"Three Smart Girls"

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 April 1937, Page 13

"Three Smart Girls"

Apparently every film-producing company thinks it incumbent on it to make at least one “discovery” in every season. New “glamour,” new “exotic stars,” are promised in large doses. Some arrive, some so patently fail to arrive and New Zealand never sees them, many gradually descend to lesser rojes and a very few become stars. But occasionally the screen is presented with a personality so unusual apd appealing that its success is assured from the start, and with this select company will undoubtedly rank Deanna Durbin, New stars are usually regarded sceptically by both the trade and the public, but a whisper of Deanna’s talents must spread. And let it be said at once that here is no smart tale of cocktail swilling, society extravagances and compromising situations, but a homely and altogether believable tale of three youthful daughters endeavouring to reconstruct their parents’ broken romance.

Deanpa herself, is a revelation. This pretty, dimpled child, only fourteen years of age and only thirteen when “Three Smart Girls” was filmed, has a mature soprano voice in which the officials of the New York Metropolitan Opera are deeply interested. But such is the calibre of her performance in her first film that it seems safe to predict that her motion picture career will be far too successful for her to make sacrifices for grand opera. She sings as naturally as a bird, obviously enjoying her powers and happy in the knowledge that her hearers must enjoy being under her spell. Deanna’s voice has been trained for ,several years now, but whether it be opera or lyrics at no time is the effect one of a concert platform performance. This makes her out to be a fine little actress, and this she bears out in every foot of film in which she appears.

STARS A DELIGHTFUL PERSONALITY

Deanna Durbin will be the heroine of the hour, but without her “Three Smart Girls” would still be a film to see and enjoy. The attempts of three daughters—Deanna is the youngest and Nan Grey and Barbara Read her sisters— to bring their mother and father together from opposite sides of the Atlantic after ten years of divorce are touching and at the same time vastly amusing. When the news reaches their English home that their father in New York is about to marry again, and to marry one who is but too obviously an adventuress, the girls are deeply perturbed, for they know where their mother’s affections lie and find it inconceivable that their father should have ceased to love such a sweet wonian. Comedy riots through almost every scene—clean, understandable comedy—with never a doubtful line tp besmudge the presence of the lovely child for whom the story is woven. There is no lack of welj-loved faces in “Three Smart Girls,” .Charles Winninger, immortal “Cap'll Andy” of “Show Boat” is Mr Winninger, the efficient business nian who is jittery and nervous when his affections are reached. The adventuress who wants him for his wealth is Binnie Barnes, unscrupulous, statuesque and compelling while Alice Brady, fluttery “Mrs Bullock” of “My Man Godfrey,” contributes another comedy gem as the vamp’s mother. Mischa Auer, lean and sauve, is a degenerate and penniless Austrian count whose aid is enlisted in an effort to sidetrack the vamp. But dominating all —stars and veterans, story and sentiment—is this new personality. Why? To see and to hear Deanna Durbin is to know the answer, even if it cannot be adequately gauged in words.