Deanna Durbin, the star of Universal musicals who was a box-office phenomenon of the late 1930s and early 1940s, died several days ago at the age of 91.
Pretty but not glamorous, possessed of a sweet and resonant voice that made her seem older than she was, the wholesome, cheerful Canadian made a more sophisticated adolescent than Judy Garland. That’s why Louis B. Mayer, who cast them both in the 1936 short “Every Sunday,” when Durbin was 14, decided not to sign her. Which shows how wrong the MGM chief could be.
At Universal, she began a run of films, produced by Joe Pasternak and directed by Henry Koster, that helped wipe away the Depression and brought her a special Oscar in 1939. “Three Smart Girls” (1936), the first of the six movies in which Koster cannily steered her, is said to have rescued the ailing studio from bankruptcy. The others were “One Hundred Men and a Girl” (1937), which partnered her with the composer Leopold Stokowski; “Three Smart Girls Grow Up” (1939); “First Love” (1939); “Spring Parade” (1940); and “It Started With Eve” (1941).
When Durbin transitioned to ingénue as a Cinderella-ish orphan in “First Love” and had her first movie kiss (with Robert Stack), the nation blushed. When Pasternak quit for MGM, she lost a mentor and a guiding light. Her attempt to grow up on screen foundered because of the studio’s fear of losing a cash cow.
Cast as a missionary in the comedy drama “The Amazing Mrs. Holliday” (1943), she was initially directed by Jean Renoir, but he quit after 47 days of shooting.
“She had just gotten married, she was particularly ravishing, and I was very excited about it,” the French director later said. “The reason I didn’t finish the film is that Deanna Durbin was imprisoned by the genre that made her a success…. But I wasn’t good at this genre, and so it was better for the film to be shot by people more familiar than I was. [She] had become as good as gold, and this film’s script was once again the usual type…. I could have done things the way I wanted, but in the end, each decision was so important. Even a smile, a wink, was discussed by ten people around a green rug. It was difficult for me to work with so much seriousness.”
Durbin’s insistence on playing a nightclub chanteuse rather than a prostitute in “Christmas Holiday” (1944), and her refusal to be deglamorized, hurt Robert Siodmak’s film noir, though it remains her most interesting picture. She plays a woman devoted to a psychotic racetrack hustler (Gene Kelly, also cast against type) who has an over-affectionate relationship with his mother (Gale Sondergaard). Kelly’s performance laid down the blueprint for Robert Walker in “Strangers on a Train” and Robert De Niro in “The King of Comedy,” and though Durbin lacked the dramatic chops, she looks as fragile as a glass bauble on a Christmas tree.
She also appeared (singing, of course) in the effective comedy noir “Lady on a Train” (1945), a spoof of Cornell Woolrich’s crime fiction, but by now she was marking time. After the comedy “For the Love of Mary” (1948), she retired to France at the age of 26. The Guardian’s obituary cites her telling Pasternak, who tried to persuade her to continue, “I can’t run around being a Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song — the highest-paid star with the poorest material.” Although Durbin did not identify with her image, which she considered childlike, she made a beloved contribution to Hollywood’s golden era.
Durbin was married three times. Her first two marriages — to assistant director/executive Vaughn Paul (1941-43) and to producer Felix Jackson (1945-49) — ended in divorce. In 1950, she married Charles David, who had directed her in “Lady on a Train.” They raised her daughter Jessica (from her marriage to Jackson) and their son Peter. Her 49-year marriage to David ended with his death in 1999.