The Artistry of Deanna Durbin
I just rewatched a classic film with the odd name, Her Butler’s Sister, about a young woman from a small midwestern town who travels on a train to New York City to try to find work as a singer. She’s played by Deanna Durbin, a Hollywood colleague of Judy Garland when they both sang together as little girls, and according to Kristian Lin, one of the many columnists who wrote obituaries when Durbin died in 2013, one of the world’s biggest movie stars of the 1930’s and 40's.
The aspiring singer in this movie thinks her older brother (played by Pat O’Brien) is rich because of his swanky Park Avenue address, but finds he’s been keeping from her that he’s only the butler. Against his wishes she finagles a maid’s position in the same household. She learns that the owner (Franchot Tone) is the famous producer of musicals she’d thought she was singing for on the train to New York (that man turned out to be a girdle salesman).
The many treats in this movie include good acting performances by Durbin, Tone, and O’Brien, but the main event is Durbin and her singing. With her impeccable vocal technique, gorgeous voice, and powerful emotional delivery, she can turn even a relatively simple operetta song such as Victor Herbert’s “When You’re Away,” or a popular favorite such as “Danny Boy” into a ravishing musical experience.
Her character desperately wants to audition for the producer, and it should be easy since she’s now living in his penthouse with her brother, but the producer hates auditioning singers at home. Neither she nor Tone realize he’s already heard her sing because he also was on that train to New York when she mistakenly sang for the wrong man. When she does later have a chance to sing and be heard by him, knowing he’s in the next room, she sings “When You’re Away.” He loves it, but can’t see her, and thinks the song is coming from his broken radio which in the past few minutes he hasn’t been able to turn off.
Further difficulties and possible romantic attachments begin, and there’s an astonishing tour de force with Durbin singing a suite of Russian songs, all in Russian.
Her last song in Her Butler’s Sister” is an aria from Puccini’s opera Turandot, “Nessun Dorma,” loved by opera fans and normally sung only by great tenors who possess magnificent range and technique. It’s a surprising choice for a coloratura soprano, but she sings it beautifully and with intense emotional power, making its climactic ending a perfect lead-in to the romantic last moments of the movie. (Photo below: Franchot Tone and Deanna Durbin, New York Times)
My copy of this movie seems to have been produced in Portugal, and the cover title is in Portuguese, yet the movie on the disc is in English. (If you get this version, don’t be concerned by the few more lines in Portuguese you’ll see before the story begins.) There are some other versions but this was the only one I could find at the time. It includes a famous short after the film ends, of a very young Durbin singing with a very young Judy Garland, combining classical and popular songs.
I saw a DVD of the film recently on Amazon for $65(!) But I’ve read that most of Durbin’s movies can be seen on YouTube, so give that a try. Finally there are several collections of her films on Amazon for more reasonable prices.
I enjoy most Durbin films but some of my favorites besides this one include It Started with Eve with the great English actor Charles Laughton, the very entertaining For the Love of Mary, and another film with Laughton, Because of Him. Laughton nearly steals the show in both films he made with Durbin, but she was fine with that. Another Wikipedia article notes she said It Started with Eve “was handed to Charles Laughton. He was marvellous in the picture and the fact that we remained very close friends even though we were both aware of ‘Eve’ being a Laughton not a Durbin film, shows how fond we were of each other.” You can detect that bond, which does come through in the performances.
To hear her sing “Danny Boy,” try to get hold of Because of Him, but get it also because it’s a wonderful movie. Or go to the video link below to see and hear her sing it in the film. At one point you can see Laughton listening in the background.
Here’s the link. Go down the page a little to find “Danny Boy.”
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=96013&forumID=7&archive=0
Interesting fact: Durbin and her movies delighted much of the world during WWII, especially Winston Churchill, who, according to Wikipedia, screened her films “on celebratory wartime occasions.” The site also says Russian cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich considered Durbin a very important musical influence on him, saying, “She helped me in my discovery of myself. You have no idea of the smelly old movie houses I patronized to see Deanna Durbin. I tried to create the very best in my music, to try to recreate, to approach her purity.”
Biographer William Manchester said she was his favorite star. Another fan was Anne Frank, who kept a photo of Durbin on the wall of the Amsterdam house where the family hid from the Nazis.
The same site says the success of Durbin’s films was reported to have saved Universal from bankruptcy. Producer Joe Pasternak said of her:
Deanna’s genius had to be unfolded, but it was hers and hers alone, always has been, always will be, and no one can take credit for discovering her. You can’t hide that kind of light under a bushel. You just can’t, no matter how hard you try!
For a fascinating article about Durbin’s extraordinary life, truncated career, and long after-film life in France, see Stuart Mitchner’s “Deanna Durbin’s Star Shone Brightest in the World’s Darkest Hour,” at the link below in Notes. There’s also a very good article in the New York Times by Aljean Harmetz (See Notes.).
Here’s what’s on the cover of the DVD that today’s post features ( His Butler’s Sister).
Notes:
Kristian Lin, https://www.fwweekly.com/2013/05/02/r-i-p-deanna-durbin/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/05/02/deanna-durbin-obit/2129781/ (from Associated Press)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deanna_Durbin
“Deanna Durbin’s Star Shone Brightest in the World’s Darkest Hour” https://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2013/05/08/deanna-durbins-star-shone-brightest-in-the-worlds-darkest-hour/
Harmetz, Algean, Photo of Durbin and Tone, and article: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/movies/deanna-durbin-1930s-star-of-universal-pictures-dies-at-91.html
Originally published at https://theserenecity.substack.com.
