Deanna durbin actress biography
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Edna Mae had been given a provisional six-month studio contract and was renamed Deanna Durbin, a stage name inspired in part by her family nickname of Deedee. At a young age, Durbin displayed a remarkable talent for singing and acting. "Three Smart Girls" would spawn two sequels: "Three Smart Girls Grow Up" (1939) and "Hers to Hold" (1943). Feeling disillusioned, she decided to retire from the film industry and moved to France.
Despite numerous offers, she never returned to public life.
Deanna Durbin lived peacefully in Paris, enjoying a quiet and private existence away from Hollywood fame. Taken in at Universal, Durbin was groomed as a rival to Fox's pint-sized headliner Shirley Temple. As her public stock rose, so did her asking price and the size of her perquisites, which included a $10,000 per-picture bonus.
Having severed her ties with Hollywood, Durbin spent the rest of her long life in the company of family and close friends, fending off increasingly lucrative offers to make her comeback.
By Richard Harland Smith
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Born in 1921 in Winnipeg, Canada, Deanna Durbin moved to the United States with her family when she was just one year old.
Her talent and contributions to the film industry continue to be celebrated. Her first picture, "Three Smart Girls" (1936), was an unexpected box office smash and a string of subsequent hits made Durbin Hollywood's highest paid female star and an honorary Academy Award winner.
As her international fame grew, Durbin's fans came to include British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Holocaust diarist Anne Frank.
She was often praised for her ability to embody the spirit of youth and individuality.
Transition and Retirement
In 1948, at the age of 27, Deanna Durbin received her last film payment for three movies that were never produced.
By 1937, she had already placed her handprints at the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Just two years later, Durbin received a Juvenile Academy Award, honoring her contribution to the entertainment industry as a positive role model for youth. She then married film writer and producer Felix Jackson, with whom she had one child before divorcing.
A MGM discovery, the 13-year-old Canadian émigré was dumped by the studio in favor of a young Judy Garland in one of Tinseltown's most notorious intra-office screw-ups. Her first marriage was to Vaughn Paul, a producer, which ended in divorce. In 1949, after starring in 25 films, Deanna chose to leave the spotlight.
Shrewd investments and a share in a line of trademarked merchandise made the actress independently wealthy by the time she was 18 years old. She married for the third time, to director Charles David, with whom she remained until his death in 1999. Enrolled at Bret Harte Junior High School in Burbank, Edna Mae enjoyed swimming, roller-skating, school dramatics, and singing at church functions; it was her sister, Edith, who thought she possessed a singing voice worthy of cultivation and gambled her weekly salary as a school teacher on voice lessons.
While a student at the Ralph Thomas Academy, Edna Mae received attention from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, on the hunt for a teen singer with an operatic voice to play the younger Ernestine Schumann-Heink in a proposed biography of the famed Austrian contralto.
Brought into Metro, Edna Mae sang an aria from Luigi Arditi's "Il Bacio" for a number of studio executives and later MGM head Louis B.
Mayer, for whom she auditioned via telephone. Durbin quickly became one of the most popular and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.
Cultural Impact
Durbin's films provided a much-needed escape for audiences during the Great Depression and World War II. Her performances brought joy and inspiration to millions of people around the world.
ALWAYS |
Photo credit: Universal Pictures - De Carvalho Collection - Getty Images |
| Born Edna Mae Durbin in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on December 4, 1921 (some sources say 1922), her family moved to the United States when she was two years old due to her father's health. Durbin became an American citizen in 1928. Durbin was discovered by a casting director searching in Los Angeles singing schools for someone to play opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink as a child. In 1936, her singing landed her a spot in Eddie Cantor’s weekly radio program. Assuming the professional name of Deanna Durbin, she made her first film appearance that same year in Every Sunday. Under contract to Universal Studios, and widely credited with saving Universal Pictures from bankruptcy, she received the Academy Juvenile Award in 1938 honouring her "significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth". By then, Durbin was a rising star as the singing ingénue in such films as Mad About Music and That Certain Age By 1946, Durbin was the second-highest-paid woman in the United States, making a reported $250,000 a year, surpassed only by Bette Davis. Throughout her career, the star famously played everyone’s kid sister, the wholesome girl next door, or the can-do all-American girl who could seemingly give hope to anyone down on their luck. In 1950, at the age of 28, Durbin moved to France, settling in the village of Neauphle-le-Chateau with her third husband, director Charles Davis. Durbin primarily kept at home where she happily raised her children and lived a private life. Deanna Durbin successfully stayed out of the spotlight and rarely gave interviews before she passed away on April 17, 2013 at age 91. Compiled from the following sources: |
| Deanna Durbin sings Ave Maria from the 1940 movie, It's a Date |
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin once saved a major Hollywood studio from bankruptcy with a winning smile, an operatic singing voice, and a can-do attitude.
She caught the attention of talent scouts and soon signed a contract with the Universal Studios.
Rise to Stardom
Deanna Durbin's breakthrough came when she starred in the film "Three Smart Girls" in 1936.