As detailed in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Doris Day was a passenger in the vehicle when it struck a northbound freight train sometime around midnight. An ambulance was called to the scene for multiple injuries, most of which were cuts and scrapes. But Day’s injury was to her right leg: a compound fracture for which she was treated at the hospital and ordered four months of bed rest. In the end, according to The Enquirer, Day spent over a year in a cast and using crutches, knowing her dance career was over.
She turned her attention to singing. As a music school student, she had already dabbled in voice lessons, but now she jumped in with both feet, so to speak — cast and all. Before long she was performing in bands and on the radio. One song she sang in the late 1930s, “Day After Day,” inspired her new stage name because as bandleader Barney Rapp told her, Kappelhoff was too long to put on a marquee. Day spent the early 1940s touring with the Les Brown Band, and signed a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1947, according to CNN.
