Deanna Durbin

Deanna Durbin

DEANNA DURBIN d2013. Canadian singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films during the 1930-1940s ; her singing voice being variously described as being light but full, sweet and unaffected. With the technical skill and vocal range of a legitimate lyric soprano, she performed everything from popular standards to operatic arias. She made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday (1936) and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios. Her success as the ideal teenage daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. In 1938, at the age of 17, Durbin was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award.  As she matured she grew dissatisfied with the girl-next-door roles assigned to her and attempted to portray a more womanly and sophisticated style. Christmas Holiday (1944) and Lady on a Train (1945) were not as well received as her earlier musical-comedies and romances had been. She retired from acting and singing in 1949 and withdrew from public life. She married film producer-director Charles Henri David in 1950 and the couple moved to a farmhouse near Paris. She recently died in 2013 in Paris aged 91.

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