Deanna Durbin, who died aged 91, was the best-loved and most fondly remembered singing star of Hollywood’s golden age. Her debut, as an enchanting 14 year-old with a remarkable voice, saved the fortunes of the studio which employed her.
She blossomed before the cameras into a spirited, light-hearted young woman; her first screen kiss made worldwide news. Then, at 27, her career faltered and she retired to France and a long happy marriage. Her admirers, who were more devoted in Britain than anywhere else, were left with an unfading picture of springtime personified. Her blue eyes, auburn hair and toothsome gaiety won the hearts of filmgoers without resorting to sexuality or coquetry.
Is there anyone, a contemporary critic asked, who doesn’t like a Deanna Durbin film? The answer was no — except for Miss Durbin herself, who came to dislike her screen image as “Little Miss Fixit who bursts into song”.
The daughter of Lancastrian emigrants, Edna Mae Durbin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on December 12 1921, and moved soon afterwards to Los Angeles. The richness and purity of her voice attracted the attention of a talent scout while she was still at school.
Disney auditioned her for Snow White, but thought she sounded too old. MGM, planning a film — never actually made — about the life of an opera singer, put her under contract, but used her only in a short, Every Sunday, along with another child singer, Judy Garland. Joe Pasternak, a producer at Universal, tried to get Miss Garland for a film about three teenage girls: but MGM kept Judy Garland while dropping Deanna Durbin after six months, so Pasternak took Deanna instead.
By the time the film was released in 1937, she had already become popular in America as a resident singer on The Eddie Cantor Radio Hour: but Three Smart Girls was a sensation. It had been envisaged as just one more minor production from a studio which was faring badly, but a first glimpse of the rushes convinced the studio management that “Universal’s new singing discovery” — as the credit titles described her — offered outstanding potential. The budget was doubled, her part was fattened — and two million dollars flowed back through the box-office. Universal had found a new star.
Since a touch of highbrow music was then fashionable in musical films, Pasternak devised 100 Men and a Girl (1937), in which Deanna persuades Leopold Stokowski to conduct an orchestra of unemployed musicians. Again it was a huge success. Deanna Durbin was now far and away Universal’s most valuable property, and she was paid accordingly: but she remained unspoilt and free of the bumptious characteristics which rendered so many child stars offensive.
A series of carefully crafted vehicles gave her a wide range of songs to sing. They were gentle comedies, usually with a small-town setting and a warmly paternal leading-man. In Mad About Music (1938) she acquired Herbert Marshall as a stepfather; in That Certain Age (1938) she had a schoolgirl crush on Melvyn Douglas; in It’s a Date (1939) she lost Walter Pigeon to Kay Francis, playing her mother. She received a special Academy Award “for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth”.
Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) proved worthy of its predecessor. First Love (1939), a modern Cinderella story culminating in that famous kiss from Robert Stack, moved her delicately into grown-up romance, a notoriously difficult transition for child stars. Story ingredients and co-stars were, from then on, constantly repeated in slightly differing combinations.
In Spring Parade (1940) she fell for Robert Cummings, who had been in Three Smart Girls Grow Up; and in Nice Girl (1941), maddened by Robert Stack’s failure to respond, she flirted with Franchot Tone.
The Amazing Mrs Holiday (1943) cast her, oddly, as a missionary’s daughter bringing Chinese orphans to San Francisco. Jean Renoir resigned as director, complaining that she was “unable to escape from the style which made her famous”. Nevertheless, she aspired to more serious dramatic roles.
She was indulged with Christmas Holiday (1944), a gloomy piece derived from a Somerset Maugham novel. The misleading title helped to bring audiences into the cinema, but they were indignant at the film’s unsuitability. Neither Durbin’s genuine acting talent nor her rendition of Spring will be a little late this year consoled the public — or the critics. Universal declined to repeat the experiment; a refusal which spurred her growing disillusionment with Hollywood.
Her only colour film was Can’t Help Singing (1945), a comedy Western with an excellent score by Jerome Kern; enjoyable certainly, but her appearance was marred by heavy make-up and blonde ringlets. Lady on a Train was a pleasant little thriller, directed by a Frenchman, Charles David, who five years later became her third husband.
Partly because he could not agree with Universal about the best way to use Deanna Durbin, Joe Pasternak had moved to MGM, to which he always hoped he might one day lure her. Without his guidance, her later films were thin in the extreme, with poor scripts, uninteresting leading men and meagre production values. For a while she was the highest paid female star in Hollywood; the studio claimed that her salary consumed most of the budget, leaving very little for anything else. She said that, whenever she asked for better material, the studio responded by giving her more money.
Inevitably her popularity waned, and she was permanently at loggerheads with the studio. Finally, in 1949, the remainder of her contract was paid off.
There seems no objective reason why her career could not have been relaunched. She had a weight problem, but did not lose her looks. Her voice was just reaching its full maturity. The trouble was that she had come to loathe Hollywood and showbusiness. She no longer wanted to make the kind of films that her public, which held her in peculiarly proprietorial affection, wanted to see.
She had two failed marriages behind her, the first to the producer Vaughan Paul, the second to a German-born screenwriter, Felix Jackson, who produced many of her films. She had wanted to retire at the time of her first marriage, but was persuaded not to do so because in wartime she was needed as a morale-raising entertainer. Now “in a blue funk” about her career and personal life, she determined to leave not only Hollywood but America too. She turned down various possibilities, including My Fair Lady, which was then in the initial stages of conception, because she already had “a ticket for France in my pocket”.
She announced her retirement and, shortly afterwards, married Charles David, who was 16 years her senior. They settled at Neauphle-le-Château, outside Paris.
Unlike many Hollywood stars, she had invested her money sensibly and was a rich woman. But her tastes were simple. She made no public appearances and gave no interviews. Her husband fended off the journalists, and the local people helped to defend her privacy. Occasionally she would slip across the Channel, unrecognised, to visit Glyndebourne. One anomalous event temporarily threatened her seclusion: Ayatollah Khomeini, during his exile in France, came to live nearby.
Occasionally she would watch one of her old films — but only the early ones. Meanwhile, her records, made from the soundtracks, all of which had dropped out of the catalogues, were reissued, and her films were much requested on British television. She did send a message to her British fans, who formed a fan club in 1992, saying that she was “enough of an old man” to enjoy being remembered.
Her husband died in 1999. She had a son from her third marriage and a daughter from her second.
Deanna Durbin, born December 12 1921, died April 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment