The Twisted Path to Marriage for Leo Durocher & Laraine Day

It took two weddings and two divorces before they legally tied the knot.

by Rich Watson 

Baseball manager Leo Durocher met Hollywood actress Laraine Day in 1942. They were married to other spouses at the time, yet they fell in love. 

He divorced in 1943. By 1946, once she obtained a divorce from her husband, bandleader and airport manager Ray Hendricks, she was ready to wed Durocher.

They would have to jump through a number of hoops first.

She was from Hollywood 

Day wasn’t a superstar, but she had a good career in the movies. She was in the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock picture Foreign Correspondent and was a regular in the Dr. Kildare series of films. 

A Mormon from Utah, she was active in a number of wartime charities and was the pin-up girl on a P38 airplane, the Lucky Lady.

Durocher and Day met at a party at the Stork Club in New York. They hit it off later, when they ran into each other on a flight to Chicago.

Day filed for divorce in November 1946, testifying that Hendricks’ drinking was to blame. Hendricks accused Durocher of stealing Day from under his nose and in the presence of their two adopted children. He also resented their age difference; Day was twenty-six, Durocher forty-one.

He was from baseball

Durocher, a former shortstop, was a three-time All-Star who had played on championship teams for the Yankees and Cardinals. He became a player-manager beginning in 1939 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Nicknamed “The Lip,” he had a reputation for mouthing off, at the press, at the commissioner, and especially at umpires. As a manager, he’s fourth on the all-time list with ninety-five ejections.

In the spring of 1947, Durocher was entangled in a dispute with new Yankees co-owner Larry MacPhail, his former boss in Brooklyn, over the alleged presence of gamblers in their respective clubhouses. Gambling was a vital issue for Major League Baseball ever since the 1919 White Sox threw the World Series. Durocher in particular had a history of gambling going back to his playing days.

Commissioner Happy Chandler had reason to believe Durocher and his gambling buddy, movie star George Raft, ran a crooked craps game that bilked a player. 

Separations of different kinds

In January 1947, Day’s divorce came through, on the condition she not remarry for a year, but the next day, she got a Mexican divorce in Juarez. This type of separation was not unusual among celebrities during the forties; Mexico doesn’t require the presence of a spouse in divorce proceedings, so they tend to be quicker.

That same day, she married Durocher in El Paso, Texas, but the judge in the original divorce case invalidated the Mexican divorce. Because she didn’t wait one year before remarrying, he did the same for her marriage in Texas. Accusations of bigamy arose.

In March, Durocher penned a ghost-written Brooklyn Eagle piece complaining MacPhail was free from criticism over gambling associations but not Durocher. MacPhail countered with a defamation charge against the Dodger manager. 

The feud with MacPhail, plus his affair with Day and his association with gamblers, led to severe criticism from religious leaders. The Catholic Youth Organization threatened to boycott not only the Dodgers, but baseball in general if something wasn’t done about Durocher.

Commissioner Chandler held hearings on the matter, and in April he suspended Durocher for the entire 1947 Dodger season.

Media sensation

The Hollywood media ran with the Durocher-Day relationship and it boosted Day’s profile. She was in demand by newspapers and magazines eager to play up the love angle. Her salary allegedly increased. One Brooklyn movie theater marquee billed her as “Mrs. Leo Durocher.”

The Dodgers did fine without Durocher. Under interim manager Burt Shotton, they won the National League pennant, but ironically, lost to the Yankees in the World Series in seven games.

A word about Durocher and Jackie

1947 was also the year Jackie Robinson became the first black ballplayer in Major League Baseball. 

Durocher played a role in his ascension. According to the Robinson book Opening Day by Jonathan Eig, several Dodgers started an anti-Robinson petition while in Panama for an exhibition game. Durocher expressed his support for the rookie second baseman at a team meeting, in no uncertain terms:

“I don’t care if a guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra,” he told the team, according to one eyewitness account. “I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays.” Robinson was going to put money in all their pockets by helping to get the team to the World Series, Durocher said, and anyone who didn’t like it would be traded or released as soon as the details could be arranged. As for the petition, he concluded: “Wipe your ass with it!”

The petition wasn’t an issue after that.

Day as ‘first lady of baseball’

Durocher lived with Day in Santa Monica, California during his suspension, building a home. Day had a new movie, a noir called The Locket, which opened to generally positive reviews and became one of her biggest hits. Despite Shotton’s success, Durocher returned as Dodger manager for 1948. In February, he and Day remarried. Their union was now legal.

More off-field controversy, plus a poor on-field record, led to Durocher’s mid-season move across town to the New York Giants. Day, meanwhile, immersed herself in the game, reading every baseball book on which she could get her hands.

In 1951, Durocher and the Giants won the National League pennant in one of the most thrilling and dramatic playoff games ever played.

Day took on more television roles beginning that year, and she became the first woman feted by the New York Baseball Writers Association for her public support of Durocher, the Giants and the game in general. The next year, she came out with a book, Day With the Giants, which chronicled the team’s success from her perspective. She even hosted a Giants pre-game show on television.

Soon she was known in the press as “the first lady of baseball.” A quote attributed to her summed up her new attitude: “Let someone else be the world’s greatest actress. I’ll be the world’s greatest baseball fan.”

Divorce

The duo broke up in 1960. Durocher won a World Series with the Giants in 1954 before leaving the team a year later. He either coached or managed teams into the seventies. Day made theatrical films until 1960, and appeared on TV movies and shows well into the eighties.

While they were together though, baseball got quite a boost from their relationship.

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Have you seen any of Laraine Day’s movies?