Deanna Durbin

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Deanna Durbin
Image:Deanna Durbin in Yank Magazine.jpg Deanna Durbin on the cover of Yank Magazine, January 1945.
Birth name	Edna Mae Durbin
Born	December 4 1921 (1921-12-04) (age 88) Winnipeg, Manitoba
Years active	1935–1950
Spouse(s)	Vaughn Paul (1941–1943) (divorced) Felix Jackson (1945–1949) (divorced, 1 daughter) Charles David (1950–1999) (his death, 1 son)

Deanna Durbin (born December 4, 1921) is a Canadian singer and actress from Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Filmography 4 References 5 External links

[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.

[edit] Career

Durbin signed a contract with MGM in 1935 and made her first film appearance in a short subject Every Sunday 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.^[1]

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.^[2] 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.

Durbin is perhaps best known for her singing voice—a voice described variously as light but full, sweet, unaffected and artless.^{[citation needed]} 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 which were said to sound like her.

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

Actress Hedda Hopper alleged that Durbin had an affair with Joseph Cotten. However, the slur was completely untrue as Cotten testified in his autobiography. What brought about the rumor of an affair was that both Cotten and Durbin stayed overnight at the studio without the other one knowing it, only to realize it when they met the next morning at the commissary. Cotten was so enraged by Hopper's conduct that he kicked her chair out from underneath her just as she was about to sit down at a Hollywood function. This generated a spontaneous round of applause from spectators.^{[citation needed]}

In private life, the actress 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.

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 1947, her employers merged with two other companies to create Universal-International, and the new regime discontinued most of Universal's familiar product, including musicals, westerns, and comedies. Durbin stayed on for only two more pictures (Something in the Wind and For the Love of Mary) before quitting the studio in 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. She married Charles David, who had directed her in Lady on a Train. Durbin vowing 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 several by Mario Lanza, and 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.

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.

[edit] Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1935	Every Sunday	Edna	short subject
1936	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		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		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
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. ^ Clarke, Gerald (2001). Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland. New York: Random House. ISBN 0375503781. 
2. ^ Clarke 76

[edit] External links

• Deanna Durbin at the Internet Movie Database
• The Deanna Durbin Database
• The Deanna Durbin Page
• YouTube - Deanna Durbin "The Turntable Song" Something in the Wind - The opening scene of Something in the Wind where Deanna Durbin sings "The Turntable Song"
• Photographs of Deanna Durbinde:Deanna Durbin

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