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. (more…)