Jump to content

Deborah Kerr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Yamanbaiia (talk | contribs) at 18:08, 16 November 2007 (→‎Career: added screnshot). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Deborah Kerr
in An Affair to Remember (1957)
Born
Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer
Other namesDeborah Kerr-Trimmer
Deborah Kerr-Viertel
Years active1940 - 1986
Spouse(s)Anthony Bartley (1945-1959)
Peter Viertel (1960-2007)
ChildrenMelanie Jane Bartley (b.1947)
Francesca Ann Bartley-Shrapnel
AwardsNew York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
1947 Black Narcissus
1957 - Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
1960 - The Sundowners
Sarah Siddons Award
1955 Actress of the Year

Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer, CBE (30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007) was a six-time Oscar-nominated Scottish actress, a Broadway star and 1994 recipient of an Honorary Oscar by the Motion Picture Academy. She also received a Cannes Film Festival career tribute and Golden Globe and BAFTA awards.

She was nominated six times for an Academy Award as Best Actress, but she never won. Many years later, however, she was cited by the Motion Picture Academy for a film career that always represented "Perfection, Discipline and Elegance". Her most famous films were The King and I, An Affair to Remember and From Here to Eternity.

Although the Scottish pronunciation of her surname is like "care," when she was being promoted as a Hollywood actress, her last name was pronounced the same as "car." In order to avoid confusion over pronunciation, MGM billed her as "Kerr rhymes with Star!"[1].

Early life

Kerr was born Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer in Glasgow, Scotland,[2] 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.[3] 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.[4][5]

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.[6][7]

Career

Films

Kerr in Julius Caesar (1953)

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.[8]

I realised, said Powell, that Deborah was both the ideal and the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for.[8]

Although 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.[8] Powell had hoped to reunite Kerr and Roger Livesey, who had played Blimp, 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.[8]

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 jungle 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 in 1951 by her appearance in the 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 organization 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,[9][10] she has portrayed nuns (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison) and mamas' girls (Separate Tables), but also an earthy Australian sheep-herder's wife (The Sundowners) and a lustful and beautiful screen enchantresses (Beloved Infidel, Bonjour tristesse). She has also acted in comedies (The Grass is Greener).

File:Anaffairtoremember Kerr.png
Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant in An Affair To Remembers final scene

Her most famous roles are, probably, as 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 to appear in the film, 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 achieved the distinction of appearing as a Bond Girl in Casino Royale.

In 1969, pressure of competition from younger, upcoming actresses made her agree to appear nude in John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths.[11] This would be 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 Sixties in favour of television and theatre work. [11]

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, as she said :

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 grown ups, 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. [6]

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 was married twice: The first marriage was to Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley on November 29 1945. They had two daughters, Melanie Jane, born on December 27, 1947, and Francesca Ann (the wife of the actor John Shrapnel). She and Bartley divorced in 1959. Her second marriage was to writer Peter Viertel on July 23 1960 until her death. By this marriage she had a stepdaughter, Christine Viertel. Although she long resided in Switzerland and Spain, she moved back to Britain to be closer to her children.

Kerr was the patron of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection (NSCA) from 1992 until her death from the effects of Parkinson's disease on October 16 2007 at the age of 86 in the village of Botesdale, Suffolk.[12]

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.[13]

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1709 Vine Street.

She was awarded a BAFTA Special Award in 1991. [6]

She was awarded an Honorary Oscar at the 1994 Academy Awards 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".[14]

Award nominations

Academy Awards

Deborah Kerr was nominated six times in the category of Best Actress:

She equalled Thelma Ritter for the distinction of receiving the most nominations for an actress for an acting Academy Award, without actually winning. It should be noted that her nominations were all for Best Actress, while Ritter's were all for Best Supporting Actress.

BAFTA Awards

Unsuccessful Nominations for Award for Best British Actress:

Emmy Awards

Unsuccessful Nomination in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special:

Golden Globe Awards

For successful Golden Globe Awards, see the Infobox.

Unsuccessful Nominations in the category of Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama:

  • 1949 - Edward, My Son
  • 1957 - Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
  • 1958 - Separate Tables

Filmography

Television credits

References

  1. ^ New York Times. "Deborah Kerr Obituary". Retrieved 2007-10-20.
  2. ^ http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1771494.0.0.php
  3. ^ Filmreference.com. "Deborah Kerr Biography (1921-2007)". Retrieved 2007-10-29.
  4. ^ "'Road rage' killer's appeal win". BBC News. 2006-03-30.
  5. ^ "Killer's term cut". Worcester News. 2006-04-05.
  6. ^ a b c "Deborah Kerr Obituary in the Daily Telegraph 19 October 2007". Retrieved 2007-10-20.
  7. ^ "Kerr, Deborah". International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers. FindArticles.com. 2000.
  8. ^ a b c d A Life In Movies - autobiography (Part I), Powell, Michael, Heinemann, 1986, ISBN 0-434-59945-X
  9. ^ Herald Tribune - Deborah Kerr, versatile British actress, dies at 86 Retrieved on 2007-November 11.
  10. ^ NY Times - Deborah Kerr, Actress Known for Genteel Grace and a Sexy Beach Kiss, Dies at 86 Retrieved on 2007-November 11.
  11. ^ a b Deborah Kerr, Braun, Eric, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-18895-1, 1978
  12. ^ "Actress Deborah Kerr has died". Detroit Free Press. 2007-10-18. Retrieved 2007-10-18.
  13. ^ Baxter, Brian (2007-10-18). "Deborah Kerr" (obituary). Guardian Unlimited.
  14. ^ BBC NEWS - British actress Kerr dies at 86Retrieved on 2007-November 11
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Deborah Kerr.
Template:S-awards
Preceded by NYFCC Award for Best Actress
1947
for Black Narcissus 		Succeeded by
Preceded by NYFCC Award for Best Actress
1957
for Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1957
for The King and I 		Succeeded by
Preceded by NYFCC Award for Best Actress
1960
for The Sundowners 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Academy Honorary Award
1994 		Succeeded by

Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deborah_Kerr&oldid=171927575"