Early Life
Melcher was born Terrence P. Jorden in New York City to trombonist Al Jorden and his wife, singer-actress Doris Day. Known as Terry, the boy was named by his mother after the hero of her favorite childhood comic strip, Terry and the Pirates.
Before the birth, Day was planning to leave the abusive, violent Jorden. Outraged when he found out about her pregnancy, Jorden had demanded that Day get an abortion. Shortly after giving birth, Day filed for divorce, left the boy with her mother in Ohio, and went back to touring with big band leader Les Brown. After the divorce, Jorden visited his son infrequently and had little presence in his life. After divorcing her second husband, saxophonist George Weidler, Day married Martin Melcher, who would become her manager and produce many of her films. Melcher adopted Terry, giving the child his surname. (After Martin Melcher's death in 1968, Day discovered that he had mismanaged or embezzled $20 million of her money.)
Read more about this topic: Terry Melcher
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)