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Posted: 8:20 PM- Utah-born actor Laraine Day, famous for being Dr. Kildare's nurse in the movies and known in the 1950s as "the first lady of baseball," died Saturday in Ivins, Utah. She was 87.

Day died Saturday at the home of her daughter, Gigi Bell, according to her publicist Dale Olson. Day had lived in Utah since March, after the death of her husband of 47 years, producer Michel M. Grilikhes.

"She was just an incredibly warm and funny and honest person," her daughter said Tuesday.

Day - born Laraine Johnson to a prominent Mormon family in Roosevelt, Utah, on Oct. 13, 1920 - appeared in some 40 movies between 1937 and 1960, and made dozens of appearances on TV, according to the Internet Movie Database.

A contract player first with RKO and then at MGM, Day first earned fame as nurse Mary Lamont, stalwart assistant and later fiancee to Lew Ayres' Dr. Kildare in seven films from 1939 to 1941. The studio killed off Day's character in 1941's "Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day"; she was hit by a truck while shopping for wedding furniture.

Day's other notable films included: Alfred Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), opposite Joel McCrea; "Mr. Lucky" (1943), with Cary Grant; and the airline disaster epic "The High and the Mighty" (1954), starring John Wayne. Her last film was "The 3rd Voice" (1960).

On TV, she had her own talk show in 1951, and later made guest appearances on such shows as "Playhouse 90," "Wagon Train," "Murder She Wrote," "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat." On a 1979 episode of "Lou Grant" that was dotted with classic-Hollywood stars, she played a starlet who disappeared in the '40s - and had been living unnoticed as a suburban mom.

Bell said her mom was "an incredible practical joker." When filming "Tycoon" (1947), Bell said, Day planted several sets of spare keys around the set, each with a tag that read, "If found, please return to John Wayne - Reward." For days after, Wayne was approached by people who thought they had found his keys and expected a reward.

"She never told," Bell said. "To people's dying day, they never know she had these unbelievable things."

Because of her 13-year marriage to Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher, Day was known as "the first lady of baseball." Day married Durocher in 1947, after divorcing her first husband, musician Ray Hendricks. Day and Durocher were divorced in 1960.

In 1950, Day started a 15-minute TV pregame show on WPIX-TV, interviewing players of Durocher's New York Giants at the Polo Grounds.

"She had her room under the stands, next to the dugout, with all the lights and the TV cameras, and she'd bring a ballplayer every day to interview them," recalled Herman Franks, a Giants coach under Durocher from 1949 to 1955.

"She said she always prayed for the Giants to win," Bell said, "unless they were playing the Pirates, because Vernon Law was on the Pirates and he was also LDS. So she said on those days she would let God decide."

"She was pretty knowledgeable," Franks said Tuesday from his Salt Lake City home. "I never heard of a lady doing [ballplayer interviews] like that. Today, it's quite common . . . but in those days, it was unknown for ladies to be talking about sports."

Day often traveled with the team to spring training. In 1952, she spent some time on the road during the regular season - an experience that produced a memoir of her baseball life, Day With the Giants.

Franks remembered spring training in 1951, when the Giants had their camp in St. Petersburg, Fla. (swapping their usual Arizona location with the Yankees for a season), and Day and Durocher hosted nightly dinner parties at their beach house.

"We used to play charades," Franks said. "Leo would be one captain, her the other. We got into some pretty fierce battles with that."

With her third husband, Grilikhes, Day worked to develop the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. She also was a founding member of SHARE, a charity begun by women in the film industry to raise money for women and children suffering developmental disabilities. Bell, her daughter, said her mom and dad also worked regularly in the LDS temple in Los Angeles.

Day is survived by four children - two daughters with Grilikhes, Gigi Bell and Dana Grilikhes Nassi; and with Durocher, a son, Christopher, and a daughter, Michelle - and a twin brother, Lamar Johnson of Chico, Calif. Private services and interment will be at Forest Lawn in California, with a memorial to be set.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to SHARE Inc., P.O. Box 1342, Beverly Hills, Calif., 90213.

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