Doris Walker

Doris Walker was a protagonist of the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. She was played by the late Maureen O'Hara.

By the mid 1940s Walker was divorced with a young daughter named Susan. Living in New York City Walker was an executive working for R.H. Macy at his flagship store, in charge of personnel. Because of her organizational abilities she was tapped to run the Thanksgiving Day parade one year.

At that parade Kris Kringle informed her that the man she had hired to play Santa Claus was falling down drunk. Kringle agreed to take over for him, and after the parade agreed with toy department manager Julian Shellhammer to hire him as the store Santa. She met the young lawyer Fred Gailey after the parade, who had allowed Susan to watch the parade from his apartment across the way. Susan thought the Santa was much better this year, and Doris remarked he was a last minute replacement as she was forced to fire the original Santa. When Susan asked why Doris asked if she remembered how the janitor was last New Year's, and said he was much worse.

Walker at first thought Kringle was a kindly old man, and disapproved of both Gailey and Kringle trying to influence Susan to believe in Santa Claus, stating that she didn't want to raise her daughter to believe in nonsense. At first when learning that Kringle really believed himself to be Santa Claus she dismissed him from employment at the store, but changed her mind when finding out how thrilled Mr. Macy was with the new Santa. During this time she also became friends with Fred Gailey, who made it his mission to convince Susan and Doris that Santa existed.

Over the next few weeks she started to come around to the idea of Santa Claus after witnessing the positive influence Kringle was having, not just on Susan but other people as well. She grew very fond of Kringle and was very upset when Granville Sawyer forced her and Shellhammer to agree to competency hearings after Kringle tapped him on the head following a confrontation.

Feeling betrayed, Kringle deliberately failed the exam. He was set to be committed, but Gailey intervened and demanded a hearing. When Gailey announced that he intended to prove the existence of Santa Claus this led to some tension between Doris and Gailey. Doris felt that Gailey was being unrealistic and overreaching, that he was not being sensible. Gailey responded that not everything on Earth was sensible before leaving in a huff.

When the prosecutor demanded that Gailey provided positive proof that Kringle was Santa, Albert was despondent over this, feeling for sure that Kringle would lose his case. Doris told him not to give up hope. Susan soon approached her mother to ask what was going on. Doris explained about the trial and how some people wanted to put Kringle away. Susan said that Kringle must be feeling sad and that she would write a letter to boost Kringle's spirits. Susan wrote a letter to Kringle stating that she believed in Santa. Doris appended her own note, saying that she also believed in Kringle. This brought Kringle a considerable amount of joy that he had brought both Susan and Doris around to believing in him.

In addition to delivering that letter to Kringle, a couple postal employees delivered a large amount of mail to Kringle, using him as an excuse to clear out the dead letter office. Gailey used this to say that the post office was recognizing Kringle as Santa Claus. With that Judge Harper said that since the Federal Government recognized Kringle as Santa that he would not dispute that, and ordered the case dismissed. Outside the courthouse Doris congratulated Kris and asked him to dinner, but Kringle declined since it was Christmas Eve.

The following day after a Christmas party Kringle gave Doris and Fred directions for an alternate route home. The route took them past a house which Susan saw and insisted they stop at. Running into the house Susan told her mother and Fred it was her house, that Kringle had given it to them. Seeing it was for sale Doris and Fred decided to buy the house and start a family together. Seeing a familiar cane and a hat in the house Doris said it must've been left by the previous owners. Gailey thought maybe he hadn't done such a wonderful thing after all.