DURBIN IS GROWING UP

Evening Star, Issue 23146, 21 December 1938, Page 7

DURBIN IS GROWING UP

ROMANCE WITH MELVYN DOUGLAS Deanna Durbin is growing up and now has reached the age when a young girl has thoughts of the romance and excitement of life. In Deanna’s ease, in ‘ That Certain Age,’ which opens at the llegent on Friday, she is provided with a sterling interest, a returned war correspondent who has been wounded in the leg while covering the strife in Spain, and she reaches the highest flights of romance, becoming a young woman with a purpose. This may seem strange to those who remember Deanna as the bright young miss of ‘ Three Smart Girls,’ but they must be reminded that there is now before the cameras a new film entitled ‘ Three Smart Girls Grown Up.’ Time marches on, and Deanna is some years older. In the new film the Durbin tradition is continued; there is surface brightness, rapidity of movement and the unchallenging acceptance of life as it comes which marks fortunate youth. Before the bright background there is Deanna, attractive and likeable. There is no doubt that the little girl who got into the films because she was a radio singer is going to stay in them because she has acting ability. There is Melvyn Douglas. He is more than the man chosen to play the chief role with Deanna; he is part of the mood and movement of the film. For his dry humour, his worldly poise, are just what are wanted to throw into relief the extravagances of behaviour of the young woman and to account for the way she abandons her daily companions for a world in which she is the playmate and the adoring companion of a foreign correspondent. The film is a triumph for him as well as for her.