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.
Bob
I really don’t understand your point or why you took my comment from February 13 so badly.
“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
The quote from Hartley should be supplemented by a quote from Tolstoy
“History would be a wonderful thing if only it were true.”
These quotes do draw the distinction between the past and history. History is what is taught about the past. The past is of course what actually was. I think it was Napoleon who said that “History is stories we tell about the past.” Mark Twain raised the cynicism level to “History is the lies we tell about the past.” To cut to the chase, I appreciate all the hard work Cogerson does on this blog to shine a light on the movie past. It is valuable to find out what really happened at the box office versus the conventional “facts.” I don’t how many films I have seen described as flops by movie “historians” which on examination made a lot of money.
“Gallup Poll”–It confuses me why you have such a problem with a quote from the Gallup poll of 1941 in which Deanna Durbin was placed 4th. I quoted it to show her standing back then. Is the Gallup Poll flawed? Of course. But it is direct evidence of what folks thought. But why you are so worked up about it when she finished so high eludes me.
My main point about Durbin being forgotten was her extremely low vote totals over at IMDB. These are her top five vote totals–
Lady on a Train—–1,039
It Started with Eve—–924
Three Smart Girls—–910
Christmas Holiday—–891
One Hundred Men and a Girl—–722
These are extremely low totals. (I know this will anger you, but 1,039 votes would place the movie 37th on Loy’s list, and Loy is far from having the highest totals) It does appear that if she has a lot of fans out there, they don’t vote on IMDB for some reason. In response to your posts I also googled “The favorite movies of the 1930’s” (also 1940’s) and none of her movies appeared in the top fifty of movies with hits on the internet from films of those decades.
What does any of this mean. I said it in my original post. “She has her fans and ‘forgotten’ is generally overused.” But relative to her peers back in the day, she does seem to be less remembered. The question I would more like to discuss is why, as she is a very appealing star and what is the dynamic of being remembered or not remembered? Studio? A family pushing your memory? That one (or two) really big movies which are still watched (Fay Wray with King Kong, for example). I think that would be an interesting subject.
“Do you think world-wide masses give a damn”–I don’t think they did even then. How many Chinese ever watched Hollywood movies? They had their own movies and stars. Same with other countries for the most part. Hollywood was mostly a western, and probably mainly English speaking, cultural and economic force. Modern technology has probably opened the world up to the Hollywood product to a far extent than it was in the past. They dub much better than they did in the old days.
“Clark Gable” and 50% of college students. Well, 50% is probably a terrific number for someone who has been dead for a generation. How many of these students could name most American presidents, let alone someone like Charles Evans Hughes or Andrew Mellon or Joseph Story? And don’t even ask about William Pitt or Lloyd George. Not too long ago I saw a study of college students which indicated that most couldn’t name the century the American Civil War was fought in.
The issue with someone like Gable for me is not so much if he is “forgotten” as relatively of course he is, but how well is he remembered versus his peers. Same with Durbin. Or Garland.
1 STEVE Thanks for your feedback. John called Deanna “forgotten” and I couldn’t let him get totally away with that. There is a site on the Net where a legion of Garland and Durbin fans swap insults. It seems to attract competing protagonists like the Crawford/Davis fan loyalty does and these people abuse each other’s heroines in the foulest language possible. John and I will not go there and anyway I admire both Deanna and Judy – it’s just that Deanna is my idol and her voice is more to my taste than Judy’s. So I’ll simply sign off by Dan-like joining up of the dots between two of my idols
FROM THE DIARIES OF HENRY KOSTER WHO DIRECTED BRANDO IN DESIREE (1954) AND DURBIN in NUMEROUS MOVIES
A few days later my Dad invited Deanna Durbin and Marlon Brando for dinner. Brando had expressed the desire to meet Deanna Durbin, who happened to be in town. Durbin had retired a few years prior and was living in Paris, but she was visiting Los Angeles at the time. The two arrived for dinner and Marlon was enjoying Deanna’s company. At this point, remember, he had just appeared in On the Waterfront and The Wild One and was at the height of his fame and popularity. Girls across the country felt their hearts race at the mention of his name. He followed Deanna upstairs to where Anita was sitting, watching television and doing her homework, and Deanna and Marlon entered the room. They had a brief conversation, which delighted Anita, and then Deanna signed the plaster cast on her leg. Marlon asked if he could sign also, and did so. Those were the only two signatures on Anita’s plaster cast. The next day when Anita went to school she was the most popular girl in her class, and from then on the house was filled with schoolgirls running in and out to visit their new best friend.
2 Unfortunately the apparent social off-set harmony between Koster and Brando didn’t spill over into their primary professional relationship and whilst Marlon and Durbin clearly hit it off as people I am not sure that he though too much of her movies. Brando was unhappy with how Koster was directing him in Desiree and in front of the entire cast and crew berated him with “You can’t direct s***. Who in f** *do you think you’re directing? Deanna Durbin?” Very sad in my view but I’ve long accepted that stars whom I admire on-screen don’t always behave admirably of-screen. However few of us are perfect – probably not even John – as for example my Deanna’s 2nd marriage was a shotgun wedding.
JOHN/WORK HORSE/STEVE
DEFENDING DEANNA PART THREE
Here’s how some others have “forgotten” Deanna Durbin.
1 FROM WIKIPEDIA
• Deanna Durbin’s singing is featured in Alistair Maclean’s 1955 novel HMS Ulysses, being broadcast over the wartime ship’s internal communication system.
• She is referenced in Richard Brautigan’s novel Trout Fishing in America (1967), when the narrator claims to have seen one of her movies seven times, but cannot recall which one.[20]
• Durbin figures prominently in the 1963 Ray Bradbury short story “The Anthem Sprinters” (collected in The Machineries of Joy).
• In Philippe Mora’s 1983 cult film The Return of Captain Invincible, Christopher Lee sings a song called “Name Your Poison,” written by Richard O’Brien & Richard Hartley, which has the line, “Think of young Deanna Durbin / And how she sang on rum and bourbon.”
• Russian cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich in a mid-1980s interview cited Durbin as one of his most important musical influences, stating: “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.”[21]
• Indian-Bengali film director Satyajit Ray, in his acceptance speech for an Oscar (Honorary – Lifetime Achievement) in 1992, mentioned Deanna Durbin as the only one of the three cinema personalities he recalled writing to when young who had acknowledged his fan letter with a reply. (The other two were Ginger Rogers and Billy Wilder.
2 LEONARD MALTIN IN MAY 2013 ON HOW HISTORY OUT IN THE REAL WORLD HAS “FORGOTTEN” D D
The only people who don’t like Deanna Durbin, it seems to me, are people who’ve never seen her movies. Possessed of a glorious, bell-like sopranovoice, she was presented to moviegoers of the 1930s in a series of irresistiblecomedies that showcased a fresh, sunny screen personality. Delightful filmslike Three Smart Girls, One Hundred Men and a Girl, and Mad About
Music were said to have saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy; I don’tknow if that’s actually true, but they were enormously successful, and her fanshave remained devoted to her for decades. As to who might have related to the optimistic character she played so often, my friend Eric Schwartz (a prominent entertainment lawyer) recalls, as a teenager, asking his parents, “Who is that girl in the pictures on the wall in Anne’s room?” while on a tour of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. It was, of course, Deanna Durbin.
3 IT WOULD SEEM THAT EVEN DURBIN WANTED DEANNA [AND EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT HOLLYWOODTO BE ”FORGOTTEN”
One of the newer Garland biographies writes that Judy visited Deanna when she was in Europe late in her life. Judy was telling Deanna about all of her concerts and bookings, and Deanna said, “Oh…are you still in that ’s**t business?”
Judy Judy Judy! [faints]
Bob, an interesting read as usual, not sure what your point was though apart from telling the world what a huge Durbin fan you are. I haven’t seen any of her films and to be fair I haven’t seen all of Judy Garland’s movies, a true fan would have seen them all.
I’ve seen all of Elvis Presley’s films, yes it’s true I’ve sat thru all 33 of them, so I suppose that makes me a true fan, Bruce Lee’s too, but the poor bugger died after finishing 4 successful martial arts movies, a 5th was completed 5 years after his death. I haven’t seen all of Charlton ‘Marabunta!’ Heston’s films despite supposedly being a big fan. [cue Bob and Bruce in shocked silence]
JOHN/STEVE/WORK HORSE”
CORRECTION:
My last post should of course have read “I hope that Bruce would NOT argue that his UMR scores
reflect ——today’s population.” Sorry Work Horse if my error implied you are a conceited individual which it is always clear you are not!
HELLO AGAIN JOHN/STEVE/AND WORK HORSE
A FAN’S APPRECIATION OF “FORGOTTEN” DEANNA DURBIN PART TWO
To continue:
(1) I am one of the biggest fans of this site and it is invaluable to me but I hope that Bruce would argue that his UMR scores reflect the tastes, opinions and concerns of today’s entire world population. It is open to question how much ice ANY star of long ago truly matters to today’s man in the street. When it published the list of its perceptions of the 100 most important people of the last century the likes of and Sinatra was included as a singer, Lucille Ball as a TV icon and Bruce Lee as a novelty cult figure otherwise the only serious mainstream movie stars in the 100 from the entire 20th Century were Chaplin, Monroe and Brando (in that ranking order with Sinatra coming after Chaplin).
(2) I am not arguing that the Time conclusions were definitive and certainly I would have loved my other idols such as Crawford, Peck, the Duke and Jimmy Stewart to have been ranked somewhere in it and I can think of other movie legends who probably had just as good a claim for being considered but given that opinion polls in the last couple of years have utterly failed to predict a Conservative overall majority in the 2015 British General Election, the winning side in the 2016 British European Referendum, and the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, can we be totally confident that those old Gallup polls and other sources you keep quoting to us have accurately gauged sentiments on a large scale about long-dead stars who were fashionable mainly in the first half of the last century?
(3) Certainly on this site I have previously mentioned a survey in which 50% of US university students questioned didn’t know who Clark Gable was. Consistency might dictate that that survey be taken as seriously as any of YOUR revered Gallup polls and if it was any way accurate then it would suggest that today Durbin isn’t the only “forgotten” star from yesteryear as the particular survey I quote was taken 30 YEARS AGO.
(4) Perhaps it is different in some parallel universe from which I have been excluded, or that in areas where you live there is a unique breed of movie connoisseurs that I have never encountered but travelling around Northern Ireland I never spot large queues forming at cinemas whose marquees advertise the films of for example Myrna Loy. “Frankly my dear” John do you really think that worldwide masses of people really “give a d**n” about again for example some actress who played foil to William Powell and Clark Gable away 70 years ago? Accordingly my own view is that the degree to which Deanna may be forgotten and others remembered is highly relative in many respects and is indeed overall negligible. “The past is a foreign Country: they do things differently there.” [L P Hartley ‘The Go Between’]