* What’s even sadder is that the life they’ve both worked so hard to achieve, the stardom they represent, is itself about to be over, too. Lana and Ty were vintage 1947, and they were standing on the brink of the collapse of the studio system. Within less than ten years, nothing they worked for would be there for them in the same way, and not just because they got older. Everything they understood to be reality was doomed.
* The drama of her first appearance on-screen is heightened by the effect of having her sit in a darkened carriage, giving the audience a sense of an apparition beyond life, a mysterious creature in the dark. When Turner finally does lean slowly forward into the light—and the Technicolor—audiences were not jerked out of their mood and back to earth. She was unreal. A proper goddess.
* Although Topping was Turner’s third husband, it was her fourth marriage.
* Betrayed is stolen by Victor Mature, that underrated actor of maximum flamboyance who did so much to inject humor and life into so many dying films. Playing the dashing guerrilla leader who blows up bridges, kills Germans, and generally has a high old time of it before he’s revealed as a villainous traitor, Mature delivers what might stand as the definitive line regarding his own film career: “I’m in this strictly for laughs.”
* Considering Turner’s overall marital record, her marriage to Lex Barker had been long and relatively steady—four years out of the headlines.
* This film was shot after Diane, which was made at MGM. Rains, a 20th Century–Fox movie, was released, however, before Diane. Diane was released in December 1955.
* The novel Peyton Place, like Forever Amber before it, was the sensational best seller of its day, packed with sex and sin at a time when such things were not available at every corner newsstand. Grace Metalious made a fortune with the book, which purported to tell all about the secret lives of the citizens in a small New England town. (“There ain’t nobody livin’ intelligently in this town—nobody.”)
† Dates in all cases reflect dates of newspaper item.
* What the press could not cover, however, was that Cheryl Crane grew up to be a responsible businesswoman. After a difficult period of internment in juvenile prison and years of analysis, she matured and settled down. The press also did not cover Lana Turner’s genuine anguish, nor her attempts to help Cheryl over the years. What has not been written is that mother and daughter remained lifelong friends, and that Lana Turner was fiercely proud of her only child, Cheryl Christina Crane.
* His stage name was Ronald Dante; the name Lana Turner assumed was real and was the one he continued to be known by.
† She found it just as things looked hopeless, early in 1971. Turner was approached about the possibility of appearing in summer stock. She was invited to star in the popular Broadway comedy Forty Carats, the story of a forty-year-old woman who falls in love with a much younger man. Having become a shrewd businesswoman, Turner forged a deal that brought her nearly $200,000 plus the guarantee of salaries for her personal hairdresser, makeup man, and chauffeur, and a limousine.
* She would make two more totally awful movies, Bittersweet Love (1976) and Witches’ Brew (1980). Her final movie role is that of a veteran witch.
* Barbara Stanwyck, Flynn’s co-star in Cry Wolf (1947), was known to have high standards for professional behavior. Of Flynn she said, “People say terrible things about Errol Flynn. I never worked with anybody nicer. He was on time, he knew his lines, he was a perfect gentleman.”
* His mother, with whom he had a complicated relationship, once told British reporters that “Errol was a nasty little boy.”
* Smith is supposed to be the point of a love triangle between Flynn and his co-star, Fred MacMurray. The real love triangle is a professional one, involving Flynn, MacMurray, and Ralph Bellamy, all struggling to figure out why pilots black out during dive bombing.
† They also co-starred in Four’s a Crowd (1938) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).
* Richard Schickel described Flynn on-screen as “using the act of love as an act of aggression.” This sets Flynn aside from popular leading men like Charles Boyer and William Powell, who could banter and tease, but who, unless cast as villains, projected no negatively aggressive traits.
* Flynn remained at Warners until 1949.
* And yet Flynn was a perfect male fashion plate. Whenever he plays in a modern drama, he is impeccably tailored in well-cut suits made from fabrics you can practically feel. He’s 3-D in fashion. Flynn is one of the best dressed of the male superstars of the golden era, and he has a better body than most. (Gable, another amazingly costumed male, has both period and modern suits cut to his figure perfectly, and he always looks great. But Gable is short, rather high-waisted, and his suits have to compensate accordingly.) Gary Cooper, one of the most beautiful men ever on the screen, is very tall and lean but could also wear anything and look fabulous. However, he was seldom cast in the “I am a hunk but also a fashion plate” kind of roles after his early years. Today, male stars are never about tailoring, but always about costuming. Actors like Russell Crowe, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and even Tom Cruise are not tailored to a fare-thee-well unless for some reason it is necessary for their character. Perhaps the modern well-dressed actor is Michael Douglas, but only because many of his roles cast him as the modern-day successful man: Wall Street (1987), the remake of Dial M for Murder (retitled A Perfect Murder, 1998), and Fatal Attraction (1987).
* Walsh always allowed Flynn to be a loose, slightly comic hero. In his Curtiz movies, Flynn’s more romanticized, a British gentleman. He’s not without humor, but has a definite set of values to be defended. Walsh allowed Flynn the margin of self-mockery.
* He had also made the popular World War I air force movie The Dawn Patrol in 1938.
* England had not forgotten its animosity toward Flynn about Objective, Burma! To offset any audience bad feeling, Lilacs in the Spring makes light of it. When Neagle is off to the Far East to entertain the troops, her Cockney friend jokingly says, “Give my love to Errol Flynn if you see ’im in Burma!” Flynn’s character (an Errol Flynn–ish movie star) says she won’t need pajamas in Burma because “It’s too hot … and I should know!”
DEFECTION: DEANNA DURBIN
AND JEAN ARTHUR
DEANNA DURBIN
Deanna Durbin
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Edna Mae. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada, on December 4, 1921, to an ordinary family who moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was about one year old. Years later, when she was about twenty-eight years old, Edna Mae married and moved to a little French village called Neauphle-le-Château, where she lived happily ever after. After Winnipeg and before the French village, however, Edna Mae lived the life of a princess. She was a movie star named Deanna Durbin.
This is a true story even though it sounds like a fairy tale. In fact, the career of Deanna Durbin is a fairy tale with no parallel in movie history. It began with a bang in 1936 and ended unexpectedly in 1948. Her original success was so sudden that she can actually qualify as a bona fide member of that dubious category “overnight sensation,” and her ultimate stardom was so large that she has often been credited with “single-handedly” saving Universal Pictures from financial ruin. She appeared in twenty-one feature films in eleven years, and most of them were certified box office bonanzas since they weren’t especially expensive to make. She had a very distinctive movie type—that of a feisty Little Miss Fix-It, a peculiarly American form of Cinderella. Rich or poor, small town or big city, with loving parents or distanced ones, she lived on-screen in a happy-ending plot, surrounded by lavish production values and easily finding an excuse to burst into beautiful, glorious song. This, it was assumed, was the story of her life, and it was the story of her life—up to a point.
Durbin’s career illustrates the star system in its purest form as well as its most romantic evocation. She had real talent, fortuitous accidents of fate, careful publicity, campaigns that built fan interes
t, casting that shaped her movie type so a formulaic story pattern could be determined, mass audience appeal, studio backing, and, of course, the bottom line of it all: work, work, work that capitalized on the public’s initial interest and generated lots of money, money, money.
The creation of Deanna Durbin is a quintessential example of the down-to-earth business know-how of the movie star–making machine. The 1930s were a popular time for young stars, especially ones who could sing and dance, so in and of itself, her rise wasn’t that unusual. The audience of the time wanted to be reassured that youth could prevail, that there was hope for the future. They liked kids. Of course, movie audiences had always liked kids, dating back to Mary Pickford and forward through the Jackies, both Coogan and Cooper, and the monumental child star fame of Shirley Temple, whose career was already under way when Durbin’s began. But in the 1930s, there were more children in the film business than ever before. Not only were there child stars, but also star “teenage” characters in series films like Andy Hardy and Nancy Drew (and Henry Aldrich and Corliss Archer on radio). (The last hurrah for really big child stardom in the movies was Margaret O’Brien in the 1940s, until the trend more or less pooped out, only to be revived with a vengeance by television in the 1950s, when every sitcom had its kids, and carried over today with shows on the Disney Channel.) But Deanna Durbin was unusual. She was an authentic movie star in the days when stardom counted. She aged gracefully, had real singing talent, and could easily have continued in show business, but she opted out. She up and quit the Hollywood rat race at the age of twenty-seven, never to return. She just walked away. When her last film was released in 1948, she made a firm statement: “I’m tired of playing little girls. I’m a woman now. I can’t run around forever being the Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song. I want to get out of Hollywood and get a fresh approach.”
Since Durbin’s name is not particularly well known today, it’s important to realize how big she was. Her very first feature, Three Smart Girls, launched her as if she were already a star even though she wasn’t yet fifteen years old. The audience’s immediate acceptance confirmed the studio’s confidence. By the time she was sixteen, legions of fan clubs—the Deanna Durbin Devotees—had sprung up all over the country. These clubs published a quarterly diary that reported every activity Durbin undertook. Products were created in her name and carried her likeness on them: dolls, paper dolls, coloring books, toys, school supplies, recordings, and teenage fashions. She became the only female Boy Scout in the world when Troop 42 of San Diego made her an honorary member. She was presented with the key to New York City by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. She was the number-one box office star of British cinema and an honorary colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force. Her footprints were set in stone at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and she was awarded a special “juvenile” Oscar by the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy. By 1940, she was Universal’s top box office star. Her story could be—and is—the definitive story of the successful development of a movie star, except for one thing: the ending.
Deanna Durbin is the real Greta Garbo. Garbo left show business partly by accident and spent the rest of her life hanging around famous people, sitting in her apartment, and starring in the role of Very Public Recluse. Durbin, however, disappeared into a farmhouse in rural France, and that was the last anyone has seen of her.
IT ALL BEGAN sometime in early 1935 when Edna Mae Durbin was thirteen years old. Edna Mae lived in Los Angeles, which was a company town, and the company was Hollywood. Because she had a beautiful voice and loved to sing, she began taking serious voice lessons at the Ralph Thomas Academy while in elementary school. Thomas staged programs to showcase his students and recruit new ones, and Edna Mae, a prize pupil, had already been featured in the academy’s regular recitals and as a soloist at various Los Angeles clubs and churches. In the meantime, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was planning to make a “biopic” based on the life of the famous opera star Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink. The movie, to be called Gram, was scheduled for 1935 release, and preparation was solidly under way. The script called for a lovely young girl who could play Schumann-Heink as a child, and naturally the girl would have to be able to sing well enough to portray a future opera star. MGM’s casting director, Rufus LeMaire, was pulling his hair out looking for such a girl. He had exhausted his list of professional teenage singers, having auditioned and/or tested nearly everyone in town, when a friend told him about the Ralph Thomas school and the little girl he had heard sing there. Edna Mae Durbin was thus called in to audition for Metro, where she sang “Il Bacio,” first for LeMaire, then for the studio’s vocal coach, and ultimately for Louis B. Mayer. When the vocal coach had her sound her scales, he was stunned and told Mayer her voice was already that of a mature soprano. Edna Mae Durbin was signed to a six-month contract, with her first picture to be Gram.
Since Edna Mae Durbin was a trained singer performing in the Los Angeles area, and since she was a pretty and vivacious little girl, the story so far is not all that remarkable. She was right under the noses of studio talent scouts and casting directors. Furthermore, she wasn’t just some pretty beauty contest winner—she had talent. MGM risked little by putting her under a low-level step contract, particularly since they were hiring her for a specific role. Everyone knew she could give value for the money they were paying, and Louis B. Mayer himself directed her “renaming” process. Durbin was all right, but “Edna Mae” was too ordinary. She was sometimes called “Deedee” at home, and everyone thought matching initials would be attractive for an actress’s name. Edna Mae liked the name “Diana,” but she pronounced it “Dee-anna” and a sharp-eared publicity man jumped on the difference. “Dee-anna” would be original and have cachet. So Edna Mae Durbin, renamed Deanna Durbin, was set to go into her first feature film. To raise awareness of her talent, MGM arranged for her to sing on a national radio show, The Los Angeles Breakfast Club. She appeared three times and was a big hit.
The powerful MGM star machine started planting the name Deanna Durbin in the trade papers. Sometimes she was still called “Edna Mae” and not “Deanna,” and sometimes she was touted as still being only thirteen years old, the age at which she had first been given a contract. (The movie rule of thumb was to claim child stars to be as young as possible for as long as possible. Shirley Temple’s real age was kept from her public for years.) Plants with Durbin’s name were first seen as early as January 3, 1936, in the Los Angeles Herald Express. In an article by Gene Inge entitled “Young Stars over KFAC Tonight,” she is listed as one of a group of young artists who were going to be featured. Coverage of this event was guaranteed because Mickey Rooney, himself an MGM child star and already a big name, was going to be master of ceremonies. The article said, “Edna Mae Durbin, who is only 13 years of age, has a remarkable operatic voice.” By May, she was described as part of Ben Alexander’s Talent Parade and called both “a member of the film colony” and “a thirteen-year-old soprano.” By September, MGM had her publicity running full tilt. By then she was always called Deanna Durbin. MGM press notes say such things as “warbles like Grace Moore” … “a sweet-faced girl, who is going places” … “acclaimed by Lily Pons as the greatest child singer of her sex” … “has the screen presence of a Garbo and the voice of a Grace Moore” … “Filmland’s latest Cinderella girl” … “innocent and pretty, has the sweetness associated with adolescence.” Of course, no one had seen her yet, and she was scheduled for only one film, signed only to a short-term contract. That didn’t stop the Metro publicity machine, because the overall promotion of Durbin was related to Gram.
As Gram was to begin shooting, however, Madame Schumann-Heink became ill, and since she was to be a consultant on the movie, the production was temporarily postponed. This left MGM paying an unknown little girl and getting no return for their cash. They decided to fill Durbin’s time while she waited by placing her in a short musical film called Every Sunday, to be directed by Felix Feist. Her co-star was another young female Metro contr
act player who could also sing. Her name was Frances Gumm, but she had been renamed Judy Garland.
Garland, born June 10, 1922, had made her movie debut with her two sisters in 1929, but nothing had come of it. She auditioned for Metro more than once, and had made an MGM short, La Fiesta, for an August 1935 release without gaining steady work. In September 1935, she finally signed the important “real” seven-year contract at $100 per week. Roger Edens, who had played the piano for her at her successful audition, later recalled her as a “chunky kid in a blue middy blouse.” Garland, like Durbin, was just waiting around for her studio assignments. She later said, “They wanted you either five years old or eighteen, nothing in between. Well, I was in between, and so was little Deanna Durbin, and they didn’t know what to do with us. So we just went to school every day and wandered around the lot.” In publicity stills they were posed as two little girl pals, smiling sweetly at each other across a game table or walking arm in arm. They also posed with child star Jackie Cooper—all three earnestly pasting stamps in albums as if they were just three regular kids. Like Durbin, Garland was also singing on the radio during this time, earning her own raves. MGM shot a successful screen test of the girls together, and it was decided that while both prepared for bigger things, they could make Every Sunday. It was summer 1936. Deanna and Judy were both fourteen years old.*
And so it was that Deanna Durbin’s first screen appearance is a now legendary short that places her alongside another authentic movie star. Every Sunday is a typical formulaic short of its time: Two young girls are friends. One’s grandfather conducts an orchestra in an open-air bandshell. He’s about to lose his job because no one comes to the concerts, so the girls decide to save him. However, on the day of the big concert, there is no audience. This precipitates the big finale: The two little girls, desperate, get up and sing with “Grandpa’s” orchestra. And guess what? An audience flocks in.
The Star Machine Page 35
