Deborah Kerr
Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer, CBE (30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007) was a Scottish stage, television and film actress. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance in Tea and Sympathy, which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture, The King and I, and she was also the recipient of honorary Academy, BAFTA and Cannes Film Festival awards.
She was nominated six times for an Academy Award as Best Actress but never won. In 1994, however, she was cited by the Motion Picture Academy for a film career that always represented "Perfection, Discipline and Elegance". Amongst her most famous films were: The King and I, An Affair to Remember, From Here to Eternity, Heaven Knows, Mr Allison and Separate Tables.
Although the Scottish pronunciation of her surname is closer to a phonetic reading of the name(), when she was being promoted as a Hollywood actress it was made clear that her surname should be pronounced the same as "car". In order to avoid confusion over pronunciation, Louis B. Mayer of MGM decided to bill her as "Kerr rhymes with Star!
Early life
Kerr was born Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer in Glasgow, Scotland, the eldest child and only daughter of Kathleen Rose (née Smale) and Capt. Arthur Charles Kerr-Trimmer, a World War I veteran pilot who later became a naval architect and civil engineer. She was, however, raised in the nearby town of Helensburgh, where her parents lived at the time of her birth. Kerr had a younger brother, Edward (a.k.a. Teddy), who became a journalist and died in a road-rage incident in 2004.She 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 ran the Hicks-Smale Drama School in Bristol.
Career
Films
Her debut was in the British film Contraband in 1940 but her scenes were left on the cutting room floor. She followed that with a series of other films, including Hatter's Castle (1942), in which she starred opposite Robert Newton and James Mason. The following year, she played the triple role of the hero's loves in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. During the filming, according to Powell's autobiography, she and Powell became lovers.
I realised, said Powell, that Deborah was both the ideal and the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for.
Although Winston Churchill thought it would ruin wartime morale, and the British Army refused to extend co-operation with the producers, the film confounded critics by proving to be an artistic and commercial triumph. Powell had hoped to reunite Kerr and Roger Livesey, who had played the title character, 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 was made.
It was her role as a troubled nun in Black Narcissus in 1947 which brought 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. In Hollywood, her British accent and manners led to a succession of roles portraying a refined, reserved, and proper English lady. Nevertheless, Kerr frequently used any opportunity to discard her cool exterior. In the 1950 adventure film, King Solomon's Mines, shot on location in Africa with Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson, she impressed audiences with a sexuality and an emotional vulnerability that brought new dimensions to a male-oriented action film. This was immediately followed by her appearance in the 1951 religious epic Quo Vadis?, in which she played the indomitable Lygia, a first century Christian.
Kerr also departed from typecasting with a performance that brought out her sensuality, as Karen in 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 she and Burt Lancaster make love on a Hawaii beach amidst the crashing waves. The organisation named it one of "AFI's top 100 Most Romantic Films" of all time.
From then on, Kerr's career choices would make her known in Hollywood for her versatility as an actress,. She portrayed a nun (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison), a mama's girl (Separate Tables), and a governess (The Chalk Garden), but she also portrayed an earthy Australian sheep-herder's wife (The Sundowners) and lustful and beautiful screen enchantresses (Beloved Infidel, Bonjour tristesse). She also starred in comedies (The Grass is Greener).
Among her most famous roles are Anna Leonowens in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, and opposite Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember. In 1966, 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 favour of appearing in an aborted stage version of Flowers for Algernon. In 1967, at the age of 46, she starred in Casino Royale, achieving the distinction of being the oldest Bond Girl in any James Bond film.
In 1969, 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 Kerr's career. Concern about the parts being offered to her, as well as the increasing amount of nudity in films in general, led her to abandon film work at the end of the 1960s in favour of television and theatre work.
Theatre
As a stage actress, Deborah Kerr made her Broadway debut in 1953 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. In 1975, she returned to Broadway, originating the role of Nancy in Edward Albee's Pulitzer-winning play Seascape.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.
Television
Deborah Kerr experienced a career resurgence in the early 1980s on television, when she played the role of the nurse (played by Elsa Lanchester in the 1957 film version) in Witness for the Prosecution. Later, Kerr re-teamed with screen partner Robert Mitchum in Reunion at Fairborough. This period also saw Kerr take on the role as the older version of the female tycoon, Emma Harte, 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 Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley on 29 November 1945. They had two daughters, Melanie Jane, born on 27 December 1947, and Francesca Ann, the wife of the actor John Shrapnel. The marriage was troubled, due to Bartley's jealousy of his wife's fame and financial success, and because her career often took her away from home. Kerr and Bartley divorced in 1959.Her second marriage was to the author Peter Viertel on 23 July 1960. In marrying Viertel, she acquired a stepdaughter, Christine Viertel. Although she long resided in Klosters, Switzerland and Marbella, Spain,, she 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. She died from the effects of Parkinson's disease on 16 October 2007 at the age of 86 in the village of Botesdale, Suffolk. Peter Viertel died of cancer on 4 November 2007, only three weeks later. At the time of Viertel's death, Director Michael Scheingraber was filming the documentary "Peter Viertel: Between the Lines" which Scheingraber says will include reminiscences about events concerning Kerr and the American Academy Awards. The film is as yet (2008) unreleased.
Some of Deborah Kerr's leading men have stated in their autobiographies that they had an affair or romantic fling with her. The actor Stewart Granger claimed that Kerr seduced him in the back of a London cab in 1950. Likewise Burt Lancaster claimed that he was romantically involved with her during the filming of From Here to Eternity in 1953. There is no independent corroboration of either actor's claims.
Kerr was a patron of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection (NSCA) from 1992 until the end of her life.
Honours
Deborah Kerr was appointed a Commander of the Order the British Empire in 1998, but was unable to accept the honour in person due to ill health. She was also honoured in Hollywood where, for her contributions to the motion picture industry, she was granted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1709 Vine Street.Although she never won a BAFTA, Oscar or Cannes Film Festival award in a competitive category, all three academies gave her honorary awards:
In 1984, she was awarded a Cannes Film Festival Tribute. In 1991, she received a BAFTA Special Award and in 1994, she received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance".
Award nominations
Deborah Kerr was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress: Edward, My Son (1949), From Here to Eternity (1953), The King and I (1956), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Separate Tables (1958) and The Sundowners (1960). She equalled Thelma Ritter for the distinction of the most nominations for an actress for an acting Academy Award without ever winning, her nominations were all for Best Actress, while Ritter's were all for Best Supporting Actress.She was also nominated four times for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress: The End of the Affair (1955), Tea and Sympathy (1956), The Sundowners (1961) and The Chalk Garden (1964)
She received one Emmy Awards nomination in 1985 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special for A Woman of Substance. She 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 also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama for Edward, My Son (1949), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) and Separate Tables (1958)
Filmography
References
External links
- Deborah Kerr at Helensburgh Heroes
- Obituary, The Times, 19 October 2007
- Obituary, The Independent, 19 October 2007
- Deborah Kerr - Obituary and Memorial
- Memorial Page for Deborah Kerr on FindaGrave
- Deborah Kerr - Condolence book (Hungarian)
- Obituary Cinema2000 (in Portuguese)
- essay The Enigma of Deborah Kerr - Ephemera, media files and an essay about Ms. Kerr
- Deborah Kerr - What Lies Beneath (essay/appreciation)
- 55th Sydney Film Festival Deborah Kerr Retrospective ("From Kerr To Eternity" 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 "Broken Embraces" script was influenced by his reflections of the great international star at the time of her death (blogpedroalmodóvar, 25 March 2008)
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Last updated on Monday October 06, 2008 at 10:44:23 PDT (GMT -0700)
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