than displayed in her no-sex sex comedies, however. Her carefree demeanor and vibrant personality – which shone even in second-tier Warner Bros. musicals from the ’50s such as "Lullaby of Broadway" and "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" – belied a wretched track record with men. That included her father, who left her mother when she was 11.

A teenage Day first wed in 1941, to trombone player Al Jorden, whom she alleged abused her; Jorden fathered her son and only child, music producer Terry Melcher, who died in 2004 from cancer. In 1946, she married a saxophonist, George Weidler, who resented her growing fame as a singer. Marty Melcher, who adopted Terry, became her third husband and manager in 1951. When he died in 1968, it was discovered he had squandered about $20 million of her money. She worked her way out of debt and later sued a financial adviser to get the cash back. Her last marriage was a brief one to restaurateur Barry Comden that ended in 1982.

No wonder she told biographer A.E. Hotchner that her image “was more make-believe than any film part I ever played.”

Alfred Hitchcock peered into her soul and saw something deep and dark when they met at a party in 1951. He would give her one of her best dramatic roles opposite James Stewart in 1956’s "The Man Who Knew Too Much," as the distraught mother of a kidnapped boy. The movie bestowed on her that wistful trademark tune "Que Sera, Sera," which is sung twice – once with breezy assurance, the second as a desperate ploy to save her son. Day also impressed as Roaring ’20s torch singer Ruth Etting in 1955’s "Love Me or Leave Me" with James Cagney as her louse of a manager/husband.

Yet many have dismissed Day as a girl next door, a studio-concocted confection no less fabricated than her bustier, lustier blonde peers. As composer Oscar Levant once famously quipped, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”

But she projected her daisy-fresh wholesomeness without affectation. She could don buckskin and jeans to whoop her way through the tomboy title role in the 1953 musical Western "Calamity Jane," her own personal favorite, with beguiling gumption. She also possessed a subtle sort of sex appeal that didn’t require a plunging neckline – though she could pull that off, too.

However, it was her voice, a wondrously warm instrument that gently caressed the lyrics to such million-selling recordings as "Sentimental Journey," that first put Day on the path to stardom. Born Doris Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, she was in a dance act before a car accident at age 13 ended that. She took singing lessons and borrowed her stage name from one of her favorite tunes, "Day After Day." At age 16, she got a job as a band singer with Bob Crosby’s Bobcats and a year later she joined Les Brown’s Band of Renown. Hollywood soon signed her up for her first picture, 1948’s "Romance on the High Seas," as a replacement for Betty Hutton. The rest is box-office history.

Asked in 1996 to assess her appeal, she replied, “I honestly believed every word of what I sang or spoke. And people respond to that.”

An ex-Catholic turned Christian Scientist who neither drank nor smoked and was a vegetarian, Day kept busy overseeing two animal welfare groups and generally only made public appearances if it benefited her adored creatures. As she once quipped, “If it’s true that men are such beasts, this must account for the fact that most women are animal lovers.”

In her later years, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom but her fear of flying prevented her from attending the White House ceremony in 2004.

One wonders what might have been if Day hadn’t turned down the role of adulterous alcoholic Mrs. Robinson in 1967’s "The Graduate." You could debate for hours whether it was better to preserve her screen virginity or to have smashed it once and for all by debauching a young Dustin Hoffman.

Or you could just settle down in front of a TV, queue up "Pillow Talk" or "Calamity Jane," snuggle your pet and smile in her honor.

Contributing: The Associated Press