Deborah Kerr once forgot her lines

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 18

Deborah Kerr once forgot her lines

By

PAUL MAJENDIE

NZPA-Reuter London

For years a Hollywood star, Deborah Kerr suddenly froze with stage fright in a small provincial theatre in England and forgot her lines.

“A sort of paralysis descended on one. It was very frightening,” she said, recalling with a shudder her first night in the spa town of Bath starring in Emlyn Williams’ play, “The Corn is Green.”

But the consummate professional, nominated six times for an Oscar in her Hollywood career, soon put the fluffed lines behind her, honed her mammoth part as a liberated 1890 s schoolteacher and brought the play successfully to London’s Old Vic theatre.

Miss Kerr, a demure and elegant 63-year-old, clearly revels in the challenge of avoiding her Hollywood image as the “perfect English rose.” Different and demanding roles on stage, screen and television are eagerly seized upon. "I’ve played far more varied roles than people think. They always picture me with a cup of tea in my hand and a tiara on my head,” she told Reuters in an interview.

Fans have never forgotten her role as the governess opposite Yul Brynner in “The King and I” and she said: “Whenever I go to

Claridges Hotel in London for a drink, the orchestra always strikes up ‘Getting to Know You’ from the film. It’s very nice.” But she was obviously pleased when a London taxidriver, taking her home from the Old Vic, recalled her torrid love scene on the beach with Burt Lancaster in the 1953 film, “From Here to Eternity.” “Cor, I remember you on that beach,” the driver said with obvious relish.

Miss Kerr always looks on 1953 as the high point in her career.

She was immensely proud of her portrayal of an officer’s nymphomaniac wife in “From Here to Eternity.” She then followed up on the Broadway stage with “Tea and Sympathy” in which she played a 36-year-old woman who went to bed with an 18-year-old boy to convince him of his heterosexuality. “Both were real eyeopeners in their own special ways. It was as if a bomb had burst,” she said.

Just recalling her co-stars is like reading through a who’s-who of Hollywood greats. She singles out Robert Mitchum, her co-star in such films as “The Sundowners,” and the late David Niven, her co-star in “Separate Tables,” as her two favourites.

“Mitchum is such a gifted actor. Playing with him is

like a really superb tennis game. The ball always bounces back. The timing is superb,” she said. ’“Niven and I both had the same, rather idiotic schooltype humour. We spent most of our time together in hysterics. He was endlessly thinking up jokes,” she said. Her other co-stars win warm praise. Spencer Tracy is lauded as a tremendously gifted, natural actor while she says of Gary Cooper: “He was one of nature’s gentlemen.” The Scots-born Miss Kerr, who started out as a ballet dancer at Sadler’s Wells in London, went to Hollywood in 1946 for a 13-year career that put her at the top of her profession. “It is always fashionable to knock Hollywood at that time, but they made one a star. You were put on magazine covers from Finland, to you name it. It was just a great machine and you became used to it. I was very happy there. It was like belonging to a rather super club,” she said.

Another analogy springs to mind for Miss Kerr, who combines cool sophistication with a very direct and approachable manner.

“I was an obedient schoolgirl at M.G.M. It was like a large boarding school and we did what we were told. I would never have dreamed of charging in and thumping on Louis B. Mayer’s desk. I am really rather shy by nature,” she confessed.

“When I went there, Hollywood had been under a cloud as far as Britain was concerned for taking actresses, turning their hair Marilyn Monroe-blonde and changing their personalities. They bent over backwards to keep what they considered as my image.”

But with a down-to-earth chuckle, she adds: “I have a fairly salty sense of humour and swear with the best of them. But M.G.M. would have dropped dead with fright if I had done that.” Now she is relieved to be over what she called “that chasm in the 50s when as an actress you are too old to play 25-year-olds and too young to play old ladies.” She also enjoys watching her old films on television.

“It’s like memory lane for me. Sometimes I say I don’t remember that set or wearing that dress and then think — oh God, senility must be setting in.”