- Changed her name on escaping to Maidenhead, Berkshire, England to Samta Young Johnson.
- Had a reputation as a voracious 'man-eater'. She was mistress to several royal princes and a future Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. The writer George Bernard Shaw was enamored with her (in fact, she began to pursue him, when he was 92 and she 41). However, she was also rumoured to have had liaisons with Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead.
- Celebrated as Britain's first and original platinum 'blonde bombshell', Frances Day was an American singer and actress who became a revue star in England.
- The actor John Mills was one of her biggest fans.
- Of German-Jewish descent, she was born Frankie Schenk and began performing in speakeasies while in her mid-teens. In England from 1925, she became an instant star of West End nightspots, creating a sensation when performing in a G-string with only an ostrich fan for cover.
- When she showed up for rehearsals one morning looking exhausted, colleague Bud Flanagan commented, "Little Day, you've had a busy man".
- She acted regularly in films until 1941, and appeared on the London stage in musical revues like Cole Porter's Black Vanities (1941, in which she sang with Bud Flanagan).
- She made her London stage debut as a double act at the New Cross Empire with the dancer John Mills (later a distinguished actor), billed as "Mills and Day". This led to a chorus role in the 1929 West End production of The Five O'Clock Girl at the Hippodrome, which toured the provinces in 1930.
- Her career began as a nightclub cabaret singer in New York City and London.
- She married Beaumont Alexander, an Australian agent and publicist in London, in 1927. He masterminded her early career as a dancer in West End nightclubs, where she created favourable notoriety by performing in a G-string with only an ostrich fan for cover.
- She was also a close "theatrical" friend of the Mayfair heiress Dorothy Hartman, owner of Lendrum & Hartman Limited, the major distributor of Buick and Cadillac cars in London.
- She died of chronic myeloid leukemia, aged 76, in Windsor, Berkshire, after retreating into reclusion in Maidenhead when her career and public life ended.
- She left what remained of her estate to a young solicitor, Howard McBrien, in her handwritten will, which included the following directive: [That] there be no notice or information of any kind of my death, except for and if a death certificate is obligatory. Any persons, private or Press, you shall simply say that I am no longer at this address. "Gone away. Destination unknown", and that is the truth.
- She was a regular guest at her country home - Stumblehole Farm, Dean Oak Lane, near Leigh in Surrey.
- In the 1950s she made only four films but found a new career as a regular panelist on the British version of What's My Line?, which ran from July 16, 1951 until May 13, 1963.
- During World War II, Day entertained the troops at home and abroad, as well as working regularly in the recording studio and on radio and appearing in the London production of Du Barry Was a Lady (1942).
- First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt confessed in a letter to Day after meeting her that "I find I am quite unable to resist your extraordinary and tempestuous magnetism.".
- In 1965, she disappeared completely from public life, changing her name to Samta Young Johnson and denying that she was the famous Frances Day of years past.
- In 1932, she arrived in the West End in the book musical Out of the Bottle, the first of several shows in which she co-starred with the comic actor Arthur Riscoe. In Out of the Bottle, they performed a duet on the attractive 'I've Got the Moon and Sixpence.' From then on, until the mid-40s, Day lit up the London stage in a mixture of musical comedies and revues.
- Her glamorous image and appealing voice, with its provocative, squeaky inflection, made her an incandescent star of the London stage in the 30s and 40s.
- As her irresistible performances continued to sell tickets, her behavior became increasingly erratic. She would often show up to performances at the last second, and perform overlong encores against the management's wishes.
- She was spotted by Australian entrepreneur Beaumont Alexander, who whisked her off to London, dyed her hair platinum blonde, and changed her name to Frances Day. With Alexander's promotion, Day quickly became one of the most talked-about cabaret acts in the city, her stunning looks and fearlessly bawdy performances driving audiences wild.
- Her final stage appearance is thought to have been in 1965 with Bob Monkhouse at London's Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre in The Gulls, an English version of an 18th-century French satirical comedy.
- Howard McBrien, an employee in an office beneath Johnson's apartment, who knew her only as the friendly lady who lived upstairs, was astonished to learn that she had left her house and entire £162,000 estate to him in her will.
- At 19, she married Beaumont Alexander, who was nearly twice her age. Within three years they were separated. Day would never remarry, but would go on to notch a spectacular record of conquests, both male and female.
- In her later years she lived as a recluse just outside London. She was heard briefly again on the screen in 1981, when her recording of the jaunty 'When My Little Pomeranian Met Your Little Pekinese,' which she made with Al Bowlly in 1933, was played in the Donald Sutherland movie Eye of the Needle.
- In The Fleet's Lit Up (1938), Day introduced Cole Porter's 'It's De-Lovely' to London audiences. During the next few years she was associated with several other memorable songs, such as 'Music, Maestro, Please' (from These Foolish Things, 1939), 'My Love for You' (Black and Blue, 1939) and Michael Carr and Eric Maschwitz's tribute to the Royal Air Force, 'He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings,' which she sang in the 1941 George Black revue Black Vanities.
- Shortly after the end of the war, Day starred in Evangeline (1946), an adaptation of Nymph Errant, but without Cole Porter's songs. It folded after only 32 performances, and marked the beginning of Day's decline.
- Her popularity tumbled after the end of World War II, and though she continued to appear in film, television and stage roles, she had difficulty finding an audience.
- Shortly after her last film, Climb Up the Wall, was released in 1960, Day began refusing to acknowledge her previous career. She changed her name to Frankie Day, and often passed herself off as 'Frances Day's daughter.'.
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