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She was Winston Churchill’s favorite actress. She was so popular at the height of her career that Mussolini wrote her begging her to intercede with Franklin Roosevelt on behalf of America’s young men and ask him not to enter World War II. She didn’t.

Everyone’s idea of the perfect daughter, Deanna Durbin (Audio CD of Durbin’s 24 Greatest Hits) was a star at 15, an Oscar winner at 17 and the highest paid actress in Hollywood at 21. We’ll take a look back at her career and then discuss this week’s crop of new DVD releases.

When Universal’s horror franchise ran out of gas in the late 30s, the studio was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was saved by the teenage actress whose franchise it picked up when MGM inadvertently dropped her.

Legend has it that Louis B. Mayer, not needing the services of two budding adolescent actress-singers, told his flacks to “dump the fat one.” While neither was “fat”, both were a bit pudgy. Mayer had meant Judy Garland, but the publicists thought he was talking about Durbin and so let her go. MGM’s loss was Universal’s gain. They immediately cast her as one of three young actresses in a lighthearted musical comedy that unexpectedly became a smash hit and won three Oscar nominations including one for best picture: Three Smart Girls.

Durbin’s next film, One Hundred Men and a Girl, in which she was given the lead, was an even bigger hit, securing five Oscar nominations and an Academy Award for Best Musical Score. Her next two films, Mad About Music and That Certain Age, won a combined six Oscar nominations (4 for Mad About Music and 2 for That Certain Age) and she herself was given an Oscar, along with Mickey Rooney that same year, “for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement.”

She would continue to have one of Hollywood’s greatest careers for another ten years, after which she quit show business to marry her third husband, move to France and live happily ever after.

Today’s Hollywood flacks at both Universal and MGM couldn’t care less. Universal has issued only six of her films in a throwaway two disc set (Deanna Durbin Sweetheart Pack) and MGM has yet to release It’s a Date, the rights to which it acquired when it remade the film as Nancy Goes to Rio starring Jane Powell.

While the United States doesn’t have access to many of these films, other areas of the world do. Universal England has released more than twenty of her films on region 2 DVD, available either singly or in sets. Brazil’s Classic Line has released that lone MGM film It’s a Date under the Portuguese title Rival Sublime. It is playable in the United States as a Region 1 disc.

Durbin so despised the character she played in film after film, “Little Miss Fixit who bursts into song,” that she never seemed to take herself seriously while the world fell in love with her over and over again. She beguiled Joseph Cotton with Begin the Beguine, Gene Kelly with Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year and Charles Laughton with Danny Boy. Such legendary character players as Charles Winninger, Alice Brady, Barry Fitzgerald, Eugene Pallette and S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall couldn’t steal a scene from her, though they all tried.

A Durbin Sampling

First Love (1939), originally titled Cinderella as it is a modern re-telling of the story, the film had its name changed once publicity centered around Robert Stack giving Durbin her first screen kiss. Directed by Henry Koster.

It’s a Date (1940) in which Durbin and her mother, Kay Francis, vie for both Walter Pidgeon and a highly sought after stage role. It all turns out alright in the end with Durbin in a nun’s habit singing a stirring rendition of Ave Maria. Directed by William A. Seiter. Remade by MGM as Nancy Goes to Rio in 1950 with Jane Powell and Ann Sothern.

It Started With Eve (Deanna Durbin Sweetheart Pack) (1941) is a delightful screwball comedy in which Durbin charms both dying millionaire Charles Laughton and his playboy grandson, Robert Cummings. Directed by Henry Koster.

The Amzing Mrs. Holliday (1942) followed on the heels of Journey for Margaret and The Pied Piper, and pre-dates such later orphans-in-peril films as The Boy With Green Hair and The Search. Durbin poses as the widow of a sea captain in order to protect the orphans she rescued in China. Officially credited to Bruce Manning, Jean Renoir allegedly had a hand in directing this film between his Swamp Water and This Land Is Mine shoots.

His Butler’s Sister (1943) is a screwball romp in which Durbin works as a maid for brother Pat O’Brien in order to charm his boss, composer Franchot Tone. Directed by two-time Oscar winner, Frank Borzage.

Out on DVD Today

Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth was nominated for six 2006 Academy Awards and won three (Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup). It’s a complex film that works on the dual levels of a frightening war story and a fantasy film. Twelve-year-old Spanish actress Ivana Baquero gives a remarkable performance as the princess from another world trapped in the reality of this one. The DVD interviews with de Toro are relevant to the understanding of the story and its many complexities.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film of 2006 when it was finallyshown theatrically in the U.S. 27 years after it was first shown in France. The film, about the French resistance during World War II, is appreciated more today than it was when it was first released when spy films were in constant supply. Lino Ventura is superb in the central role and there is affecting supporting work by the entire cast, most notably Jean-Pierre Cassel and Simone Signoret.

Peter Glenville’s Becket was nominated for twelve 1964 Oscars and won one for Edward Anhalt’s screenplay. Beautifully costumed, designed and photographed, it is the acting that towers above everything else. This is especially true in the interplay between Richard Burton as the reluctant Saint Thomas Becket and Peter O’Toole as the enigmatic Henry II, a role he would reprise four years later in Oscar-nominated The Lion in Winter. The DVD release was held up for ages awaiting O’Toole’s commentary which was finally acquired.

Also being released this week is the critically panned The Fountain.

Peter J. Patrick (May 15, 2007)

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Top 10 Rentals of the Week

(May 6)

  1. Night at the Museum
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  3. Dreamgirls
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    6. Smokin’ Aces

  6. The Hitcher
  7. The Last King of Scotland
  8. Little Children
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Top 10 Sales of the Week

(April 29)

  1. Night at the Museum
  2. Deja Vu
  3. The Queen
  4. Smokin’ Aces
  5. Happy Feet
  6. The Last King of Scotland
  7. Freedom Writers
  8. Charlotte’s Web
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  10. Planet Earth: The Complete Series

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