The Durbin Effect

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Every Sunday (1936), an MGM musical short, is a precious document that introduces two adolescent girls--two remarkable talents--Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin. Head of studio Louis B. Mayer was apparently furious when, after putting Garland under contract, Durbin became such a huge success so quickly, for a rival studio, Universal. Garland, of course, went on to become a screen legend, her films frequently revived. Durbin, fed up with the generally mediocre material in which she was cast, abandoned Hollywood and the movie business, show business in fact, in 1948 when she was only twenty-seven years old.  Both of them have cult followings but Durbin is far less well known today. Contemporary viewers are often puzzled to learn that Deanna Durbin is credited with having saved Universal from bankruptcy with her feisty adolescent nature and her precocious voice. In a series of films directed by Henry Koster, she was, for ten years, sensationally popular in the United States and England.

Co-starring in Durbin’s second feature, One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), was Leopold Stokowski. The renowned conductor’s reaction to her rendition of Mozart’s “Allelulia” (from Exsultate, jubilate) mirrored that of amazed moviegoers, particularly those familiar with Mozart and the classically-trained voice. However much expert coaching went into Durbin’s impeccable delivery of the piece, the fifteen-year-old seems to be to the manner born. Of course, what makes her a movie star is the ability to project so palpably her personality, her feelings, her joy in music and in singing. Her pluckiness remains a significant image of America in the late '30's.

Durbin's voice, healthily equalized throughout her range, and her refined musicality take on particular value when she is compared to the "legit" sopranos who attained stardom in the 1940s, Jane Powell and Kathryn Grayson. Although Powell and Grayson are technically proficient, capable of the coloratura flexibility that audiences loved, they lack Durbin’s immediately recognizable sweetness. Like Garland, Durbin was a talented actress with an individual, recognizable style. That style, consonant with her musical discipline, is perceived in the fluent, rapid-fire, but utterly clear delivery of dialogue with irresistible impetus and energy, often with a dash of irony that never smacks of bratishness but rather, of real intelligence, and with a warm personality that echoes her singing/speaking voice. This served her ongoing popularity in "grown-up" roles of the 1940s. It Started with Eve (1941) pits her verbal virtuosity against the formidable Charles Laughton—the outcome is a draw. (Alas, I have found no extended excerpt from their scenes together to include in this post).

In this short scene from Spring Parade (1940), Durbin exhibits the charm, the verve, and the spirit that captivated movie audiences. Here, in a variation of the “Little Miss Fix-it” she played through her ‘teens, she promotes the musical career of a young composer. It is with enormous relief that the song, first bellowed by the relentlessly grinning Robert Cummings, finally takes wing when she chimes in.

In Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by a master of film noir, Robert Siodmak, and written by Herman J. Mankiewicz (responsible for the script of Citizen Kane), her dramatic role suggests that at a different studio, with perhaps a higher degree of ambition, she would not have truncated her career so abruptly. The visual context of noir melodrama enhances the final confrontation between the guilt-ridden, distraught Abigail (Durbin) and Robert, her deranged husband (Gene Kelly).

Christmas Holiday is the sole melodrama in Durbin’s filmography. The “Western” musical Can’t Help Singing (1944), another rare effort to vary the formula, is her only feature shot in Technicolor. The film features musical numbers (Jerome Kern’s last score) staged on location. I end this post with Durbin singing “Any Moment Now” in scenery that matches the “wonderland” of E. Y. Harburg’s lyrics.