Edna Mae Durbin (December 4, 1921 – April 17, 2013), known professionally as Deanna Durbin, was a Canadian-born actress and singer, who moved to the USA with her family in infancy. She appeared in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s. With the technical skill and vocal range of a legitimate lyric soprano, she performed styles from popular standards to operatic arias.
Deanna was a contemporary of Judy Garland. Unlike Judy, Deanna knew when to walk away.
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 Studios. She achieved success as the ideal teenaged daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936), One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), and It Started with Eve (1941). Her work was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy, and led to Durbin being awarded the Academy Juvenile Award in 1938.
Can’t Help Singing (1944).
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; she continued in musical roles until her retirement. 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.
Her final four films—I’ll Be Yours and Something in the Wind (1947), Up in Central Park and For the Love of Mary (1948)—all reverted to her previous musical-comedy structure. On August 22, 1948, Universal-International announced a lawsuit which sought to collect wages the studio had paid Durbin in advance. She settled the complaint by agreeing to star in three more pictures, including one in Paris; it did not happen before Durbin’s contract expired.
Deanna in 1981.
On April 30, 2013, a newsletter published by the Deanna Durbin Society reported that Durbin had died “in the past few days,” quoting her son, Peter H. David, who thanked her admirers for respecting her privacy. No other details were given. According to the Social Security Death Index (under the name Edna M. David), she died on April 17, 2013 in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
Deanna Durbin sings Danny Boy for Charles Laughton in “Because of Him” (1946).
Every Sunday (sometimes incorrectly listed as Every Sunday Afternoon or Opera vs. Jazz) is a 1936 American musical short film about two young girls and their efforts to save a public concert series, which was being threatened by poor attendance.
Directed by Felix E. Feist, the film served as a screen test for, and is the first significant screen appearance of, two adolescent actresses who soon became stars, Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin. Although only lightly reviewed at the time of its release, the film has garnered a generally positive reputation among Garland biographers.
Small-town friends Edna (Deanna Durbin) and Judy (Judy Garland) are upset. Edna’s grandfather and his orchestra, who play free Sunday concerts at a local park, have been fired by the town council because the concerts are poorly attended. The girls hit upon the idea of singing at the concerts and set about promoting the next one. The following Sunday Edna and Judy join Granddad on the bandstand. Edna’s operatic style and Judy’s swing bring crowds running from all over the park. The event is a huge success and Granddad’s concerts are saved.
Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland were both under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but the studio had not put them to work in films. With their contracts coming up for renewal, feelings among studio executives were that the studio didn’t need two girl singers. Every Sunday would serve as an extended screen test to decide which girl’s contract would be renewed.
Durbin recorded the aria “Il Bacio” for the film. Composers Con Conrad and Herb Magidson wrote a specialty number for Garland, “The Americana.”
Following the screening of the short for MGM executives, opinion was divided on whether Garland or Durbin should be retained. Finally, Louis B. Mayer, upon his return from a European trip, decreed that both girls should be kept. However, Durbin’s contract option had expired by then. She was signed by Universal Studios, where her first picture, Three Smart Girls (1936), was so successful that it saved Universal from bankruptcy.
As a short film that served as a programmer, Every Sunday received scant critical attention upon its release. Durbin’s hometown newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, did praise the film, lamenting that it was “all too short” and citing Garland as a “girl singer of distinction.”
