A refined actress renowned for her sophistication and dignity, Deborah Kerr was one of the leading ladies of Hollywood's Golden Age. Born Deborah Kerr-Trimmer on September 30, 1921, in Helensburgh, Scotland, she was first trained as a dancer at her aunt's drama school in Bristol, England. After being awarded a scholarship to the Sadlers Wells Ballet School, Deborah Kerr made her London stage debut at age 17 in Prometheus. Meanwhile, she developed an interest in acting and began getting bit parts and walk-ons in Shakespeare productions. While continuing to appear in various London stage plays,
… More Deborah Kerr debuted in the small role of a hatcheck girl in Contraband however this was cut from the final version, her first credited role was in 1940 as a frightened Salvation Army worker in the all-star adaptation of the satire, Major Barbara. She went on to roles in a number of British films over the next seven years, often playing refined, reserved, and proper young ladies.
However, it was her work in three separate roles in the superb Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger time-spanning saga, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, as the various women in the hero's life, that brought her recognition. She followed up with several admirable performances, as the mousy wife whose marriage is rejuvenated when she enters wartime service, in Perfect Strangers and the Irish spy in the absorbing I See a Dark Stranger.
Her portrayal of the determined yet fallible Sister Superior in Black Narcissus earned a New York Film Critics Best Actress award and led to an invitation from Hollywood to co-star opposite Clark Gable in The Hucksters. She remained in Hollywood, playing long-suffering, prim, proper, English Rose types until 1953, when she broke her typecast mold by portraying a passionate adulteress in From Here to Eternity, a part for which she had to fight. Deborah Kerr's range of roles broadened further after that, and she began to appear in British films again.
In 1953, Deborah Kerr debuted on Broadway to great acclaim in Tea and Sympathy, later reprising her role in the play's 1956 screen version. That same year, she starred as an English governess sent to tutor the children of the King of Siam in one of the most popular films of her career, The King and I.
One of her finest films came at the end of the decade when she made The Sundowners with director Fred Zinnemann. Her role as a sheep farmer's wife was performed without makeup, and her natural beauty was both affecting and enlightening. She received her final Academy Award nomination, and the film is considered one of her best achievements.
Her work as a governess who encounters ghost-possessed charges in The Innocents, and free-spirited ones in The Chalk Garden was well crafted, and she had fine moments as a gentle tourist, caring for her aging grandfather, in The Night of the Iguana.
Deborah Kerr subsequently returned primarily to stage work, keeping very busy in plays until health problems interfered with her work. She graced the film screen one more time as a repressed widow in the The Assam Garden in 1985.
Deborah Kerr retired from the screen in 1969, having received six Best Actress Oscar nominations without an award, although she did receive an honorary Oscar in 1994.
She experienced career resurgence in the early 1980s on television, when she played the role originally brought to life on film by Elsa Lanchester, in Witness for the Prosecution. Later, she re-teamed with multiple screen partner Robert Mitchum in Reunion at Fairborough. This period also saw her 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.
She had been honoured with a special BAFTA award in 1991, and, in 1998, she was further honoured in her native land with a Companion of the Order of the British Empire.
Deborah Kerr has been married twice. First, on 28 November 1945, she married Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley. They had two daughters, Melanie Jane, born on 27 December 1947 and Francesca Ann. She and Bartley divorced in 1959. On 23 July 1960, she married writer Peter Viertel.
In 2001 it was confirmed that she was suffering with Parkinson's disease and she has been confined to a wheelchair. She spent her final years in England in order to be closer to her children. Kerr died on October 16, 2007, aged 86, in Botesdale, Suffolk.
nhubi
Editor
Lux823
mrn71
mrsfleeshman
