Her first marriage, in 1941, was to Al Jorden, a talented trombonist but a jealous and “psychopathic sadist” who often beat her up, she later recalled. He once tried to force pills on her that would cause her to miscarry. She gave birth to their son, Terry, and they divorced soon after.

In 1946, she married saxophonist George Weidler, who converted her to Christian Science. She tried to live as a Los Angeles housewife before their amicable parting. Weidler had reservations about becoming “Mr. Doris Day,” and he was certain of her future stardom.

While continuing an active recording career at Columbia Records, Ms. Day flourished in movie musicals and appeared in supporting dramatic roles. She was the girlfriend of an alcoholic trumpeter played by Kirk Douglas in “Young Man With a Horn” (1950) and was the conflicted wife of a thuggish Klansman (Steve Cochran) in “Storm Warning” (1951), a film that drew admiring attention from Hitchcock.

Producer Ross Hunter gave audiences a taste of Ms. Day’s potential as a sex symbol when he gowned her in chic, form-fitting Jean Louis for “Pillow Talk.” The film, which brought her an Academy Award nomination, marked her Hollywood apex. Her career petered out in increasingly vacuous “Pillow Talk” rip-offs and other vapid comedies.

She ended her film career in the late 1960s with a cosmetics industry spy caper (“Caprice”) and a comedy about a blackout (“Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?”) -- films of such low quality that a critic with Saturday Review magazine noted in his assessment, “Doris Day’s fans, if there are any left . . . .”

In 1968, as she was winding down her career, her third husband, producer Martin Melcher, died unexpectedly at 52. She discovered that Melcher and her lawyer, Jerome Rosenthal, had squandered her entire fortune and left her $500,000 in debt.

Ms. Day won a $26 million civil suit against Rosenthal, but the two sides negotiated for 17 years to reach a $6 million settlement. Rosenthal was disbarred.

After Melcher’s death, Ms. Day spent five years in a CBS series, “The Doris Day Show,” to which Melcher had committed her without her knowledge; she and the critics hated it. She also married and divorced for the last time, to a restaurant greeter, Barry Comden.

Her son, Terry, a record producer who sang on the Beach Boys album “Pet Sounds,” died in 2004. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Ms. Day settled in Carmel Valley, caring for many pets and starting animal welfare lobbying organizations, including the Doris Day Animal League and the Doris Day Animal Foundation. She successfully advocated a California law for mandatory counseling for people convicted of animal abuse.

“The more I study human beings,” she once said, “the more I love animals.”