Deanna Durbin and the Holocaust

There was a time when Hollywood and Hollywood stars represented hope and freedom.

Universal’s top star in the 1940s was Deanna Durbin (b.1921 – ) who starred in a series of hugely popular and successful light musical comedies. Durbin, a lyric soprano, was paid $400,000 per film, and she saved the troubled studio from a looming bankruptcy.

Deanna Durbin, Anne Frank’s favorite movie star.

She was, like Judy Garland, a Hollywood creation and a world-wide phenomenon.

Deeply unhappy in the rigid studio system and locked into an image–the cheerful little girl next door–that, increasingly felt alien as she matured, Durbin married producer Charles David, her third marriage, and retired from the movies in 1949.

Deanna Durbin and her family moved to Neauphle-le-Chateau, a small village in rural France, where she continues to fiercely guard her privacy.

In 1980, she sent a current photo of herself to Life Magazine, with a note explaining that she was upset at the stories of being overweight.

Since her retirement, Durbin granted only one interview in 1983, to film historian David Shipman.

Unlike Garbo, who famously strolled the streets of New York, Durbin truly does want to be alone in order to lead a normal life.

While she was active 1936-1948, Durbin’s fan club was the largest in the world.

Anne Frank, diarist, Hollywood fan, and victim of Nazi genocide.

Winston Churchill adored her movies. And Deanna Durbin was Anne Frank’s favorite Hollywood star.

The young Jewish girl pasted Durbin’s picture to her bedroom wall in the Achterhuis where the Frank family hid during World War II. The photo can still be seen there today.

When I visited the Frank house, Durbin’s picture brought tears to my eyes. Of all the grim images of the Holocaust, the studio glamour shot of Deanna Durbin has seared itself into my memory in a unique manner. It’s American goodness and optimism set against the darkening universe of European Jew-hatred and nihilism.

Perhaps I’m cynical, but I do not believe there is a single Hollywood star who offers the hope of freedom to anyone, much less to victims of oppression or genocide.

No, these days, Hollywood stars cheerfully make pilgrimages to tyrants like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

And Hollywood movies routinely paint America in the most negative light. Movies that surely gladden the hearts of Islamic terrorists everywhere. The latest being Matt Damon in the wretched, dishonest Green Zone, a box office disaster.

The old glamour was, of course, a massive illusion.

But it was an illusion that sustained the American dream and gave hope to millions.

Here’s the 14-year old Durbin in her first starring role singing Il Bacio – Arditi in Three Smart Girls. 1936.

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For an informative and revealing look at Durbin’s brief but radiant career, see Jeanine Basinger’s fine book, The Star Machine.

Copyright Robert J. Avrech