Edna Mae Durbin (December 4, 1921 – April 17, 2013), known professionally as Deanna Durbin, was a Canadian-American lyric soprano and actress, who moved to the United States with her family in infancy. She appeared in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s. Additionally, she performed mostly classical concerts and recitals as well as concerts with semi-classical and popular music. She specialized in opera arias, art song, and semi-classical songs, which is today known as classical crossover.
Durbin was a child actress who made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday (1936), and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Pictures. She achieved success as the ideal teenaged daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) and One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937). Her work was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy, and led to Durbin being awarded the Academy Juvenile Award in 1938.
As she matured, Durbin grew dissatisfied with the girl-next-door roles assigned to her and attempted to move into sophisticated non-musical roles with film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945). These films, produced by frequent collaborator and second husband Felix Jackson, were not as successful; and she continued in musical roles. Upon her retirement and divorce from Jackson in 1949, Durbin married producer-director Charles Henri David and moved to a farmhouse near Paris. She withdrew from public life, granting only one interview on her career in 1983.
The younger child of James Allen Durbin and Ada Tomlinson Read, natives of Greater Manchester, England who relocated to Winnipeg, Canada, Deanna had an elder sister, Edith. When she was an infant, Durbin's family moved to Los Angeles due to her father's health problems with the cold winters in Winnipeg, and she and her family became United States citizens in 1928. By the time she was 10, her sister recognized that she had definite talent and enrolled her in voice lessons at the Ralph Thomas Academy. Durbin soon became Thomas's prize pupil, and he showcased her talent at various local clubs and churches.
In early 1935, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was planning a biographical film on the life of opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink and was having difficulty finding an actress to play the young opera singer. MGM casting director Rufus LeMaire heard about a talented young soloist performing with the Ralph Thomas Academy and called her in for an audition. Durbin sang "Il Bacio" for the studio's vocal coach, who was stunned by her "mature soprano" voice. She sang the number again for Louis B. Mayer, who signed her to a six-month contract. She made her first film appearance in the short Every Sunday (1936) with Judy Garland, another teenage singer-actress whose career would rival Durbin's. The film was intended as a demonstration of their talent as performers as studio executives had questioned the wisdom of casting two female singers together. Louis B. Mayer decided to sign both, but by then, Durbin's contract option had lapsed.
Universal Pictures producer Joe Pasternak wished to borrow Garland from MGM, but she was unavailable. When Pasternak learned that Durbin was no longer with MGM, he instead cast her in the film. At 14 years old, Durbin signed with Universal, giving her the professional name Deanna. Her first feature-length film, Three Smart Girls (1936), was a success and established Durbin as a young star. With Pasternak producing for Universal, Durbin starred in a succession of successful musical films, including One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), Mad About Music (1938), That Certain Age (1938), Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), and First Love (1939)—most of which were directed by Henry Koster.
Durbin also continued to pursue singing projects. In 1936, she auditioned to provide the vocals for Snow White in Disney's animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but was rejected by Walt Disney, who said the 15-year-old Durbin's voice was "too old" for the part. Andrés de Segurola, who was the vocal coach working with Universal Studios that became her voice teacher—himself a former Metropolitan Opera singer—believed that Durbin was a potential opera star. De Segurola was commissioned to advise the Metropolitan Opera on her progress. Also in 1936, Durbin began a radio collaboration with Eddie Cantor which lasted until 1938, when her heavy workload for Universal forced her to quit her weekly appearances. During the 1940s, she put on several classical concerts and gave some recitals. She also performed concerts with semi-classical and popular music for the troops who were fighting in World War II.
The success of Durbin's films was reported to have saved Universal from bankruptcy. In 1938, she received an Academy Juvenile Award with Mickey Rooney. Producer Joe Pasternak said:Deanna's genius had to be unfolded, but it was hers and hers alone, always has been, always will be, and no one can take credit for discovering her. You can't hide that kind of light under a bushel. You just can't, no matter how hard you try! Durbin continued her success with It's a Date (1940), Spring Parade (1940), and Nice Girl? (1941).
In 1941, Durbin starred in It Started with Eve (1941), her last film with Pasternak and director Henry Koster. Pasternak moved from Universal to MGM. Koster wanted to reunite Durbin with Charles Laughton as Christine and Erik in a new version of The Phantom of the Opera with Erik as Christines's father, but Durbin found the script too bloody and rejected it. This father-daughter element made it into Phantom of the Opera (1943), but it was cut at a late stage. Universal announced Durbin was to star in They Lived Alone, scheduled to be directed by Koster. However, Durbin was unhappy with the role, and that Universal had not given support to the career of her first husband, assistant director Vaughn Paul, whom she had married in April 1941. Durbin turned down the role, and was suspended by the studio from October 16, 1941, to early February 1942. In late January 1942, Durbin and Universal settled their differences, with the studio conceding to Durbin the approval of her directors, stories, and songs.
In April 1942 Universal announced a second sequel to Three Smart Girls: the wartime-themed Three Smart Girls Join Up, in which Durbin would "wear overalls and be either a riveter or a welder". Durbin issued a statement to the trade papers that she would no longer be appearing in any Three Smart Girls pictures and was abandoning the "Penny Craig" character in favor of solo vehicles. The title was changed to Hers to Hold (1943), revolving solely around her character. The film almost went unproduced; French director Jean Renoir was hired to direct Three Smart Girls Join Up, but a subsequent report announced that the Three Smart Girls picture was being replaced by The Divine Young Lady (the former They Lived Alone), a story of refugee children from China. The project was initially conceived without musical numbers, but Durbin finally relented to Universal's demand to include some. The finished film was released as The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1943), with the new title suggestive of MGM's wartime hit Mrs. Miniver.
Co-star Joseph Cotten would later speak highly of Durbin's integrity and character. Durbin had an iron will, and was influential in executive decisions at Universal, being one of the company's major stockholders. Columnist Jack Lait reported that "Durbin has been hard to deal with since she married. Demands her husband (who was only an assistant) direct her, and what with the $25,000 [salary] ceiling, she'll do it her way or no way." She dabbled in other genres, such as the romantic comedy His Butler's Sister (1943) and the musical Western Can't Help Singing (1944), her only Technicolor film, which was produced on location in southern Utah and co-starred Robert Paige. The film featured some of the last melodies written by Jerome Kern.
Durbin continued her push to establish herself as a more dramatic actress with the film noir Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak and co-starring Gene Kelly. Siodmak praised Durbin's acting skills, but later recalled she was difficult as "she wanted to play a new part but flinched from looking like a tramp: she always wanted to look like nice, wholesome Deanna Durbin pretending to be a tramp." Although the film received mixed reviews, Durbin later called it her "only really good film". The whodunit Lady on a Train (1945) also received mixed reviews.