Deanna Durbin

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Deanna Durbin

Deanna Durbin on the cover of
Yank Magazine, January 1945.
Born Edna Mae Durbin
December 4, 1921 (1921-12-04) (age 87)
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Years active 1936–1949
Spouse(s) Vaughn Paul (1941–1943)
Felix Jackson (1945–1949)
Charles David (1950–1999)

Deanna Durbin (born December 4, 1921) is a Canadian singer and actress who appeared in a number of musical films in 1930s and 1940s singing standards songs as well as operatic arias.

Durbin made her first film appearance in 1936 with Judy Garland in Every Sunday, and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios. Her success in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy and in 1938, Durbin was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award.

By the mid 1940s, Durbin had grown dissatisfied with the adolescent roles assigned to her, and attempted to portray a more mature and sophisticated style, but the film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945) were not as successful as her musical films. Her dissatisfaction with the Hollywood led to her early departure from limelight and retirement from acting in 1948.

Durbin married film director Charles David in 1950 and following her marriage moved to the outskirts of Paris. Since then she has withdrawn from public life.

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[edit] Early life

Born Edna Mae Durbin at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she adopted the professional name Deanna at the commencement of her career. Her parents, James and Ada Durbin, were immigrants from Lancashire, England, and she had an older sister named Edith who recognized Deanna's musical talents at an early age and helped Deanna to take singing lessons at Ralph Thomas Academy. This led to her discovery by MGM in 1935. In late 1936, Cesar Sturani, who was the General Music Secretary of the Metropolitan Opera, offered Deanna Durbin an audition. Durbin turned down his request because she felt she needed more singing lessons. Andres de Segurola who was the vocal coach working with Universal Studios (and himself a former Metropolitan Opera singer) believed that Deanna Durbin had an excellent opportunity to become an opera star. Andres de Segurola had been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to watch her progress carefully and keep them advised. Durbin started collaboration with Eddie Cantor's radio show in 1935. This collaboration lasted until 1938 when her heavy work-load for Universal Studios made it imperative for Durbin to discontinue her weekly appearances on Edie Cantor's radio show. [1]

[edit] Career

Durbin signed a contract with MGM in 1935 and made her first film appearance in a short subject, Every Sunday (1936), with another contractee, Judy Garland. Studio executives were questioning the wisdom of having two girl singers on the roster and the film was to serve as an extended screen test for the pair. Ultimately Louis B. Mayer decreed that both girls would be kept, but by the time that decision was made Durbin's contract option had elapsed.[2]

Durbin was quickly signed to a contract with Universal Studios and made her first feature-length film Three Smart Girls in 1936. The huge success of her films was reported to have saved the studio from bankruptcy.[3] In 1938 she received a special Academy Juvenile Award, along with Mickey Rooney. Such was Durbin's international fame and popularity that diarist Anne Frank pasted her picture to her bedroom wall in the Achterhuis where the Frank family hid during World War II. The picture can still be seen there today, and was pointed out by Frank's friend Hannah Pick-Goslar in the documentary film Anne Frank Remembered.

Joe Pasternak who produced many of the early Deanna Durbin movies said about her:

"Deanna's genius had to be unfolded, but it was hers and hers alone, always has been, always will be, and no one can take credit for discovering her. You can't hide that kind of light under a bushel. You just can't, no matter how hard you try!"

In 1936, Durbin auditioned to provide the vocals for Snow White in Disney's animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but was ultimately rejected by Walt Disney, who declared the 15 year old Durbin's voice "too old" for the part.[4]

Durbin is perhaps best known for her singing voice—a voice described variously as light but full, sweet, unaffected and artless. With the technical skill and vocal range of a legitimate lyric soprano, she performed everything from popular standards to operatic arias. Dame Sister Mary Leo in New Zealand was so taken with Durbin's technique that she trained all her students to sing in this way. Sister Mary Leo produced a large number of famous sopranos including Dames Malvina Major and Kiri Te Kanawa, all of whom were said to sound like her.[citation needed]

The Russian cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich in a late 1980s interview cited Deanna as one of his most important musical influences, stating: "She helped me in my discovery of myself. You have no idea of the smelly old movie houses I patronized to see Deanna Durbin. I tried to create the very best in my music, to try and recreate, to approach her purity." [5]

The star-making five-year association of Deanna Durbin, producer Joe Pasternak and director Henry Koster ended following the film "It Started With Eve" in 1941. After Pasternak moved from Universal to MGM, Durbin went on suspension between October 16, 1941 and early February 1942 for refusing to appear in "They Lived Alone," planned to be directed by Koster. Ultimately, the project was canceled when Durbin and Universal settled their differences. In the agreement, Universal conceded to Durbin the approval of her directors, stories and songs.[citation needed]

Durbin married an assistant director, Vaughn Paul, in 1941 and they were divorced in 1943. Her second marriage, to film writer-producer-actor Felix Jackson in 1945, produced a daughter, Jessica Louise Jackson, and ended in divorce in 1949.

In private life, Durbin continued to use her given name; salary figures printed annually by the Hollywood trade publications listed the actress as "Edna Mae Durbin, player." Her studio continued to cast her in musicals, and filmed two sequels to her original success, Three Smart Girls. The second sequel was a wartime story called Three Smart Girls Join Up, but Durbin issued a press release announcing that she was no longer inclined to participate in these team efforts and was now performing as a solo artist. The Three Smart Girls Join Up title was changed to Hers to Hold.

Joseph Cotten, who played alongside Deanna Durbin in wartime drama "Hers to Hold", praised her integrity and character in his autobiography. [6]

She made her only film in Technicolor in 1944, Can't Help Singing, featuring some of the last songs written by Jerome Kern. A musical comedy in a Western setting, this production was filmed mostly on location in southern Utah. Her co-star was Robert Paige, who is better known for his work in television dramas in the 1950s.[7]

Durbin then tried to assume a more sophisticated film persona in such films as the film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945), but the public preferred her in light musicals. In 1946, her employers merged with two other companies to create Universal-International, and the new regime discontinued much of Universal's familiar product and scheduled few musicals. Durbin stayed on for another four pictures released in 1947 and 1948. Durbin's new bosses sued her for wages they had paid in advance, but Durbin settled the suit amicably by agreeing to make three more pictures, including one to be filmed on location in Paris.

Durbin did go to Paris, but not for professional reasons. In 1950, she married Charles David, who had directed her in Lady on a Train. Durbin vowed that she would never return to show business, so the three films were never made.

She and her husband raised Durbin's second child, Peter David. Since then, she has resisted numerous offers to perform, including to costar with Mario Lanza, and she has granted only one brief interview in 1983, to film historian David Shipman, steadfastly asserting her right to privacy. She maintains that privacy today, declining to be profiled on Internet websites.[8] However, she made it known that she did not like the Hollywood studio system and decided to retire. One of the most interesting points in Deanna Durbin's statements after her retirement is that she emphasizes that she does not and never did identify herself with the persona that the media created around her. She speaks of the Deanna persona in third person and considers the movie character Deanna Durbin as a by-product of her youth and not her true self. [9]

Her husband, director Charles David, died in Paris on March 1, 1999.

Deanna Durbin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1722 Vine Street.

Frank Tashlin's 1937 Warner Bros. cartoon The Woods are Full of Cuckoos contains an avian caricature of Deanna Durbin called "Deanna Terrapin".

Durbin's name found its way into the introduction to a song written by satirical writer Tom Lehrer in 1965. Prior to singing "Whatever Became of Hubert?", Lehrer said that Vice President Hubert Humphrey had been relegated to "those where-are-they-now columns: Whatever became of Deanna Durbin, and Hubert Humphrey, and so on."

[edit] Filmography

Year Film Role Other notes
1936 Every Sunday Edna short subject (opposite Judy Garland)
Three Smart Girls Penelope "Penny" Craig
1937 One Hundred Men and a Girl Patricia Cardwell
1938 Mad About Music Gloria Harkinson
That Certain Age Alice Fullerton
1939 Three Smart Girls Grow Up Penny Craig
For Auld Lang Syne: No. 4 Herself short subject
First Love Constance "Connie" Harding
1940 It's a Date Pamela Drake (a short subject, Gems of Song, was excerpted from this feature in 1949)
Spring Parade Ilonka Tolnay
1941 Nice Girl? Jane "Pinky" Dana
A Friend Indeed Herself short subject for the American Red Cross
It Started with Eve Anne Terry
1943 The Amazing Mrs. Holliday Ruth Kirke Holliday
Show Business at War Herself short subject
Hers to Hold Penny Craig
His Butler's Sister Ann Carter
1944 Road to Victory Herself short subject
Christmas Holiday Jackie Lamont/Abigail Martin
Can't Help Singing Caroline Frost her only film in Technicolor
1945 Lady on a Train Nikki Collins/Margo Martin
1946 Because of Him Kim Walker
1947 I'll Be Yours Louise Ginglebusher
Something in the Wind Mary Collins
1948 Up in Central Park Rosie Moore
For the Love of Mary Mary Peppertree
1999 Love is All Snowqueen singing voice

[edit] References

  1. ^ Interview with David Shipman 1983
  2. ^ Clarke, Gerald (2001). Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland. New York: Random House. ISBN 0375503781. 
  3. ^ Clarke 76
  4. ^ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, (1936), Walt Disney, Walt Disney Studios, (2008).
  5. ^ Deanna Durbin and Rostropovitch
  6. ^ Cotten, Joseph: Vanity Will Get You Somewhere: An Autobiography by Joseph Cotten (Avon Books (Mm) (July 1988), ISBN 0380705346 ISBN 978-0380705344
  7. ^ Bob Dorian on American Movie Classics
  8. ^ San Francisco Chronicle profile
  9. ^ Private letter to the film historian and critic "William Everson" in the late 1970s

[edit] External links

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