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.
This page has been updated.
Always good to see one of my idols getting ongoing Cogerson attention if just to prove that Myrna Loy wasn’t the only actress around in the classic era that the Work Horse feels deserves his attention!
Actually it was worthwhile revisiting this page anyway to refresh my memory on Deanna’s grosses. I am reminded that her final Cogerson 100 million dollars barrier smasher was as early as 1944 and that the 6 movies that she made after that from 1945-1948 inclusive suffered declining revenues.
Also while her career lasted a dozen years from 1936-1948 it never enjoyed a complete CALRNDAR decade such as throughout the 1940s for example.
However whilst she made only 21 movies overall she was the stand-alone top-billed star in 20 of them getting billed above such prestigious actors as Charles Laughton and the great Eugene Kelly as Bruce faithfully records above.
Mario Lanza wanted her to come out of retirement to act and sing with him in a movie but obviously she refused as Bruce has indicated above. During her years active she recorded some 50 songs.
She was the best paid female star in Hollywood for a few years and in fact complained “I am the highest paid star with the worst material. I can’t go on playing Little Miss Fix it forever.”
Anyway this page makeover is “Voted Up”
Hey Bob…glad you like the updated Deanna page. There is an excellent Durbin Facebook Fan Page you might want to join….they share lots of great information and photos. https://www.facebook.com/groups/deannadurbindevotees
Speaking of box office hits….she actually picked up an additional $100 million movie since writing the page originally…as the cost of tickets went up….that put Three Smart Girls over that threshold.
Thanks for the vote up.
HI O Great One! Thanks for the Facebook link about Deanna. I propose to soon start updating my own database with any changes in your figures arising from recent ticket price increases.
Among the changes I expect to find apart from Deanna’s $100 million are 1/a $BILLION increase in the Thin Woman’s grosses 2/ Split on Bruce Willis’ Cogerson page has now outgrossed GWTW!
At times Deanna wasn’t completely the sweet “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” perfect little lady that her movies probably fooled guys like you into thinking she invariably was.
She could be self-opiniated on subjects as diverse as politics and sex and indeed seemed to like talking a lot about sex [though the Bible recommends we ALL should talk frequently about the latter!].
Also she could on occasion be insensitive to the feelings of even her closest friends. I have mentioned how following her retirement she would often meet up with Judy Garland on special visits to Hollywood.
According to Judy, on one occasion when Judy told her about a new TV project that Garland had signed up for Deanna retorted “What! You’re not still in that **** business are you?”
Anyway as always great chatting to you. Keep safe.
Hey Bob…thanks for the stories on DD…..I can not believe so many years passed since I first did this page. So sugar and spice and everything nice is not the best way to describe her….good line from her to Judy. As for the Facebook Durbin page….they powered this page to the top of the trending list. Have an awesome day.
Esse coraçãozinho vermelho, é para a Deanna, meu ídolo da infância!!!
Hey esirre…..glad you found our page on your “redhead” childhood hero. Thanks for the feedback!.
Ei esirre….. que bom que você encontrou nossa página sobre seu herói de infância “ruivo”. Obrigado pelo feedback!.
BRUCE “Cotten messing about with [my] girl Deanna” 1 According to a Cotten biographer the police disturbed Deanna and Joe romancing in Joe’s vehicle in a deserted late night car park and the cops moved them on. As John has his knife into Deanna I maybe shouldn’t be revealing things like that but it must be remembered that in those times Deanna was very young and had gone through the emotional turmoil of two unhappy and failed marriages.
2 IF the reports of the Cotten romance ARE true I can see how a much older and probably kind “father figure” like Joe was possibly an invaluable crutch to Deanna in those turbulent times and my take on the matter is that her long 50 year marriage to Charles David when she became a more mature young woman demonstrates that her true instinctive priorities were probably to be just a regular wife and mother and she gave up fame and further fortune to fulfil that long-term role when other Hollywood relationships were continually falling apart. Her voice was still in its prime when she forsook Hollywood and as you mention on your Durbin page she subsequently rejected numerous offers to do more movies. Lanza in particular apparently pressed her hard to co-star with him and MGM offered to Durbin first the ultimate Kathryn Grayson role in Kiss Me Kate. Durbin was reportedly also Alan Jay Lerner’s first choice to play Eliza Doolittle in his My Fair Lady production on Broadway in 1956 but again she spurned the offer.
3 I think that a lot of very young women were put under a considerable strain by the Hollywood system before they could best cope with it all and to identify a pattern you just have to look at how MGM messed up poor Judy. Joe Yule Jr said he would never forgive MGM for what they did to Garland and Bogart’s 1950 In a Lonely Place is considered by film historian to be the definitive movie to show how ruthless the Hollywood system could be and not one for the faint-hearted but thankfully my Deanna was an ultimate survivor.
Hi – Just wanted to chime in on Deanna and Joseph Cotton being caught in the car together – it’s very old news, so old it’s new again – my Mother was the same age as Deanna and she brought it up over the years, whenever watching “Her’s To Hold” that she had read, at the time it happened, that they were caught together “necking”.
I wrote about this topic befor in a post of 13 May 2017.
Joe Cotton [whom pal Orson Welles called America’s Greatest actor at that time – Sorry Al Leach!] was in fact a bit of a “ladies man” and Joe and his wife had agreed what’s called an “open marriage”.
Deanna’s hair stylist who always accompanied her on movie sets testified that she had never seen Deanna as infatuated with another male co-star as she displayed in her scenes with Joe in the apparently aptly-named Hers to Hold in 1943.
The cop who caught the talented pair in that compromising situation that Susan describes in her post said in a later interview that he could have charged them with an offence as the vehicle was stationed in an [albeit deserted] PUBLIC car park but he siimply cautioned them and ordered them to move on.
At the time of the Cotton romance Deanna was between marriages having divorced her first husband in 1941 when she was just around 20 years of age; and when she married her second husband Felix Jackson a German-born American screenwriter and producer it was unfortunately a SHOTGUN affair, otherwise in those intolerant and hypocritical time her career would have been destroyed.
So contrary to her screen persona of the innocent “peaches and cream” do-gooder young girl who runs around solving everyone else’s problems Deanna led quite an an adult life off-screen; so guys like The Work Horse shouldn’t beleive everything they see in a movie or are told by the likes of Joel Hirschhorn because in the REAL world as the saying goes “boys will be boys and girls will be girls”.
Happily ultimately Deanna found happiness with one man: Frenchman Charles Henri David who directed her in 1945’s Lady on a Train and who had been an assistant-producer of the 1942 classic The Jungle Book; and after her retirement they lived contentedly as man and wife on his family farm near Paris for half a century until his death when he was 93 – a good innings for a marriage of two movie celebs in those days which produced a daughter by the pair, Jessica.
Therefore in later life Deanna was able to put behind her the exuberance of youth and settle down as a very mature woman. She would come back to Hollywood from time to time for short visits, particuularly to see her old pal Judy Garland.
On one such visit around 1954 she was at a dinner party which also included another of my great idols Marlon Brando and the pair happily signed autographs for other guests.
One guest had a plaster caste on her leg at the time, and for a while there was a plaster caste in the public domain with the names of Brando Durbin signed on it – I wonder who got Top billing! For some reason which I’ve never fathomed her nickname was “The Mortgage Lifter” according to IMDB.
Good stuff Bob……pretty sure Susan is from that Facebook website I mentioned on a previous post. Gotta love having people to talk “Durbin” with. Her knowledge is so much more than mine…lol.
Hey Susan….thanks for stopping by and commenting on our Durbin page. Interesting about Cotton and Durbin “necking”…..I can imagine that being big news back then….one can only imagine how big it would be in this era of celebrity news. Once again, thanks for stopping by.
JOHN: To summarise and clarify.
1 You are fond of quoting Gallup polls and suchlike to us and a survey some 30 years ago found that 50% of US University students didn’t know who Gable was. Logic would suggest that some 3 decades later much lesser numbers might be interested in him or are even aware of him and he was one of the very greatest so it probably follows that other stars from yesteryear who were not as big as he was will have slipped further into public oblivion than Clark may have. So why single out Durbin?
2 I think it is far-fetched to imagine that masses of people worldwide today place great value on ANY celebrity from years ago. The great ones like Gable will still mean a lot to film buffs and historians and in that respect Leonard Maltin who one assumes knows something about the film industry has said as recent as 2013 that Durbin still has the support of legions of fans throughout the world. Maltin also highlighted the fact that continuously tourists and students of history who visit the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam will be reminded of Durbin whose photos are a central part of the Frank memorabilia in that house.
3 In short your statement that Deanna is “forgotten” seems so sweeping that it can probably be regarded a hyperbolic whereas it is possible that you overestimate the degree to which the global man in the street cares about other performers of long ago. Certainly there will likely be nowhere the interest in those celebs that there was in their heyday as “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
4 Most important to me is that even if others forget her Deanna will always have a place in my affections along with Widmark, Brando, Stewart, Laddie, Peck, Morgan Freeman, Joan, Doris and the Duke. She is among those whom I consider are some of the very greatest. So speak for yourself John –
SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
[William Wordsworth]
The Bob, lovely, well done. with regards, just another bob.
good to hear from you bob cox
HI BOB: Good to get another post from you.
I am pleased you found my comments about Deanna interesting. I have long mentioned that she is one of my all-time 5 fave actresses, the other 4 being Joan Crawford, Doris Day, Julia Roberts and Cam Diaz.
Bruce has been givng Myrna Loy the hard-sell on this site for ages now but so far I am one of the less-impressional guys who haven’t bitten!
The Work Horse’s standards may actually be well below mine: heck he seems to think that Sylvester Stallone can act whereas I wouldn’t have Sly as a patron let alone up there on the screen!
Anyway I hope that you have settled again after the rough patch you went through a while ago with the sad deaths of your parents. Always fun to hear from you.
JOHN
If our wild wish to see her and hear her,
To become entranced by her songs yet again,
If this be forgetting you’re right John
And we have forgotten her then.
Hey Bob….I like it.