Annette Sharp: John Laws’ lips are sealed on Doris Day dalliance

As a musical-loving world mourned Doris Day’s passing earlier this month, Annette Sharp learnt radio legend John Laws was in his 20s when he met and embarked upon a brief romantic liaison with the movie star. But decades later, the shock jock would neither confirm nor deny the relationship.

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‘I get passions for things,” radio star John Laws once said. “It once included women but that was too expensive.”

With two expensive divorces behind him, thrice-married radio legend Laws — once dubbed “Long John” by the press but perhaps better known as “Golden Tonsils” — isn’t one to kiss and tell when it comes to romantic dalliances.

When the question was put last week about rumours of a romantic encounter between Laws and Hollywood’s favourite 1950s girl- next-door, Doris Day, Laws declined this writer’s congenial invitation to open up.

“A gentleman wouldn’t comment,” was the message conveyed on Laws’ behalf in the days after the beloved actor and singer died, aged 97, on May 13.

Actress and singer Doris Day died earlier this month. Picture: Supplied

As a musical-loving world mourned Day’s passing, this column learnt Laws was in his 20s when he met and embarked upon a brief romantic liaison with the movie star, then an international household name thanks to popular roles in Calamity Jane, Lullaby Of Broadway and The Pyjama Game and some 30 feature films.

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It was the swinging sixties and Day had two failed marriages behind her and was in her early forties when the pair became enamoured of one another after meeting.

Laws was then a rising star of the Australian entertainment industry. He had started out as a disc jockey on rural radio in Bendigo in 1953, moving quickly — via Parkes and Orange jobs — to the big smoke, Sydney, in 1957, where he made his name initially as a broadcaster, and not long after as a country music singer.

An undated photo of radio legend John Laws in his younger days.

By 1962, the tall and lean 25-year-old had come to the attention of television executives and was offered his own television show, Startime, on Channel 7.

Laws was signed to host the program after gaining the approval of the show’s bigwig US producer Gil Rodin.

The Russian-born record producer, jazz saxophonist and songwriter was at the time one of the biggest music producers in the States and an associate of Doris Day.

Rodin, best-known at the time for the marquee shows he produced for American stars such as Eddie Fischer, Liberace and Bob Crosby, had signed 17-year-old Doris Kappelhoff to her first big band contract in May 1940.

Later that year he would introduce her to the band leader Les Brown, the man believed to have advised her to change her name — a move that helped propel her onto the big screen in 1948.

It would be another 20 years and two failed marriages before Day, then a box-office star whose squeaky-clean image was at odds with her often rough-talking, two-packs-a-day smoking real-life persona, would encounter Laws, then 14 years her junior and enjoying the first great success of his career thanks, in part, to his new affiliation with Day’s one-time manager Rodin.

John Laws on the cover of Woman’s Day in 1962.

Laws and Doris Day were said to be in a relationship.

History doesn’t relate if it was Rodin who first introduced the couple and Laws, now 83, respectfully declined to provide details when pressed last week — and boy did we press.

Laws had, by 1962, been married to first wife Sonia, mother of his eldest two sons Brett and Luke, for four years — although that marriage was an industry secret for the first four years because Laws believed on-air listeners might be “upset”, it was reported, to discover their idol wasn’t single. He was 21 when he married for the first time.

This columnist could find no reference to Day ever touring Australia, prompting us to suspect the tryst had taken place overseas, although one of Laws’ contemporaries said record companies did, in those days, frequently fly US recording artists out for brief two-day press tours.

Radio personality John Laws said “a gentleman wouldn’t comment”, when asked if he had been involved with Doris Day. Picture: Chris Hyde

“In the late 1950s and early 1960s the big recording companies would bring their major stars out to Australia and install them on the Gold Coast — then considered our glamorous resort capital — and take about 14 or so disc jockeys up there to interview them and spend two days with the stars,” one retired disc jockey recalled.

Regardless, by 1963 Laws was spruiking Day’s talents in his newspaper column, declaring her work on the CBS release of the album Annie Get Your Gun a “natural” triumph.

The affair, such as it was, was short-lived.

By the mid-1960s Laws had moved on with his second wife Yvonne, after Sonia, suspecting “Long John” of being unfaithful, hired detectives and caught him in bed with his new girlfriend.

Originally published as Annette Sharp: John Laws’ lips are sealed on Doris Day dalliance