Want to know the best Deanna Durbin movies? How about the worst Deanna Durbin movies? Curious about Deanna Durbin box office grosses or which Deanna Durbin movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Deanna Durbin movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Deanna Durbin (1921-2013) was a Canadian actress and singer, who appeared in Universal Pictures musical films in the 1930s and 1940s. The early box office success of her movies were widely credited with keeping Universal out of bankruptcy. Deanna Durbin’s IMDb page shows 23 acting credits from 1936-1948. This page will rank 21 Deanna Durbin movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Two of her short films were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: This Deanna Durbin page was requested by Robert Roy. I have to admit before starting this website in 2011….I was completely unaware of Deanna Durbin. However in my movie research over the last five plus years I have run into name numerous times. It is only after putting together this page that I realize that her career…was very very impressive. That being said…Deanna Durbin joins Mary Pickford as the only UMR subject that I have not seen a single movie that they appeared in.
Deanna Durbin Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Deanna Durbin Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies any way you want.
- Sort Deanna Durbin movies by her co-stars
- Sort Deanna Durbin movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Deanna Durbin movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Deanna Durbin movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Deanna Durbin movie received.
- Sort Deanna Durbin movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things from the Above Deanna Durbin Table
- Eleven Deanna Durbin movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 52.38% of her movies listed. One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Deanna Durbin movie grosses $128.30 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 18 of Deanna Durbin’s movies are rated as good movies…or 85.71% of her movies. It Started With Eve (1941) is her highest rated movie while I’ll Be Yours (1947) is her lowest rated movie.
- Twelve Deanna Durbin movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…. or 57.14% of her movies.
- One Deanna Durbin movie won at least one Oscar® in any category….or 4.76% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 19 Deanna Durbin movie scored higher than average…. or 90.47% of her movies. One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) got the the highest UMR Score while Up In Central Park (1948) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Deanna Durbin
1. Edna Mae Durbin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1921. Universal changed her professional name to Deanna when she signed a contract with them. She however remained Edna Mae in her personal life.
2. Deanna Durbin was in the running to play the voice of Snow White in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but Walt Disney himself rejected her, claiming she sounded “too mature.” She was 14 at the time.
3. In 1936 Deanna Durbin appeared in the short film, Every Sunday. Also in that cast was a very young Judy Garland.
4. In 1939 Deanna Durbin and Mickey Rooney shared a Juvenile Oscar®: For their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement.
5. Deanna Durbin’s first 6 movies all received an Oscar® nomination (all categories). That is probably a record…. the closest that I can think of would-be John Cazele whose first and only 5 movies got an Oscar® nomination.
6. Deanna Durbin was the number one female star in England from 1939 to 1942.
7. Deanna Durbin was Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Anne Frank’s favorite movie star. Churchill reportedly insisted that he be permitted to screen her films privately before they were released to the public in Britain and would often screen her film 1937’s One Hundred Men and a Girl to celebrate British victories during World War II.
8. Deanna Durbin has been married three times. She had two children.
9. In 1948, Deanna Durbin, retired from movies at the age of 27. Despite numerous offers she never appeared in another movie over the last 65 years of her life.
10. Reports that Deanna Durbin had died a horrible death (variously reported as during childbirth, tuberculosis, a car accident, etc.) were among the most widely circulated pieces of propaganda by the Axis Powers during World War II as a means of demoralizing Allied troops and Prisoners of War. There’s a TIME magazine article from 1944/45 in which its’ stated that one of the first questions asked by liberated POWs was whether Deanna was still alive. – Thanks to Mark for this.
Check out Deanna Durbin’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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IT STARTED WITH EVE is generally considered her best movie; her favorite was CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY. Mine is BECAUSE OF HIM.
Thanks for the feedback. I will have to check out all 3 movies.
Deanna Durbin, I’ve certainly heard of her but have I seen any of her films?
I’ve scanned the list up and down and have to confess none of those titles ring a bell, I’ve checked my datafiles, nothing. I’m a big Gene Kelly musical fan but I’ve never seen Christmas Holiday.
Interesting reading about her but not a favorite, sorry.
Hey Steve….right there with you….I have heard the name….but until checking out a You Tube video yesterday…I had never seen her in anything. I found it real interesting….that Churchill would celebrate World War 2 good news by watching Durbin movies,….puts Mr. Churchill in a different light. Tally count….Flora 5 Flora 5 Flora 5….you, me and Laurent put up a COMBINED Zero…..not too impressive for 3 film buffs…..lol.
No, not too impressive. Gold with 5 films.
BRUCE:
1 At last! Eternal thanks! As I’ve already said your Christmas Holiday figure on Gene Kelly’s page was the only reliable specific figure that I had ever hitherto picked up for a DD movie. YOU may have quoted isolated stats on her elsewhere in relation to your coverage of some of her other co-stars; but I have never been too familiar with the identity of many of the latter. I did see a vague reference to a Christmas Holiday figure in some long-ago article or other; but the article did not clarify whether the stat was rental, gross, domestic, or worldwide; and of course it was not adjusted for inflation, all of which which made it rather meaningless. Also there was a complete lack of overall knowledge at the heart of the article; because it claimed that Xmas Holiday was DD’s highest grosser, whereas you have shown that such was not so. Maybe the author made the kind of mistaken assumptions that are often the case when there is no inflation adjustment.
2 As you say she retired before she was 30 and spurned all future film offers. For example it is said that Mario Lanza was very keen to do a movie with her and pressed her unsuccessfully about the matter. I have read that she regarded Charles Laughton as a kind of mentor in her active days as he is supposed to have given her some help with the acting side of her musical performances in films.
3 I have often pondered the reason for her determination to have no further truck with her career, and a couple of alternatives have come to mind:
(1) Your page duly charts the decline of her short film career with the poor grosses of her final movies. However she had a lovely voice, then in its prime, and surely could have gone on for example making records.
(2) I never made a close study of her political attitudes but I did once form the passing impression that she may have been politically outspoken; and whilst today some of the comments that I think I remember seeing attributed to her would be regarded as very tame, in the late 40s/early 50s the US entertainment industry was of course going through political turmoil. In those days without the backing of that industry entertainers, when they could get work, were apparently not considered to be among the most elite celebrities.
(3) Perhaps though the normally official explanation was actually the true one: she yearned for a simple life. For 60 or more years from her retirement until her death she apparently lived as a self-proclaimed recluse on a farm near Paris with, for 50 of those years, her 3rd husband Charles David, a French film director who directed her in Lady on a Train. She is reported to have broken cover only twice in all that: first to give an interview to the renowned film historian David Shipman [who had done biographies on other ‘greats’ such as Chaplin/Hitchcock/Brando/Olivier] and second to permit Charles David to send the press a current photo of her to dispel rumours that she had got fat ! Her half-century marriage to Charles until his death was unusual for movie stars at that time. Truly a remarkable woman!.
4 Anyway I don’t want to seem patronising but I am so thrilled with what you have unearthed from the archives about DD and her film grosses that I cant’t resist signing off by saying – extraordinarily well done!
Hey Robert Roy.
1. Glad you found and like your requested Durbin page. So far the page is doing much better than I thought it would (the reason I did two pages at once).
2. This was like putting together a big puzzle with a few pieces missing….I actually feel really good about most of the numbers….the two 1948 movies are the exception.
3. My main sources were Variety, Reel Facts, Best Years In Movies 1945-46, Wiki Top Years in Film and some Durbin books…..and of course my database which had about 6 if these movies already done.
4. I have Christmas Holiday as her 2nd biggest box office rental total…..but with an adjustment Christmas Holiday drops to 5th place….so it is without a doubt one of her biggest hits.
5. Interesting ideas about her early film departure….I read one quote that said she had no interest in aging on screen….and no interest in playing the roles that the public liked here in….(the innocence teenager roles that made her famous).
6. I give her credit for living the life she wanted…lots of things I read said that she enjoyed her 60 plus years out of the limelight…..I wish I had written this page while she was still alive….but back in 2013 I was only vaguely aware of her career.
7. Thanks for the kind words….it turned out to be a very interesting page to research…especially since I had no knowledge of her at all…thanks for the suggestion.
Bruce:
1 DDs concern with ageing never occurred to me as a possible reason for her early screen retirement. Thanks for pointing out that alternative theory.
2 Regarding her not liking the image under which the studio marketed her, she does seem at times to have taken the initiative herself to preserve ‘miss goody-two-shoes’. For example I read that she refused to play her Xmas Holiday character in the way it was depicted in the short story (by Maugham possibly) on which the film was based – as a prostitute. Instead Deanna’s watered-down portrayal was, I think, of a night club hostess. Critics have contended that the switch to an extent created a contradiction in the latter stages of the film because apparently Gene Kelly as her screen husband became enraged at her choice of profession letting down his family’s honour. However after she retired she did on occasions become publicly outspoken and explicit about sexual matters.
3 I have used the words ‘I think’ and ‘apparently’ above because I was half as unlucky as Steve Lensman, who has never seen Xmas Holiday. I was in the middle of watching the film one rainy afternoon in 1988 when a couple of pals called and dragged me off to the pub. I did not have a recording device on TV in those days and I personally have never since seen the film repeated on television. [I might now search the DVD outlets for a copy.].
4 Anyway thanks again for your courtesy in researching a wonderful career and personality much admired by me.
BOB ROY
Hey Bob Roy.
1. I found a couple of her quotes about the aging part….not that she feared aging just feared she would always be remember as the talented teenager….pretty much like Temple.
2. Interesting about the subject changes in Christmas Holiday…seems that would have been very concerning back in 1944. I will have to check that one out….as I try and watch as many Gene Kelly movies as I can.
3. Funny story about your attempt to watch Christmas Holiday….I am sure you and I would be able to locate that movie on amazon….as I think everything is now on Amazon.com….lol.
4. Your story reminds me of a movie I almost finished. I was watching a black and white horror movie about a werewolf on a night my parents left me alone in the house…..it was a mystery as to who was the werewolf….as the movie was nearing the end….my mom and dad came home…realized I was still up and told me to go to bed right away….and I never saw the end of the movie. Speaking of Steve Lensman he thinks the movie was The Beast Must Die…..but after watching that one…I am not sure if it was the movie I was watching that night….I will probably never figure that one out….though I think about that unfinished movie many times.
5. No problem….glad you have enjoyed the Durbin page so much….it has been a better view getter than I thought it would have been….she has been battling Ryan Gosling for the top spot.
1. I would have backed Steve and said that your werewolf movie WAS The Beast Must Die, starring Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing,and the excellent George Sanders-sounding Charles Gray. However that film was in COLOR. To me it was unusual for those days [1984] because [ the wonderful Poitier aside] t a black actor was the hero, Denzel, Samuel L etc having not yet quite found their feet.
2 “Beast” had a gimmicky ‘werewolf break’ when the movie stopped for a time and a clock ticked away the audience’s time to guess the about-to-be revealed identity of the werewolf. It was actually a wonderfully entertaining movie and you should maybe try to get it on Amazon if only to make up for your own ‘Paradise Lost’.
BOB ROY
Bruce:
You said that you wanted to check out Deanna Durbin’s adjustment of character in Christmas Holiday. A good starting point for you might be the coverage of the film in Wikipedia on the Internet. The section headed SCREENPLAY explains the matter, though not mentioning the fact that the change was made on the insistence of DD. I picked up that contention elsewhere, along with accusation. by critics that the adjustment ruined the last part of the film.
Hey Robert Roy.
1. You and Steve could be correct….back then the television in my room was a black and white one with huge rabbit ears….so it is very possible that the movie was in color….but ii looked like black and white.
2. I am pretty sure I would have remembered Calvin Lockhart being in the movie….so although it fits many parts of the puzzle… I still think it was a different movie.
3. I will have to check out that Wiki section on Christmas Holiday….I just did a library search on many of her movies…and came up with a goose egg….which is amazing…as I live in an area that has 9 cities all very close…..and their libraries have over 100,000 dvds to pick from….yet nothing on DD.
4. As Flora…said…we can easily forgive you for your error…speaking of which…I never fixed that Western error.
POST SCRIPT
Sorry Bruce The Beast Must Die was 1974 and not 1984 as I said previously.
I think Bruce will forgive you. 🙂
Your face I’ve never seen but I’m now aware of your kindness!
When you live in a glass house like us….and make as many errors as we do…..it is hard to fuss about other errors…lol.
So, Cogerson. I was going to comment on Ryan Gosling first but there isn’t a comment box yet so………………..
I will write about Deanna first.
Robert Stack gave Deanna her first kiss on screen. It wasn’t advertised much because once she became a “woman” she was no longer such a bankable star. She single handily saved Universl from bankruptcy.
I love Deanna.
I cannot believe you have never seen Deanna.
Did you not see the screen test that Judy Garland did for MGM? Deanna was in it.
The highest ranking film I have seen is Number 1: One Hundred Men and a Girl.
The lowest ranking film I have seen is Number 15: Lady on a Train, a fabulous film noir set at Christmas time.
I have only seen five of her films so far, but that has to do with lack of access, not interest.
Hey Flora.
1. One of my website providers friendly “updates” to make things easier for me…require me to activate the comment section….before their update….it used to do it automatically. Obviously I have forgotten to activate the comments….not one of my updates that they have don.
2. Robert Stack kissing Deanna was a major movie event back then.
3. Three Smart Girls saved Universal…..and then her incredible eight year run got them back into good shape.
4. Tally…..count from Canada…Flora with 5…..in a three way tie for 2nd or last….Steve from England, Bruce from United States and Laurent from France….all with a goose egg.
5. The only thing I have seen of Deanna was a You Tube video I looked up while writing this page…just so I could say I had heard her voice….which was very impressive.
6. 5 is almost a quarter of her movies….and a heck of a lot better than my 0.
Thanks for the comment, the visit and movie knowledge.
Well, that is very interesting – another CANADIAN…I remember her but I do not recall any of her movies. I believe she was popular when I was very young. In Montreal we could not go to movies until the age of 16. I made up for that when I was working – I would talk my friends into going to the movies and at that time you had double features. We would go and see two movies at one theater and then go to the Chicken Chalet for dinner and then go to another double feature – 4 movies in one day!!! So you can see that I made up for going to the movies at a later date. Thank you very much for this site – I had forgotten all about her until you mentioned her name.
Hey Bern1960…..yep another Canadian…. guess the 50% Canadian blood is calling out to these actors…lol. 4 movies in a day….mmmmm…..maybe this is where I get this movie love from….lol. Glad my page triggered your memory. As always thanks for stopping by.