Just got the news that Deanna Durbin passed away a couple of days ago. She was 91 years old. Her son, Peter David, released the news in a newsletter yesterday. She has lived privately for the past 60 years in a small town in France. She soared to fame in 1936 with the release of her first film, Three Smart Girls, and by the time of her retirement in 1948, she had made 21 feature films and was the highest paid actress in the world.
Deanna herself despised the Hollywood glamour and publicity that was built around her. The whole Deanna Durbin fad struck her as somewhat false and she considered herself its first victim. "It's not that I don't like acting. I did, although the kind of picture I made didn't place much demand on acting. What I didn't like was the publicity, the invasion of my private life. A person needs to have an identity of their own. When you're a star, it's virtually impossible. That's something I could never get used to."
An article is being run in the 1 May 2013 edition of the New York Times.
