Child Film Star Deanna Durbin Dies at 91

By: May. 01, 2013
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, 1930's child film star Deanna Durbin has passed away at age 91. Durbin's son, Peter H. David, first reported the news in the Deanna Durbin Society newsletter. No specific details were given.

The Canadian singer and actress appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias. She made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday (1936), and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios. Her success as the ideal teenage daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy.[2] In 1938, at the age of 17, Durbin was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award.

As she matured, Durbin attempted to portray a more womanly and sophisticated style. The film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945) were, however, not as well received as her musical-comedies and romances had been.

Durbin retired from acting and singing in 1949. She married film producer-director Charles Henri David in 1950, and the couple moved to a farmhouse in the outskirts of Paris. She subsequently withdrew from public life.



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