Deanna Durbin, the Canadian-born child movie star who delighted Depression-era audiences with her sweet soprano voice and saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy, and who appeared in 21 feature films, before retiring in the late 1940s from public life, passed away at age 91 a fan club announced on Tuesday.
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Miss Durbin grew up in Southern California, where she studied singing. Deanna was discovered by a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer casting director searching Los Angeles singing schools for someone to portray opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink as a youngster.
Signed by the studio at age 13, Deanna, who already possessed a mature coloratura soprano, soon appeared in a one-reel short, "Every Sunday." In it, Deanna sang classical music while another recent studio signee, then 13-year-old Judy Garland, sang swing music.
But with the passing at age 75 of Miss Schumann-Heink, who was to portray herself as an adult in a motion picture about her life, Deanna's MGM career abruptly ended as the studio decided not to pick up her option.
MGM's loss would become Universal's gain as she moved to a studio that had undergone recent turmoil, resulting in the forced departure of founder and president Carl Laemmle.
Under producer Joe Pasternak, Deanna starred in ten films, starting with the one that really sent her on her way, "Three Smart Girls," which was major hit that brought box-office gold to Universal.
By mid 1940's her child-star persona gave way to appearing in such adult roles as a prostitute in love with a killer in "Christmas Holiday" (1944) and as a debutante mixed up in a murder plot in "Lady on a Train (1945)."
She married three times, the last marraige, that to French film director Charles David (he directed Deanna in "Lady on a Train")lasted nearly 50 years before his passing in 1999. She retired to a village in France in 1949 with her third and final husband and would remain out of the public eye for the rest of her life.
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