Biographies and LifeStories

Welcome to our Informative Pages
for the lovely Deborah Kerr
On these pages we'll introduce our celebrity
and highlight importaint areas of her life ~ times
and motion picture career ! We are excited that you are
visiting our web site. Our fans and writers are here to provide unique
adventures for all your needs of knowladge and occasion. On this site
you'll find information about our charming film star and, along
with discriptions of our special interests for this lovely lady.
We hope you will find all the information you are looking for about
Scotlands Classic Lass - here in . . .

The Deborah Kerr Fellowship League -
A Foundation for the Performin Arts
( Those Briht Neon Lihts and Film Journals )

Est. 1956


A PICTORIAL GALEXY and Generality - Writings of the LIFE - TIMES and FILM CAREER of Deborah Kerr | Filmography 1940 - 1950s NOTES and FACTS | Filmography 1960 - 1980s NOTES and FACTS | Biographies | JUNGLE Films | News and Gossip in BLOOM | Addle an Addict and Baffle a Buff | Vintage - CINEMA - Classics | COMEDY and ROMANCE Films | Gallery of PHOTOS | COSTUME Films | HIGH and SOCIAL DRAMA Films | CRIME and HORROR Films | RELIGIOUS and MUSICAL Films | Emotion Pictures | OBITUARIES | Legacy of a L A D Y - End of a Legend

L O V E can be P A I N . . . ! Let's talk about those "awful" Hollywood people   
 

 
Star bio:
deborah
kerr
 
Gifted, sensitive British leading actress who, after ballet training and some experience acting in British repertory theater, entered films in 1940 as a frightened Salvation Army worker in the fine, all-star adaptation of the potent Shavian satire, " Major Barbara " in 1940. Although the shy, quiet side would often remain in Deborah's later star persona, she radually acquired a stiffer-upper-lip  as her native land's and later Hollywood's postwar personification of the delicate yet strong, often impassioned English rose.
 
Deborah moved into leads in an adaptation of the controversial novel which was England's equivalent of "The Grapes of Wrath," the touching study of Depression-era poverty, "Love on the Dole" again in 1940.  Although she did well in films including the grim "Hatter's Castle" 1941, it was really Deborah's lovely work in three roles in the splendid Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburer time-spanning saga, "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" 1943, as the various women in the hero's life, that really set her on top. She followed up with several excellent performances in fine films: the mousy wife whose marriage is revitalized when she enters wartime service in "Perfect Strangers" 1945; the Irish spy in the ripping "I See a Dark Stranger" 1946; and especially, a marvelous, award-winning performance as the determined yet fallible Sister Superior who attempts to establish a school and hospital in a remote Himalayan castle in Powell and Pressburger's uniquely unsettling " Black Narcissus " in 1947.
 
With a string of performances like these, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood beckoned the graceful blonde star, and Deborah was soon co-starring opposite Clark Gable in the enjoyable satire of advertising, "The Hucksters" 1947.  In many ways she filled the void Irene Dunne would soon create by leaving films. Gracious, ladylike and smart, Deborah would in fact recreate two Dunne roles: the proper Englishwoman who becomes governess to a potentate's brood in the musicalized version of "Anna and the king of  Siam," "The king and I" 1956; with her singing dubbed; and the heroine prevented from making a crucial rendezvous with her lover in "An Affair to Remember" 1957; based on Irene Dunne's better "Love Affair." Deborah's regal quality suited her for period adventures including "Quo Vadis" 1951 and "The Prisoner of Zenda"1952, and she also ventured into comedy in "Dream Wife" 1953 and "The Grass is Greener" 1961
 
Perhaps the key difference between Deborah and earlier classy, genteel heroines such as Joan Fontaine was that the passions sparking Deborah's characters were often of a more overtly sexual nature. As questions of sex and censorship manifested themselves in the 1950s, Deborah's persona, prim only on the surface, proved ideal ( as did Grace Kelly's ) for suggesting the torrid side of romantic love. One of the most famous images of Deborah's career was that of her straying wife in "From Here to Eternity" 1953 making love on the beach with military officer Burt Lancaster. "The Proud and Profane" 1956 was such a similar film - and role - that it suffered by comparison, but there are similar dimensions in other Kerr roles such as the wife who helps an effeminate collage youth 'prove' his masculinity in "Tea and Sympathy" 1956 and even her nun, trapped on an island with a swarthy soldier, in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" 1956
 
Even if her mother-dominated spinster in "Separate Tables" 1958 was rather overdone, Deborah was a radiant, sincere and reliable actress, and since her appeal did not really depend upon youthful beauty, she continued impressively, if less prolifically, into 6os films. Her work as governesses who encounter free-spirited charges in "The Chalk Garden" 1964 and ghost-possessed ones in "The Innocents" 1961 was well crafted, and she had fine moments as a gentle tourist caring for her aging grandfather in "The Night of the Iguana" 1964 and as a matron who encounters liberated mores in the belabored but amusing sex farce, "Prudence and the Pill" 1968. Deborah subsequently returned primarily to stage work, keeping very busy in plays ranging from "Candida" to "Long Day's Journey Into Night" both 1977, and enjoying considerable success in London and a worldwide tour in "The Day After the Fair" 1972-73, 1979. Variable health and problems remembering her lines interfered with some of her work, but her presence was always cherished, and she made a successful one-shot return to films as a repressed widow in "The Assam Garden" 1985. One of the actresses most nominated for an Academy Award without ever winning, Miss Kerr was given an honorary OSCAR at the 1994 ceremonies.
 

A Biography of Deborah Kerr
by Eric Braun = 264p illus.
New York: St Martin's Press
 
This is a straightforward approved biography  for a film actress known predominately for portraying heroines who had dignity, manners, and behaved bravely through any and all crises. Although she tried to break the image several times, she was most successful in playing " the English Lady. " Her many variations of this part give evidence of her talent for making it seem so effortless.
The author has been acquainted with his subject for more than three decades and traces her career from 1938 ballet debut to THE ARRANGEMENT 1968, and her recent stage appearances. Since her rise to celebrity was swift and she has led a carefully guarded private life, there remains only a recital of the events that made up her life and career for the past 40 years. The author provides this information with such admiration and affection that the stereotype of "Lady Kerr" is reinforced.
The volume is illustrated and indexed and contains a bibliography, filmography, a discography, and alisting for her stage appearances.
Those who have found the depth and discipline of a devoted professional in Deborah's film performances will enjoy this book. Others may be a bit bored as  charm, good manners, and beauty alone do not generate terribly exciting biographies.
 

 
                          
 
 

Grace and elegance - and a fragile red haired beauty. "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" 1943 - a must see cinema for that all time film buff . . . EVERY LIFE HAS A STORY . . . This is how B I O G R A P H Y Magazine presents itself to the vast public. Here is yet another biography . . . THE LIFE ~ TIMES ~ AND FILM CAREER OF THE WOMAN ALL WOMEN WANT TO BE ~ DEBORAH KERR.

If there is no presence of children, flowers, animals (of many needs) - colors of nature, love of the arts, a decent meal, Deborah Kerr, haven for safe rest and comfort . . . THEN A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME . . . and dear caring friends mean nothing if none of this is there to make a life so all complete ! That ladylike English girl so suddenly blossomed as a sizzling passion flower in From Here to Eternity tells her own intimate story. Her hardest job? Convincing Hollywood she was really the glamour-girl type.
Her contract cost M-G-M 250,000 in 1946.
It had been printed: "Deborah Kerr is on her way to quickly becoming the brightest and best movie star the biggest star factory in the world can make of her . . . It is suspected that little Miss Kerr may be the biggest thing that has happened since Greer Garson." My "gentle beauty" was referred to. It was announced that I "shone quietly, with an ineradicable gentility;" that "Cinemactress Kerr looks like everything Englishmen mean when they become lyrical about roses." Buried in this glowing prose were the seeds of the things that were to make these prophecies impossible for six long years.
My "ineradicable gentility" was an albatross draped around my neck. The Hollywood movie makers concluded that I wasn't a woman, but a "lady;" anemic, prissy, frigid, given to wearing Victorian unmentionables. I yearned to sink my teeth into parts I could chew on. Instead, I was given pastries. In the end, I had to strike out on my own or starve of artistic malnutrition. I worked off some of my frustration by changing agents. The agents who had watched over my professional interests were amiable enough; what they did for me would have been fine for some people. But it was a joke between my husband, Tony, and me that one of their contributions to my career was dropping in now and then to ask, "How're your kids?"
I needed someone who believed in me passionately - so passionately that he would see to it that I was given a chance to do something which would rock the public, even if that opportunity came to me at the expense of another. I had been in Hollywood long enough to learn the bitter lesson: a polite "after you, my dear" attitude is the kiss of death. Even so, I still didn't have enough shove and ruthlessness to use my claws to get the things I needed.

* * * * * *

The story goes that the turning point of Deborah Kerr's film career came when she was cast against all expectation, and after Joan Crawford had been fussy, as the lusting wife in Fred Zinnemann's 1953 classic production of "From Here to Eternity."

Deborah was then, and has always been, and still is true-blue. Educated at Bristol and then a debutante on the London stage, her first film was Michael Powell's "Contraband" ~ 1939. She worked in England throughout the war years, as an ingenue, a heroine, a chip off the old block, and finally in devotional parts: MAJOR BARBARA (1940 Gabriel Pascal); LOVE ON THE DOLE (1941 John Baxter); PENN OF PENNSYLVANIA (1941) and HATTER'S CASTLE (1941 for Lance Comfort); THE DAY WILL DAWN (1942 Herald French); very good as the recurring redhead in THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943 for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger); with Mr. Robert Donat - an exceptional performer with range - in PERFECT STRANGERS (1945 Alexander Korda); Frank Launder's I SEE A DARK STRANGER (1946); a nun in BLACK NARCISSUS (1946-47).

Invited to America after the war by MGM to appear in Jack Conway's THE Hucksters with Mr. Clark Gable ~ 1947.
Victor Saville's IF WINTER COMES ~ 1947 and from Cukor's EDWARD, MY SON ~ 1949, she drifted into ever less interesting parts, the female object to Mr. Stewart Granger in KING SOLOMON'S MINES ~ 1950; a glowing Christian in QUO VADIS ~ 1951.

And there were few and others inbetween. She became a fixture when she whistled a happy tune as the governess in walter Lang's THE KING AND I (one of my personal favorites and main introduction to the charming down-to-earth cinemactress Deborah Kerr) - in 1956. The considerate offering of herself to Mr. John Kerr in TEA AND SYMPATHY (she also starred with him on the Broadway stage version in 1953 for director Elia Kazan.
Robert Anderson sent "TEA AND SYMPATHY" to Deborah, and she refused it, with polite regret. It took Kazan, the persuader of all time, to show me that she was a symbol of so many things that I myself believe in ~~ compassion and tenderness, and the idea that a man need not conform to a schoolboy image of masculinity to be a man. God I loved doing that play, but it was exhausting, and its effects on audiences became so painful. There were countless young men ~~ homosexuals ~~ who would come backstage, or write, saying, 'I wish I had met someone like you at that age.' Many would seek me out and actually ask me to ~~ well, to perform for them the same service that LAURA performed for TOM LEE, in the play. Just to have to refuse them, gently ~~ I found it literally heart-rendering."
Mr. Robert Mitchum, a nun's habit, alone on a deserted island, in HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON for director John Huston in 1957; she was a little more credible in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER also in 1957.

There were demanding parts such as THE INNOCENTS, SEPARATE TABLES, BONJOUR TRISTESSE, THE ARRANGEMENT, BELOVED INFIDEL, THE CHALK GARDEN, NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, (the final of her films) THE ASSAM GARDEN in 1985, and another of my personal favorites again with Bob Mitchum, THE S U N D O W N E R S. One or two films Ms. Kerr should have had second thoughts about and never have made ~~ EYE OF THE DEVIL and THE GYPSY MOTHS !

Deborah has beautiful skin and always looks younger than her years - even in her golden years she's still a looker. Her face is expressive but gentle, pink and flacked with pale freckles. She wears little make-up, and will always have the most enviable nose in the entertainment industry . . . there is a male new-comer who is a strong likeness in the nose runner-up dept.
"People have talked about my nose all my life," she says. "They simply refuse to believe this is the nose that God gave me."

Today, Deborah is happiest playing her role of wife, mother and grandmother. On a personal note, Ms. Kerr reveals that she doesn't cook (we happen to know that she's quite a good cook with little things here and there) - and hardly ever drives. She is quite happy to let her husband do both. "I'm one of the few women who doesn't object to being ordered out of her own kitchen. I am allowed by my husband to clean and prepare the vegetables, and wash up the pots, pans, crockery and cutlery after we have had the meal. He does the rest, and he's marvellous." About Peter, she exclaims, "he's the most marvelously humorous, easy-going man. Take the matter of my ~~ of being well-known. It doesn't impress Peter a bit. 'Christ,' he'll shout, 'my wife is a goddam movie star, which means we can't just go and get onto planes ~~ we have to have the VIP treatment at the airport, which means all the lugage is lost, and the plane leaves without us!' But of cause he laughs when he says it." Deborah laughs, too. 'That's why we get on so well. He simply refuses to make heavy weather of things." Deborah was born on the banks of the Clyde at Helensburgh in Scotland on the 30th day in September in the year 1921, the daughter of navel architect Arthur Kerr-Trimmer and his wife Kathleen known to friends and family as 'Colleen.'

Life as usual, with her husband, screenwriter Peter Viertel, at their mountaintop retreat near Klosters, Switzerland. Three young daughters to look after, one the daughter of Peter from his marriage to Bettina, the famous French model and former companion of the late Aly Khan, and two are Deborah's by her marriage to Tony Bartley - a Royal Air Force hero who never quite seemed to find himself after the war - Melanie Jane and Francesca Ann, four years apart. Peter's daughter Christine and Deborah's Francesca are of the same age and went to boarding school in Lausanne and Melanie is graduating from the International School in Geneva.

Deborah Kerr had never really been a Hollywood type - having come from sensible Scottish stock and having married properly a British war hero, Anthony Charles Bartley. When the news came of the end of their perfect marriage, there was a frightful fiasco about Deborah's conduct. Deborah herself says she was never demure in her personal life and loathed the build-up MGM gave her as a stuffed Victorian mummy. Her differences with Tony started long before she met and fell head-over-heart in love with intellectual author Peter Viertel in Vienna. But Tony, cognizant of the public image of his wife as a great lady, sued Viertel for "enticement" and came off with a 300,000 cash payoff. It was a stick show all around with Deborah having to bear the incredible pain of separation from her beloved daughters who were made wards of the British court. The tragic death of Viertel's wife in a fire cast more shadows on their love, but perhaps Viertel can still write a happy ending for them both.

This stunning, ladylike Brit made her motion picture debut opposite Rex Harrison in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. British director Michael Powell later gave the actress one of her best roles, that of a Catholic nun trying to run a mission school in the Himalayas in Black Narcissus. This led to an invitation from Hollywood to co-star opposite Clark Gable in The Huchsters.

Deborah relocated to Hollywood and appeared in King Solomon's Mines, Quo Vadis? and Julius Caesar. She wernt on to give a riveting portrayal of an adulteress in From Here to Eternity. Deborah never gave a p[oor performance, clearly demonstrated by her work as the utterly unflappable ANNA in The King and I, an elegantly witty woman in An Affair to Remember, the victim of birth control sabotage in Prudence and the Pill, a shipwrecked nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and a haunted English governess in The Innocents. She also starred with Gregory Peck in the bioppic of the last days of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Beloved Infidel.




ONCE HAPPINESS, I try to remember

Overhead the sky was blue as only a summer Paris sky can be. The Orly Airport was thronged and bustling as usual. Most of the travelers wore excited, happy smiles, talking rapidly, laughing gaily. Some had just arrived and were feeling the thrill of everyone who comes to Paris. Others were leaving for new places and were perhaps a little sad, but also looking ahead to the thrills to come.

The lonely red-haired woman who sat with the two little girls in a far corner of the waiting room seemed almost out of place in that happy atmosphere. She looked lonely and a liitle sad, though there was a determinedly gay tilt to her chin as she spoke to the children. "Now girls," said Deborah Kerr gently, "it's really time we left. After all, Daddy's plane left half-an-hour ago!"

"Please," begged one little girl, "just a minute more!" "The Airport's so busy!" said the other, not taking her eyes from the hurrying crowds.
It took Deborah another few minutes to persuade Melanie and francesca to vacate the exciting bustle of the Airport lobby, and still another few to find a taxi. All the way back to the Paris hotel, the little girls chattered together - about how exciting it was to have Daddy come over from England every weekend, how much fun it was when Mummy took them to the Airport Sunday afternoons to say goodbye.

Deborah listened, smiling, but her heart was winging toward England with her husband, Tony Bartley. These were the times when she missed him most, when the weekend reunion ended and she had to say goodbye to him. During the week, he worked in England on the TV series and the movie he was producing while she was in Paris finishing up her new picture, "Bonjour Tristesse." At least now it was better than it had been earlier in the summer when she'd been on location in the south of France. Then the reunions had been even rarer, while now Tony managed to get to Paris every week.

While she was working, there was much to keep her busy - filming during the day and at night the quiet evenings with her daughters or with her co-star, David Niven, and his wife. David was an old friend from England, and they had a lot to talk about. There were times, of couse, when she longed for Tony - but always there was the picture and her little girls to keep her busy. And after all, she and Tony had known there'd have to be separations when they chose their present way of living. It hadn't always been their decision, though. When they fell in love and married, for instance . . .

Tony was an R.A.F. (Royal Air Force) flier when they met during the war in Brussels, so right from the start they had had to become used to being separated. they were married the winter after the war was over, and when Deborah came to America, Tony came with her. At the time, he'd been in the aircraft industry in England, but when Deborah knew she wanted to continue acting in America, the Bartleys spent long hours talking over their future. Finally, tony decided that he'd like to put his executive abilities to work in some phase of motion pictures, so they could be together as much as possible. Not for them, this business of being continually separated because of careers!

For a while, he turned to writing, doing some screen originals and even working on a novel. Meanwhile, when Deborah took off for locationing in England and Africa, and Rome, Tony simply packed up his typewriter and went along for the ride. But it was on the trip to Africa that Tony came up with the idea of doing an on-location TV series about a white hunter - and found the niche in showbusiness he'd been searching for.

As it turned out for Deborah and Tony, they also found a new kind of life, one far different from the other they thought they'd have. Tony made a success of his producing ventures and soon his work took him from New York to England to Spain and back to Africa, with Deborah "going along for the ride" as often as she could. But when her first Broadway play, TEA AND SYMPATHY, was a smash hit, she had to stay in New York while Tony continued flying all over the globe. They had a house in New York, though, and as often as possible they lived a happy family life, with Melanie and Francesca enrolled in New York schools.

It was about this time that the first rift rumors started, probably brought about by the separations and - Deborah laughs - "my sexy role in "From Here to Eternity." But the Bartleys continued their way of life with dignity and frequent reunions and by now they don't have to bother to convince anybody that they're still romantically in love and that their marriage is a success. "It isn't bad to be apart," said Deborah recently. "In this modern day when you can dine in London and breakfast in New York, we really aren't ever separated for very long. Living apart occasionally is good for people. It's essential for a person to fulfill himself and that's what I'm doing and that's what Tony's doing."

Yes, there may be times when Deborah wonders whether she and Tony have made a mistake in their way of life, when she misses him too much. But the happy times come oftener, when they are together, bursting with the excitement of news to tell, the happiness of their wartime reunions lived all over again. These are the moments that make up their love and their marriage, and Deborah knows in her heart that there is no danger in this kind of love. For them, this is the perfect way of life.

END







TM Photo from the Hugh Miles-Hutchinsen/Hiller Collection c2003 All Rights Retained Hereto


Hollywood Moviemakers Concluded I Wasn't A Woman But A Lady; Prissy and Fragil . . . .

" I yearned to sink my teeth into some roles I could chew on ". A classic beauty, Deborah had been playing rather frigid women since coming to America and the attention of the Hollywood public shortly after the war. Her screen characters always suggested that there was more here than meet the eye . . . her icy manner was just mere good breeding. However, make note of this, she loves a beer! It took the part of Karen Holmes in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY - 1953 and Ida Carmody in THE SUNDOWNERS - 1960 to make it clear that a real woman existed beneath that cool exterior. 




That's Why the Lady Is A Lady

NEW YORK TIMES PRESS STORY by Tom Burke

"  My God, they think I sit about all day with a bloomin' tiara on my head," says Deborah Kerr, "like the woman in the margarine commercial." Smiling wickedly, she looks out the windows of the Ritz Tower suite and waves a pale hand toward Park Avenue, and the Hudson, and all the moviegoers west of it. "Damn it, I am not the dowager empress! But then, they have seen me play all those ladies-in-pearls, so one really can't blame them."
T
rue. Even her Karen Holmes, the abrasive, alcoholic nymphomaniac of "From Here to Eternity," didn't change the public's mind. Before it came "The Hucksters" and "Young Bess," and after it, "The King and I" and dozens of other films in which Deborah Kerr was, as she puts it, "about as sensual as an oyster," and always seemed, somehow, to be wearing strands of pearls, even when she was not. Her casting was understandable; she is a lady; and movie actress with breeding are rare as movie executives without suntans. But dowager empress? Ask Frank Sinatra, who was nervous about doing a picture with her ( "I believe Frank actually thought he couldn't swear in my presence" ), but enjoyed it so much that he has sent her flowers every Mother's Day since, or Robert Mitchum, who is not known for his rapport with leading ladies but gushes for 10 minutes when her name is mentioned, or Robert Stack, who got through his first Hollywood awards dinner speech because Dedborah, who was seated next to him, noted his nervousness, leaned over and whispered, " Bob, before you start, just look'em straight in the eye and say to yourself, '-----'em!' "

Or ask her directors. Vincent Minnelli, Walter Lang, John Frankenheimer, Elia Kazan -- they begin by explaining how much fun a set becomes when she is on it, then quickly add that she has been on sets consistently for 30 years because she can act. Though she has been nominated for six Academu Awards and lost ( "I did mind missing that 'Sundowners' Oscar" ), she has salvaged myriad movies with the depth, dignity and effortless reality she can breathe into a souffle scenario. This winter, soon after her 48th birthday, her 43d film, "The Gypsy Moths," will open, and she has just completed "The Arrangement." Elia Kazan, who directed the latter, a screen version of his own autobiographical novel, insisted that no other actress play the character that is really his late wife, Molly.
"Now, if you ask Gadge," says Deborah, leaning forward confidentially, "hell say that the characters are all fictional, and I don't think that any of us approached the parts as if we were playing actual people, but every so often, as we worked, Gadge would say to me, 'Remember how Molly was at a moment like this, how she would just not bend on this particular point?' That's really the way he has always worked with me: he does not get specific asbout sense memories and so on; instead, we'll sit and recall people we knew, and I'll say, 'Oh, it's the way she was,' and he'll say, 'Yes, that's it, use it!' And you know, Gadge hasn't changed one bit in the years since we first met." She smiles, looking wicked again, and adds, dryly, "If anything, he's more so. He's violent, vivid beyond belief, and utterly brilliant. His genius is his incredible enthusiasm for actors, for that curious thing that makes people act. All of us are either timid, shy and frightened, or very, very extroverted, and Gadge knows exactly how to crack the shell of your timidity, or harness your extroversion. Somehow, he makes you, as an artist, feel - 15 feet tall! For him, I'll play anything. Anything. I've always said, 'Gadge, if it's two lines as the charlady, I'll do it'"
Her eyes bright, she glances at the parson's table by the sofa, and points to the tea service the waiter has brought. "Elia Kazan," she announces, "could make that teacup act!" Of course her first brush with Kazan was in "Tea and Sympathy," on Broadway. The symbolism of the bit of white china on the table strikes her, and she laughs. "I was terrified of doing that play, and after three days of rehearsal, I said to dear Gadge, 'Let me out of my contract, let me go home!' He simply said no, but when Gadge says no, there is very little more one can say. Opening night, I  nearly collapsed. All of show business was out front, not to mention the critics, and I kept saying to myself, '------'em,' but it didn't help. The curtain went up, and I went totally blank. Thank God I had an exit right after the first little bit, to get the tea things. As soon as I was off, I croaked, 'My God, I'm going to faint!' Well, they stuck my head between my legs and gave me smelling salts and I just kept saying over and over, 'Don't make heavy weather, girl, don't make heavy weather . . .' "
She learned the  phrase from her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who headed a drama school in Bristol, and performed the amazing feat of having her first child at the age of 47. " I remember saying to her. 'Good heavens, Aunt Phyllis, uh, what was it like?' She simply said, 'Oh well, mustn't make heavy weather of things.' And those words have always given me confidence, something I lack profoundly. As a child, I was the worst sort of timid, underweight washout. I loathed boarding school, and the tapioca pudding they made us eat. I called it frog spawn. I can't look at frog spawn to this day without thinking of boarding school." "How often do you look at frog spawn?" "Oh, all the time, because we have a large pond at home in Switzerland, and in the spring, it's covered with it. At any rate, I studied dance with Aunt Phyllis, and longed to be in the ballet, but I was too tall. Acting just seemed the logical alternative. I wasn't in the least competitive or ambitious, really, and I had no notion in the world of becoming this thing called 'a movie star.'"
E
nter Gabriel Pascal, the flamboyant Hungarian director. In 1939, Deborah was playing small parts in London repertory, and living at the Y.W.C.A. on 2 pounds a week. A kind agent  was treating her to lunch in a good restaurant when Pascal approached their table. "Who is this sweet little virgin?" he said to the agent. "I am Deborah Kerr," said Deborah evenly. "You should wear your hair down around your shoulders," said the director. "Pinned up that way, you look like a tart." Deborah promptly unpinned her reddish-golden hair. "Come to my office tomorrow afternoon," Pascal said, exiting.
H
e made her recite the Lord's Prayer, and signed her on the spot to play a Salvation Army girl in his excellent  film version of "Major Barbara." Six British films followed, including "The Adventuress," a charming story of an Irish girl who unwittingly involves herself with the Nazis. Louis B. Mayer saw it, and brought Deborah to MGM, as a threat to the valuable and rebellious Greer Garson. On the Metro lot, no one could pronounce her name. "It rhymes with car," said Deborah. "No," said Mr. Mayer, "it rhymes with star." Hedda, Louella and Sheilah quickly set about manufacturing a Kerr-Garson feud.
"Of course it was all nonsense," Deborah says, emptying her teacup with three matter-of-fact gulps, "and for ages, journalists referred to my time at Metro as the 'years of captivity,' but really, I had a ball. I found that whole Hollywood build-up thing amusing, and really rather fun. I simply went to work and did my job and assumed that directors and studio heads knew better than I did. I'm afraid I can't explain to you how I act - it's entirely instinctive with me, I don't analyze it - but I can tell you why. Because I find it enormously satisfying to pretend to be other people. And I pretend rather well. It's as simple as that. And, I mean to say, MGM was paying me heaps of money to do what I enjoyed. Oh, I realized that I was being typed, but I'm just not a scrapper, it's not my bag, or whatever the hell one says nowadays."
Finally, Bert Allenburg, "a terrific artist's agent," supervised her rebellion. He lured her from MCA, then asked if she'd like to play Karen Holmes. "I said 'Oh, Bert, they'll scream if you so much as suggest it.' He did, and they not only screamed, they kicked him out of the office. But he got to Fred Zinnemann, the director, and dear Fred, I do love him, do you know what his reaction was? He said, 'Now, why didn't I think of Deborah before?'"
With the contract signed, she panicked."I realized that all I'd wanted was a different sort of part, and that now I had one and didn't know how to play it. I couldn't sleep, I had ghastly nightmares. I'd sit and think as hard as I could of any women I'd ever met who was even vaguely like Karen, because, you know, a helluva lot of acting is simple mimicry, a helluva lot of it is just observing and imitating your fellow human beings. Then we went on location, to the army base, and it was a revelation! For the fist time, I saw army wives, the awful little houses they had to live in, the endless cocktail parties, the boredom, the bitterness. And when the picture came out, I really got a helluva lot of pleasure hearing people say, "Ohhh, she can act!' Of course, I'd been acting for years, but I had to roll about on a beach with Burt Lancaster, the male sex symbol of the time, before anyone noticed."
Robert Anderson had already noticed. While "Eternity" was still in production, he sent "Tea and Sympathy" to Deborah, and she refused it, with polite regret. The housemaster's wife looked, on paper, like "another goody-goody lady, so sort of pie. It took Gadge, the persuader of all time, to show me that she was a symbol of so many things that I myself believe in - compassion and tenderness, and the idea that a man need not conform to a schoolboy image of masculinity to be a man. God, I loved doing that play, but it was exhausting, and its effects on audiences became so painful. There were countless young men - homosexuals - who would come backstage, or write, saying, 'I wish I had met someone like you at that age.' They confused me with the character I played. Many would seek me out and actually ask me to - well, to perform for them the same service that Laura performs for Tom Lee, in the play. And what could I say? Just to have to refuse them, gently - I found it literally heart-rending.
S
he turns and looks out the windows, then clears her throat abruptly. "And that was only 13 years ago. Incredible! We were all so much more naive then. Many people who saw 'Tea and Sympathy' really did not understand what Tom Lee was suspected of. At the end of one performance, i heard a woman in the second row whisper to her husband. 'There, I told you he was a jew!' When we made the film, Bob Anderson battled endlessly with the censors, but we could not even imply that homosexuality was involved. And today? Well, I suppose the play would hardly make sense now, Would it? Because we no longer have the same prejudices, at least the young people don't, and that's marvelous. But we still don't know how to handle so much artistic freedom. 'The Killing of Sister George' was a fine play, but look what happened to the film! I, for one, was appalled at having to watch Caral Browne sticking her tongue down Susannah York's throat, simply because showing it ruined the drama. There was something far more gripping, in 'Eternity,' about watching Burt and me undressing, with bathing clothes underneath. It was twice as powerful, left to the imagination."
A
n aged messenger with a moist, crumbled face and hair like a dandelion gone to seed, arrived with papers from Deborah's press agent. She tips the old generously, and when he is gone, she says, "Poor soul, poor fellow! Up and down the streets in this heat. It breaks my heart to see people like that. What has he ever had, what does he have to look forward to?" She shakes her head; the question is unanswerable, or better left unanswered. Therefore, what has Deborah Kerr to look forward to? Perhaps a play, definitely the film of Brian Moore's novel, "THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE," which she will do as soon as a script is ready. In the meantime, life as usual, with her husband, screenwriter Peter Viertel, at their mountaintop retreat near Klosters, Switzerland. "I love working, but I must spend a good part of the year just being home. People who come for a week of skiing ask what in the world we do there the year round. With a big house, and a garden, and snow to shovel, and three young daughters to look after? What a question!"
One of the daughters is Peter Viertel's, by a previous marriage; the otherers are Deborah's, by her marriage to Tony Bartley, a Royal Air Force hero who never quite seemed to find himself after the war. Their 1959 divorce was attended by a certain amount of scandal: Bartley publicly accused Viertel of "enticing" his wife. I have been warned that this subject is verboten, but introduce it anyway. Deborah smiles and says that really, it is rather a private matter when two people who are married find, for example, that their temperaments are totally fifferent, or that one has matured and the other has not; and that certain newspapers - London's Daily Express is one - infuriate her with "reporting that really amounts to invasion of privacy. At the time of my divorce the British press descended like a pack of wolves, and I thought, well, so much for loyalty, so much for all the times I'd put myself out a bit for them. I wanted to shout, 'My children, in case you've forgotten, can read!'

Earlier, her husband has phoned to say he will be late; they are to sail for home the next morning, and he is seeing to last-minute state-side business. "Oh, I do wish you could have met Peter," she exclaims. "He's the most marvelously humorous, easy-going man. Take the matter of my - of being well-known. It doesn't impress Peter a bit. 'Christ,' he'll shout, 'my wife is a goddam movie star, which means we can't just go and get onto planes - we have to have the VIP treatment at the airport, which means all the luggage is lost and the plane leaves without us!'

Deborah laughs, too "That's why we get along. He simply refuses to make heavy weather of things."

  

  

                                                                                                                                        


Retired and Resting ~~

Please believe me, Mr. Allison, I count my blessings for EDWARD,MY SON ~ FROM HERE TO ETERNITY ~ THE KING AND I ~ HEAVEN KNOWS,MR. ALLISON ~ SEPARATE TABLES ~ THE SUNDOWNERS ~ and all the goodness that was there for me to work with inbetween; remembering Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember ~ what a dear man. The calm and loyal Mr. Gable in The Hucksters, David Niven ~ my dear friend for many years ~ in Separate Tables, Burt Lancaster and I rolled and rolled in those waves for hours and had a dickens of a time keeping the sand out of our suits ~ we never won that battle ~ in From Here to Eternity. There were other films, many that I remember, and those wonderful people I worked with all those years. And now--so many years later--I have the joy of my family and dear Hollywood friends. My life has always been a great journey, from my very first begining with Rex Harrison and Wendy Hiller in Major Barbara ~ through to that well-documented Eternity role, right up to the present and even my Tevee work! Many thanks to you the readers and loving fans ~ and my Hollywood family . . . well do I remember Spencer Tracy, Stewart Granger, Yul Brynner, Richard Burton, Mr. Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor, Alan Ladd, Rossano Brozzi, David Farrar, Trevor Howard, Roger Livasy and certainly Mr. Allison ~ my bestest buddy ~ Bob Mitchum! Most of my Hollywood friends are gone and I miss them dearly . . . !

It's difficult to single out a favorite actor because, honestly, it wouldn't be fair. I've learned so much from all of them and had fascinating experiences with them all.

Very sincerely,

with best wishes to everyone for my memories . . .

--- Deborah Kerr

  


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