Deborah Kerr
Deborah Jane Trimmer[1] CBE (30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007), known professionally as Deborah Kerr (/kɑːr/), was a Scottish film, theatre and television actress. Kerr was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and holds the record for an actress most nominated in the lead actress category without winning.
Deborah Kerr | |
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 Kerr in 1973, by Allan Warren | |
| Born | Deborah Jane Trimmer[1] 30 September 1921 7 St James Terrace, Hillhead, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland |
| Died | 16 October 2007 (aged 86) Botesdale, Suffolk, England |
| Resting place | Alfold Cemetery, Alfold, near Guildford, Surrey, England |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1940–1986 |
| Known for | The King and I An Affair to Remember From Here to Eternity Tea and Sympathy Separate Tables Black Narcissus The Innocents The Sundowners |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Lex Shrapnel (grandson) |
During her international film career, she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Anna Leonowens in the musical film The King and I (1956). As well as The King and I, her films include: An Affair to Remember (1957), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1947), From Here to Eternity (1953), Tea and Sympathy (1956), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Separate Tables (1958), The Innocents (1961), The Sundowners (1960), The Grass is Greener (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1964).
In 1994, however, having already received honorary awards from the Cannes Film Festival and BAFTA, Kerr received an Academy Honorary Award with a citation recognising her as "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance".[2]
Early life
Deborah Jane Trimmer[1] was born on 30 September 1921 in Hillhead, Glasgow,[3] the only daughter of Kathleen Rose (née Smale) and Capt. Arthur Charles Kerr Trimmer, a World War I veteran who lost a leg at the Battle of the Somme and later became a naval architect and civil engineer. Trimmer and Smale wed, both aged 28, on August 21, 1919 in Smale's hometown of Lydney, Gloucestershire.[4][5]
Young Deborah spent the first three years of her life in the nearby town of Helensburgh, where her parents lived with Deborah's grandparents in a house on West King Street. Kerr had a younger brother, Edmund ("Teddy"), who became a journalist. He was killed in a road rage incident in 2004.[6][7]
Kerr was educated at the independent Northumberland House School, Henleaze in Bristol, and at Rossholme School, Weston-super-Mare. Kerr originally trained as a ballet dancer, first appearing on stage at Sadler's Wells in 1938. After changing careers, she soon found success as an actress. Her first acting teacher was her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who worked at a drama school in Bristol run by Lally Cuthbert Hicks.[8][9] She adopted the name Deborah Kerr on becoming a film actress ("Kerr" was a family name going back to the maternal grandmother of her grandfather Arthur Kerr Trimmer).[10]
Career
Theatre career
Kerr's first stage appearance was at Weston-super-Mare in 1937, as "Harlequin" in the mime play Harlequin and Columbine. She then went to the Sadler's Wells ballet school and in 1938 made her début in the corps de ballet in Prometheus. After various walk-on parts in Shakespeare productions at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London, she joined the Oxford Playhouse repertory company in 1940, playing, inter alia, "Margaret" in Dear Brutus and "Patty Moss" in The Two Bouquets.[8]
In 1943, aged 21, Kerr made her West End début as "Ellie Dunn" in a revival of Heartbreak House at the Cambridge Theatre, stealing attention from stalwarts such as Edith Evans and Isabel Jeans. "She has the rare gift", wrote critic Beverley Baxter, "of thinking her lines, not merely remembering them. The process of development from a romantic, silly girl to a hard, disillusioned woman in three hours was moving and convincing".[8]
Kerr returned to the London stage 29 years later, in many productions including the old-fashioned, The Day After the Fair (Lyric, 1972), a Peter Ustinov comedy, Overheard (Haymarket, 1981) and a revival of Emlyn Williams's The Corn is Green.[8] After her first London success in 1943, she toured England and Scotland in Heartbreak House.
Near the end of the Second World War, she also toured Holland, France, and Belgium for ENSA as "Mrs Manningham" in Angel Street, and Britain (with Stewart Granger) in Gaslight.
Having established herself as a film actress in the meantime, she made her Broadway debut in 1953, appearing in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Kerr repeated her role along with her stage partner John Kerr (no relation) in Vincente Minnelli's film adaptation of the drama. In 1955, Kerr won the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago during a national tour of the play. After her Broadway début in 1953, she toured the United States with Tea and Sympathy. In 1975, she returned to Broadway, creating the role of Nancy in Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape.
In 1977, she came back to the West End, playing the title role in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida.
The theatre, despite her success in films, was always to remain Kerr's first love, even though going on stage filled her with trepidation:
I do it because it's exactly like dressing up for the grown ups. I don't mean to belittle acting but I'm like a child when I'm out there performing—shocking the grownups, enchanting them, making them laugh or cry. It's an unbelievable terror, a kind of masochistic madness. The older you get, the easier it should be but it isn't.[8]
Film career
Kerr's first film role was in the British production Contraband in 1940, aged 18 or 19, but her scenes were edited out. With her next two British films — Major Barbara and Love on the Dole (both 1941) — her screen future seemed assured and her performance, said James Agate of Love on the Dole, "is not within a mile of Wendy Hiller's in the theatre, but it is a charming piece of work by a very pretty and promising beginner, so pretty and so promising that there is the usual yapping about a new star".[8]
She went on to make Hatter's Castle (1942), in which she starred opposite Robert Newton and James Mason, and then played a Norwegian resistance fighter in The Day Will Dawn (1942). She was an immediate hit with the public: An American film trade paper reported in 1942 that she was the most popular British actress with Americans.[11]
In 1943, Kerr played three women in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. During the filming, according to Powell's autobiography, Powell and she became lovers:[12] "I realised that Deborah was both the ideal and the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for".[12] Kerr made clear that her surname should be pronounced the same as "car". To avoid confusion over pronunciation, Louis B. Mayer of MGM billed her as "Kerr rhymes with Star!"[13]
Although the British Army refused to co-operate with the producers— and Winston Churchill thought the film would ruin wartime morale — Colonel Blimp confounded critics when it proved to be an artistic and commercial success.[12] Powell hoped to reunite Kerr and lead actor Roger Livesey in his next film, A Canterbury Tale (1944), but her agent had sold her contract to MGM. According to Powell, his affair with Kerr ended when she made it clear to him that she would accept an offer to go to Hollywood if one were made.[12]
Her role as a troubled nun in the Powell and Pressburger production of Black Narcissus in 1947 did indeed bring her to the attention of Hollywood producers. The film was a hit in the US, as well as the UK, and Kerr won the New York Film Critics' Award as Actress of the Year. British exhibitors voted her the eighth-most popular local star at the box office.[14] Soon she received the first of her Oscar nominations for Edward, My Son, a 1949 drama set in England that co-starred Spencer Tracy.
In Hollywood, Kerr's British accent and manner led to a succession of roles portraying refined, reserved, and "proper" English ladies. Kerr, nevertheless, used any opportunity to discard her cool exterior. She starred in the 1950 adventure film King Solomon's Mines, shot on location in Africa with Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson. This was immediately followed by her appearance in the religious epic Quo Vadis (1951), shot at Cinecittà in Rome, in which she played the indomitable Lygia, a first-century Christian. She then played Princess Flavia in a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda (1952).
In 1953, Kerr "showed her theatrical mettle" as Portia in Joseph Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar.[8] She then departed from typecasting with a performance that brought out her sensuality, as "Karen Holmes", the embittered military wife in Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity (1953), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The American Film Institute acknowledged the iconic status of the scene from that film in which Burt Lancaster and she romped illicitly and passionately amidst crashing waves on a Hawaiian beach. The organisation ranked it 20th in its list of the 100 most romantic films of all time.[15]
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Thereafter, Kerr's career choices would make her known in Hollywood for her versatility as an actress.[13][1] She played the repressed wife in The End of the Affair (1955), with Van Johnson; a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) opposite her long-time friend Robert Mitchum; a mama's girl in Separate Tables (1958) opposite David Niven; and a governess in both The Chalk Garden (1964) and The Innocents (1961) where she plays a governess tormented by apparitions. She also portrayed an earthy Australian sheep-herder's wife in The Sundowners (1960) and appeared as lustful and beautiful screen enchantresses in both Beloved Infidel (1959) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958).
Among her most famous roles were Anna Leonowens in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I (1956); and opposite Cary Grant as his shipboard romantic interest Terry McKay in the bittersweet love story An Affair to Remember (1957). She reunited with Grant and Mitchum for a sophisticated comedy, The Grass Is Greener (1960), and then joined Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in a love triangle for a romantic comedy, Marriage on the Rocks (1965). In 1965, the producers of Carry On Screaming! offered her a fee comparable to that paid to the rest of the cast combined, but she turned it down in favor of appearing in an aborted stage version of Flowers for Algernon.
In 1967, Kerr appeared in the comedy Casino Royale, achieving the distinction of being, at 46, the oldest "Bond Girl" in any James Bond film, until Monica Bellucci, at the age of 50, in Spectre (2015).
In 1969, facing the pressure of competition from younger, upcoming actresses made her agree to appear nude in John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths, the only nude scene in her career. Concern about the parts being offered to her, as well as the increasing amount of nudity included in films, led her to abandon the medium at the end of the 1960s in favour of television and theatre work.[10]
Television
Kerr experienced a career resurgence on television in the early 1980s when she played the role of the nurse (played by Elsa Lanchester in the 1957 film of the same name) in Witness for the Prosecution (1982 film), opposite Sir Ralph Richardson.
Later, Kerr rejoined old screen partner Mitchum in Reunion at Fairborough. She also took on the role of the older Emma Harte, a tycoon, in the adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance. For this performance, Kerr was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Personal life
Kerr's first marriage was to Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley RAF on 29 November 1945. They had two daughters, Melanie Jane (born 27 December 1947) and Francesca Ann (born 20 December 1951 and subsequently married to the actor John Shrapnel). The marriage was troubled, owing to Bartley's jealousy of his wife's fame and financial success,[10] and because her career often took her away from home. They divorced in 1959.
Her second marriage was to author Peter Viertel on 23 July 1960. In marrying Viertel, she became stepmother to Viertel's daughter, Christine Viertel. Although she long resided in Klosters, Switzerland and Marbella, Spain, Kerr moved back to Britain to be closer to her own children as her health began to deteriorate. Her husband, however, continued to live in Marbella.[16]
Stewart Granger claimed in his autobiography that she had approached him romantically in the back of his chauffeur-driven car at the time he was making Caesar and Cleopatra.[17] Although at the time he was married to Elspeth March, he states that he and Kerr went on to have an affair.[18] When asked about this revelation, Kerr's response was, "What a gallant man he is."[19]
Death
Deborah Kerr died aged 86 on 16 October 2007 at Botesdale, a village in the county of Suffolk, England, from the effects of Parkinson's disease.[20][21][22] Less than three weeks later on 4 November, her husband Peter Viertel died of cancer.[23]
At the time of Viertel's death, director Michael Scheingraber was filming the documentary Peter Viertel: Between the Lines, which includes reminiscences concerning Kerr and the Academy Awards.[24] Kerr is buried in Alfold Cemetery, Alfold, Surrey.
Work
Film
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1963 | ITV Play of the Week | Moira | Episode: Three Roads to Rome |
| 1982 | BBC2 Playhouse | Carlotta Gray | Episode: A Song at Twilight |
| 1982 | Witness for the Prosecution | Nurse Plimsoll | Television Movie |
| 1984 | A Woman of Substance | Emma Harte | Miniseries |
| 1985 | Reunion at Fairborough | Sally Wells Grant | Television Movie |
| 1986 | Annie and Debbie | Ann | Television Movie |
| 1986 | Hold the Dream | Emma Harte | Miniseries |
Theatre
| Year | Title | Role | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | Tea and Sympathy | Laura Reynolds | Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway |
| 1973-74 | The Day After the Fair | Edith | National Tour |
| 1975 | Seascape | Nancy | Shubert Theatre, Broadway |
Radio
| Year | Program | Episode/Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1944 | A Date with Nurse Dugdale | BBC Home Service, 19 May 1944. Guest star role in the penultimate episode. |
| 1952 | Lux Radio Theatre | King Solomon's Mines[26] |
| 1952 | Hallmark Playhouse | The Pleasant Lea[27] |
| 1952 | Hollywood Sound Stage | Michael and Mary[28] |
| 1952 | Suspense | The Colonel's Lady[29] |
| 1952 | Hollywood Star Playhouse | Companion Wanted[28] |
Awards and nominations
| Year | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Best Actress | Edward, My Son | Nominated |
| 1954 | From Here to Eternity | Nominated | |
| 1957 | The King and I | Nominated | |
| 1958 | Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison | Nominated | |
| 1959 | Separate Tables | Nominated | |
| 1961 | The Sundowners | Nominated | |
| 1994 | Honorary Oscar | -- | Won |
She is tied with Thelma Ritter and Amy Adams as the actresses with the second most nominations without winning, surpassed only by Glenn Close, who has been nominated seven times without winning.
| Year | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1956 | Best British Actress | The End of the Affair | Nominated |
| 1958 | Tea and Sympathy | Nominated | |
| 1962 | The Sundowners | Nominated | |
| 1965 | The Chalk Garden | Nominated | |
| 1991 | Special Award | -- | Won |
Primetime Emmy Awards
| Year | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Outstanding Supporting Actress - Limited Series | A Woman of Substance | Nominated |
| Year | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | Edward, My Son | Nominated |
| 1957 | Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy | The King and I | Won |
| 1958 | Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison | Nominated |
| 1959 | Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | Separate Tables | Nominated |
| Henrietta Award (World Film Favorite) | -- | Won | |
| Year | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | Best Actress | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Love on the Dole | Nominated |
| 1947 | Black Narcissus, I See a Dark Stranger | Won | |
| 1956 | The King and I, Tea and Sympathy | Nominated | |
| 1957 | Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison | Won | |
| 1960 | The Sundowners | Won | |
Honours
Deborah Kerr was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1998, but was unable to accept the honour in person because of ill health.[30] She was also honoured in Hollywood, where she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1709 Vine Street for her contributions to the motion picture industry.
In 1994, Glenn Close presented Kerr with the Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement with a citation recognising her as "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance".[31]
Kerr won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy" for The King and I in 1957 and a Henrietta Award for "World Film Favorite – Female". She was the first performer to win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Best Actress" three times (1947, 1957 and 1960).
Although she never won a BAFTA, Oscar or Cannes Film Festival award in a competitive category, all three organisations gave Kerr honorary awards: a Cannes Film Festival Tribute in 1984;[32] a BAFTA Special Award in 1991;[8] and an Academy Honorary Award in 1994.[2]
In September and October 2010, Josephine Botting of the British Film Institute curated the "Deborah Kerr Season", which included around twenty of her feature films and an exhibition of posters, memorabilia and personal items loaned by her family.
References
- Leadbetter, Russell (20 January 2015). "The King and I actress Deborah Kerr is Glasgow's star - and there is a birth certificate to prove it". Glasgow Times. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- "British actress Kerr dies at 86". BBC News. 18 October 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2010.
- "Deborah Kerr profile". The Herald. Glasgow. Archived from the original on 21 October 2007. Retrieved 19 October 2007.
- Goldman, Lawrence (7 March 2013). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2005-2008. Oxford: Oxford Univ Press. p. 642. ISBN 978-0199671540.
- "Deborah Kerr biography (1921–2007)". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 29 October 2007.
- "'Road rage' killer's appeal win". BBC News. 30 March 2006.
- "Killer's term cut". Worcester News. 5 April 2006. Archived from the original on 22 July 2009.
- "Obituaries: Deborah Kerr". The Daily Telegraph. London. 19 October 2007. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- Sater, Richard; Pardi, Robert (2000). "Deborah Kerr". International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers. Detroit: St. James Press. ISBN 978-1558624498. Archived from the original on 20 October 2007.
- Braun, Eric. Deborah Kerr. St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-18895-1.
- "FILM NOTES". The West Australian. Perth: National Library of Australia. 7 December 1945. p. 13. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
- Powell, Michael (2000). A Life in Movies (reprint ed.). Faber. ISBN 978-0571204311.
- Martin, Douglas (19 October 2007). "Deborah Kerr, Actress Known for Genteel Grace and a Sexy Beach Kiss, Dies at 86". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 October 2007.
- 'Bing's Lucky Number: Pa Crosby Dons 4th B.O. Crown', The Washington Post 3 January 1948: p. 12.
- "AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions". American Film Institute. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
- "Actress Deborah Kerr Dies at 86". CBS News. 18 October 2007. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- Granger, Stewart (1981). Sparks Fly Upward. Harper Collins. pp. 88–91. ISBN 978-0399126741.
- "Stewart Granger". Lenin Imports. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
- Vallance, Tom (17 August 1993). "Obituary: Stewart Granger". The Independent. London.
- Clark, Mike (18 October 2007). "Actress Deborah Kerr dies at age 86". USA Today.
- "From Here to Eternity actress Kerr dies." Archived 30 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine CNN. 18 October 2007
- "Actress Deborah Kerr has died". Detroit Free Press. Associated Press. 18 October 2007. Archived from the original on 20 October 2007. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
- "Peter Viertel, 86, Writer". Variety. 7 November 2007. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- "Between The Lines A film by Michael Scheingraber". eeweems.com. Retrieved 10 May 2010.
- "Casino Royale is too much for one James Bond". 007 Magazine. No. 40. July 2017.
- Kirby, Walter (30 November 1952). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 48. Retrieved 14 June 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- Kirby, Walter (9 March 1952). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 42. Retrieved 23 May 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- Kirby, Walter (16 March 1952). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 44. Retrieved 23 May 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- Kirby, Walter (30 March 1952). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 46. Retrieved 18 May 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- Baxter, Brian (18 October 2007). "Deborah Kerr" (obituary). The Guardian. London. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- White, Jim (2 February 2018). "Biggest Snubs in Academy Awards History". Observer. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
- "Pierre Tchernia présentateur du palmares du festival de Cannes" [Pierre Tchernia, presenter of the Cannes Festival palmares] (in French). Festival International de Cannes. 23 May 1984. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
Bibliography
- Braun, Eric. Deborah Kerr. St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-18895-1.
- Capua, Michelangelo. Deborah Kerr. A Biography. McFarland, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7864-5882-0.
- Street, Sarah. Deborah Kerr. British Film Institute, 2018. ISBN 978-1844576753.
- Powell, Michael. A Life in Movies. Heinemann, 1986. ISBN 0-434-59945-X.
- Andrew, Penelope. "Deborah Kerr: An Actress in Search of an Author". Bright Lights Film Journal, May 2011, Issue #72. Deborah Kerr: An Actress in Search of an Author, (c) Penelope Andrew, 2011.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Deborah Kerr. |
- Deborah Kerr at the Internet Broadway Database
- Deborah Kerr on IMDb
- Deborah Kerr at the TCM Movie Database
- Deborah Kerr at the BFI's Screenonline
- Deborah Kerr "Rhymes with Star" tribute site
- Deborah Kerr at Helensburgh Heroes.
- The Enigma of Deborah Kerr, ephemera, media files and essay at cinemagraphe.com.
- "From Kerr To Eternity", 55th Sydney Film Festival Deborah Kerr retrospective (2008).
- Deborah Kerr Rhymes With Star, and What a Star She Was: She Deserves to be Remembered, Too, Huffington Post, 7 April 2008.
- Deborah Kerr tribute by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, whose script for his film Broken Embraces was influenced by his reflections on her at the time of her death.
- Extensive collection of press articles from the 1940s to 2000s, photo galleries and other information at deborahkerr.es (April 2009).
- Photographs and literature at virtual-history.com.
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