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.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark.
HELLO JOHN/STEVE/WORK HORSE
A FAN’S APPRECIATION OF “FORGOTTEN” DEANNA DURBIN PART ONE
1 In an effort to ensure that I have missed no good posts on Cogerson I flick back through them now and again and have just noticed that I never saw your 20 Feb 17 post about Deanna Durbin. Please accept my apologies for the oversight and consider some belated comments with the following caveats:
(1) W of John should be assured that although I disagree with her Oracle husband a lot I am really generally speaking as affable as she thinks Spencer Tracy was, though that might not be setting too high a benchmark!
(2 All stars experience fading popularity over time and my main interest in movie stars of the classic era lies in comparing how they performed in their actual heyday and certainly little Eda Mae can be said to have made quite a mark in her time when she was idolised by such important historic figures as Churchill and Anne Frank, chalked up as string of box office hits in the few short years of her youth, was regarded as Universal’s biggest star apart from maybe A & C and whether true or not is credited with saving Universal from bankruptcy.
(3) I do not have the supreme confidence that you seem to have in relation to yourself that my take on everything to do with people who performed up to 90 years or more ago is decisive. However with regard to the general esteem in which Deanna is today held what matters most to yours truly is that HE has not forgotten her. I have every respect for the massive legend of Judy Garland but FOR ME Deanna was more entertaining, sexier and prettier and had by far a better voice. I have many of Durbin’s records in my collection but sadly there are only a few of Judy’s that interest me. Another thing I admired about the very young Durbin was that she did not rely on too many top stars to help her carry her movies in her heyday. Mine is just one opinion but I like to value it as much as I’m sure those sampled by your idol Dr Gallup value theirs.
Steve,, Bob, Cogerson
Just watched your Deanna Durbin video. For me, of the ones I have seen, and I have seen It Started with Eve, the Durbin which stands out is Three Smart Girls. It was nominated for best picture in 1936. Less for the music than as a screwball comedy.
What happened to Durbin’s career is certainly one of the fascinating puzzles of Old Hollywood. In the Gallup poll of the favorite stars of movie fans in 1941, Durbin came in #4, behind Davis, Rogers, and Loy, and just ahead of Garland and Hepburn. Today? I checked at IMDB and the # of ratings for her top movies are 1002, 904, 894. I would guess that those numbers are by far the lowest of anyone listed here on the UMR table. She has her fans I am certain and “forgotten” is generally overused, but if such a term applies to any studio era star, it is Durbin.
I read a post by a Durbin fan at IMDB pointing out that Universal did a better job of building Durbin into a star during the late 1930’s than MGM did with Garland. True, I think. Durbin was all Universal had. Garland just one of many. But Universal hit a ceiling and just couldn’t take the next step up while Garland got opportunities like The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St Louis.
Off what I have seen, Durbin’s films, after the 1930’s, fall into the average to mediocre range, with some pretty bland leading men–Robert Paige, David Bruce, John Dall. Ouch. Durbin herself wanted more “adult” roles. This might have been good idea, but using Gene Kelly as a psycho killer in a movie called Christmas Holiday was I think a big mistake. Any leading man could have played that part. Why waste Kelly? And the title implies a happy holiday movie not a dark murder story. I wonder if this one really started her decline? regardless of how it did at the box office.
Deanna Durbin only made one color movie despite being a musical star. Maria Montez was the Universal star who got to look good in Technicolor.
By 1948 her movies were both bad and flopping at the box office. Her best option would seem to be trying to hook on at MGM, Fox, or Warners. I don’t know if she tried, or if any of them wanted her. Jack Warner didn’t like “operatic” singers. Neither I think did Zanuck. MGM had Jane Powell.
And so a forgotten star.
Thanks for the info and trivia John, it is appreciated. Only one color film? Kinda surprised, I thought by the 1940s nearly all Hollywood musicals were filmed in color.
Christmas Holiday sounds interesting, Kelly as a psycho killer? Will have to seek this out.
Hey Steve….I agree……knowing that Kelly plays a killer on Christmas Holiday makes this a movie I want to check out.
John is correct that title does not go with the subject. I always figured that was about Gene putting in s show and saving a farm, a hotel or a family home.
John has been on a roll today with these comments….they are making me feel like I know nothing about movies……lol.
Hey John….kudos for an excellent comment. One of the best comments ever. Lots of great information and presented in easy to read way. I feel I understand her career more now, Thanks for sharing this infornation.
I imagine the people that lived in the 1940s would be shocked that she is an almost forgotten star. Good stuff.
STEVE We have discussed before on this site the enigma of Deanna’s complete retirement from her career before she was thirty, with her complaining that she was “the highest paid star with the poorest material.” She apparently made her home in France** for the rest of her life maintaining privacy but liking travel and I read that in communications with friends she referred to herself as “a globetrotting recluse”. Even her death was shrouded in some secrecy and although she was 91 and almost certainly died of one of the afflictions of old age her family reportedly would not release precise details and chroniclers appear to be only guessing when they say she died ”on or about 20 April 2013”
2 Her bright and breezy career produced many fine posters and among yours I liked for example those for Cant’ Help Singing and It’s a Date and the very sexy one for Nice Girl. But that’s just for starters! I loved the Deanna/Gene Kelly still from Xmas Holiday, the one of her with Laughton and Robert Cummings from It Started with Eve, and the excellent solo ‘pin up’ photo of little Edna right at the end.
3 You and Bruce are agreed in only two of your top 5. He includes Xmas Holiday in his 5 and you do not and I back him on this occasion. You both ranked Lady on a Train highly just outside your Top 5s and that interested me as it was directed by** Charles David whom Deanna married on her retirement and with whom she lived in France for the next half century until his death in 1999. The fact that both you and El Commandant gave that film a good rating of around 70% is I think IN EFFECT A FINE TRIBUTE TO DURBIN AND CHARLES DAVID AS A COUPLE.
4 As a Durbin fan I appreciate the excellent profiles of her career that both you and Bruce have provided and for me the video is worth a 9.5/10. PS I liked too Bruce’s montage of miniature stills above.
“I couldn’t go on forever playing little Miss Fix It who breaks into song.”
[Edna Mae Durbin]
Hi Bob, thanks fro the review, rating, comment, trivia, observation, nitpick and comparison, much appreciated.
As you’re a huge fan of the wholesome young warbler I assume you’ve seen all her films? Well she only has 21 movies on her filmography.
This was the first video I’ve produced in which I had not seen any of the films and our illustrious el commandante has confessed to drawing a blank here too. Sorry but I’m firmly in the Judy Judy Judy camp. [cue Bob snarling]
Bruce’s charts came in useful and we have the same top two but veered off on her other movies. Glad you liked the stills and posters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbGkWFQyQBA
Have a great holiday Bob. Little Miss Broadway is up next.
Hey Steve….what fun would it be if our rankings matched 100%. Thanks for the link to your video.
Bob …….hope you enjoy your holiday.
Hey Bob….good breakdown on one of your all time favorites. Steve’s video is a fine addition to his video library. I imagine you are responsible for a good % of the new Durban pages/videos that have been made/published the last nine months.
Glad to see you landing on the right side of the ratings difference between me and Steve…..lol.
Why Deanna, why not. I have some old wartime magazine called PIC that has Deanna on the cover. There is another with Yvonne DeCarlo and one with Maria Montez and I forget the other 2 I have. Deanna’s last film was in 1948 and it should be no surprise that there is not one person on the current Oracle of Bacon Top 1000 Center of the Hollywood Universe list. There are a few on the 2000 list and they are as follows;
Because of Him (1947) – 222 Bess Flowers, 740 George Chandler
Can’t Help Singing (1944) – 234 Akim Tamiroff
Christmas Holiday (1944) – 783 James Flavin
First Love (1939) – 120 Robert Stack, 222 Bess Flowers
For the Love of Mary (1948) – 406 Edmond O’Brien
Hers to Hold (1943) – 158 Joseph Cotten, 740 George Chandler
His Butler’s Sister (1943) – 234 Akim Tamiroff
I’ll Be Yours (1947) -222 Bess Flowers, 740 George Chandler
It Started with Eve (1941) – 222 Bess Flowers
It’s a Date (1940) – 299 Fritz Feld, 395 Walter Pidgeon, 571 Charles Lane
Lady on a Train (1945) – 273 George Coulouris, 507 Ralph Bellamy, 740 George Chandler
Mad About Music (1938) – 832 Don Brodie
Nice Girl? (1941) – 120 Robert Stack
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) – 222 Bess Flowers
Something in the Wind (1947) – 222 Bess Flowers, 824 Frank Wilcox
That Certain Age (1938) – 222 Bess Flowers, 651 Melvyn Douglas
The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1943) – 222 Bess Flowers, 406 Edmond O’Brien, 740 George Chandler, 767 Philip Ahn
Three Smart Girls (1936) – 187 Ray Milland
Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) – 222 Bess Flowers
Up in Central Park (1948) – 125 Vincent Price
Deanna worked with 7 Oscar winners that I see.
Because of Him (1947) – Charles Laughton
For the Love of Mary (1948) – Edmond O’Brien
It Started with Eve (1941) – Charles Laughton
Nice Girl? (1941) – Walter Brennan
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) – Alice Brady
That Certain Age (1938) – Melvyn Douglas
The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1943) – Edmond O’Brien, Barry Fitzgerald
Three Smart Girls (1936) – Ray Milland, Alice Brady
People who appeared in films with her.
Got it.
Hey Dan….Deanna is one of Bob’s favorite actress…she was another actress that surprised me with the box office success. She was almost the equal of Shirley Temple….I am sure many people have no idea about that. Wow…not a single one on the current Oracle list….you would think somebody would have made the list. I see Bess Flowers but no Arthur Tovey on the 2000 list….the rest of that list (with the exeption of Price and Bellamy) has little star power. Hmmmm only 7…..that is one of the lowest totals yet. Thanks for the lists.
Ray Milland, Melvyn Douglas, they were big in the 30’s (Melvyn was leading man then), Ray from say 1937 to 1962 (best actor in 1945). Melvyn’s granddaughter Illeana is on current list.
I need to do a page on both Milland and Douglas…I would bet Douglas’career box office total will end up pretty high. Wow…I never knew Illeana Douglas was Melvyn’s granddaughter…that is usually movie trivia that I am all over….disappointed in myself. Thanks for the enlightment.
Hey Bruce:
Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the nice comment about my post. Glad you enjoyed it so much and found it so informative. One of the things that fascinates me about Deanna Durbin is her career, which, I think, in many ways was unique (e.g., she was THE star of every feature film in which she appeared, never appeared opposite a comparably popular co-star to help attract movie patrons, made all her films for one studio (Universal), etc.).
It’s interesting to think what direction Deanna’s career might have gone in had Joe Pasternak remained at Universal. I know he stated on more than one occasion that he would never have allowed her to make CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY, or a similarly stark drama, if he’d been managing hIer career. On the other hand, he also stated in his autobiography that he’d begun to get requests from theatre owners (and later, complaints from Deanna herself) to let her try more “adult” roles, especially as she was newly married and approaching her twenties at the time he left.
I agree that world leaders of the time were as captivated by Deanna Durbin as the pubic at large was, if not more so. I didn’t mention it previously, but one of her most ardent fans was our own president, Franklin Roosevelt. Deanna was an honored guest for at least one of his birthday parties, sang at his 1942 inauguration (the song “Thank You America” from her 1941 film, NICE GIRL?), and appeared on several radio broadcasts commemorating his birthday. She also was specially requested to sing Schubert’s “Ave Maria” on what may have been the first national radio memorial to FDR following his passing on April 12, 1945. The memorial was broadcast on April 15, 1945 and Deanna’s performance can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkbaJ-WpK1w.
Have a wonderful 4th of July!
1
Hey Mark….taking an educated guess that you were Anonymous….so I went and changed the name. If Mark was not Anonymous…..sorry for giving him credit for this comment.
Good point about her carrying all of her movies alone….when looking at her table….there are only 4 co-stars that have links……I have over 400 pages….which cover most of the main stars.
I think Pasternak would have helped her mid 1940s to late 1940s….and with some luck and success….she could have graduated to better roles….probably challenging Elizabeth Taylor for some of her great roles in the 1950s…..just my guess.
When researching this page I was amazed of the stories that revolved around Durbin and some of the most powerful leaders of World War 2…..that takes some talent and clout. Thanks for the You Tube link….very impressive….glad to see you found your way back to our Durbin page. Thanks for another great comment.