DEANNA DURBIN

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 5

DEANNA DURBIN

A SELF-POSSESSED YODNfi WOMAN Judged by ordinary cinema standards of juvenile genius, Deanna Durbin is a most uninteresting child, says a writer in the ‘New York Times.’ She does not dimple readily. Her coy small talk is next to negligible. She has never hurled a dripping lollipop at a director to emphasise her artistic integrity. Affable but inscrutable, she declines, like Hamlet, to let interviewers pluck the heart out of her mystery. Everybody seems to like the way she sings on the screen, but it fills her with alarm. Right in Hollywood, where love amounts to a state of religion, she has announced her heretical intention of being an old maid. All she wants to dp is sing and act. Hers is an uncomplicated sort of genius. Deanna is, of course, the little girl with the big soprano voice who works for Universal Pictures and who woke up the morning after ‘ Three Smart Girls ’ was released, to find herself famous. She has completed her second picture for Universal. It is called ‘IOO Men and a Girl.’ Deanne is co-starred in it with the noted concertmeister Leopold Stokowski, the only man alive who dares to face a stageful of hungry musicians without a stick in his hands. She sings four songs. He conducts, and acts, if playing one’s self can be called acting. He does not want to be considered an actor. THE ADMIRING WORLD. Between her two pictures little Miss Durban has been receiving a good deal of attention from the world at large. She has,been a captain in the 116th California Infantry. . She has been dubbed a Texanita. Such musical pundits as Grace Moore, .Lily Pons, Andre de Sogurola, and Eddie Cantor have put np their enconinms on her singing in writing.. Her mail has increased from a few, postcards to 1,600 letters a week. Some of these ask for money. Others ask her hand in holy wedlock. Strangely, few of the latter group come from our child-marriage belt. A number emanate from sophisticated Paris. So far Deanna has received these proofs of the world’s esteem, or better, with little show of emotion on her

slightly poker face. She has a full sense of her film accomplishment. But she prefers to point with pride to the fact that when she was cashier in the cafeteria at Bret Harte High School, her alma mater, she handled £3 in cash every day without losing a nickel. This preference is characteristic. Deanna is not at all impressed with herself as a Hollywood personage.

One of her major musical enthusiasms is- the lion-maned Stokowski. When she learned that in ‘ 100 Men and a Girl ’ she was to play a little girl who forms an orchestra of 100 jobless musicians, she wont straight to Joseph Pasternak and Henry Koster, who were to produce and direct this picture as they had 4 Three Smart Girls.’ Just as she now docs in the film, Deanna begged them to get Stokowski for her orchestra leader. When Stokowski later consented and asked to hear her sing, she was thrilled to the marrow. She would allow no on© but herself to pick the piece she was to sing for him. She selected * Mind’s Farewell ’ from ‘ La Boheme.’ Yet upon meeting her hero at long last, she just said “ Hello,” and

Stokowski said “ Hello.” They went to lunch. She sang for him. He said, “How nice!” She said, “Thank you, sir.” And that was Hiat. LEADING MEN. At times this preternatural seif-pos-gessioa of hers is a trifle terrifying to Hollywood, where almost everything human bubbles over a bit. While_ ‘ 100 Men and.a Girl’ was casting, interviewers ashed Deanna how she would like Clark Gable for her leading man. She replied, “ Why I admire Mr Gable’s acting very much, • hut I believe the choice of a leading man depends on whether or not he is suitable for the role.” To break the somewhat stunned silence that followed, another scribe nervously inquired if she fancied any one around town as a future husband. “ I shall' probably never ‘marry,” said Deanna firmly. “No, there’s not one of .the glamorous leading men I ve met here I could think of marrying.” This imperturbable young person now facing the improbable future of spinsterhood was' born in Winnipeg, Canada, 14 years ago. She remained there only long enough to win a prophetic pewter plaque for being the loudest crying baby at the state fair. She was brought to Las Angeles in the year on© of her life, not to be nearer the films, but so that her ailing father could be further from the Canadian winters. She sang as soon as she spoke and learned the chromatic scale and the alphabet simultaneously. She was discovered by Jack Sherrill, who used to be Alice Brady’s leading man in the old World Film days, and is now a players’ agent. He sold her to Metro, and to Universal when her, first option expired. ,