Deanna Durbin, my cinema ghost
December 4, 2021 was the 100th anniversary of Deanna Durbin’s birth. It is difficult for me to imagine the number 100 attached to Deanna Durbin. In my memory, she is always only just a little bit older than me, and always existing in the very same moment as I.
See, Deanna Durbin is my cinema ghost. Call it a parasocial phenomena, but she was a tangible presence in my childhood. A permanent fixture floating around the edges and spurring me to be just a little more indomitable.
The first film I ever truly remember the experience of watching was Three Smart Girls (1936). I was probably four or five. It was a library VHS and I distinctly remember where I was sitting on the floor watching it–absolutely transfixed by the sheer energy of Deanna Durbin. I was lost.
The closest library branch to my rural childhood home was about a thirty-minute drive away; and I cannot overstate how small this library is in square footage, yet on any given trip, you could find six or seven Deanna Durbin films on VHS. The spines all lined up next to each other with the titles and a signatory Deanna swirling making it clear. Other branches in the system had other titles and the librarians always helped me put them on hold.
I watched them all. I was a tiny little completist. I downloaded her presence into my life like it was a coding program from The Matrix. Her cinema persona was clever, resourceful, emotional, strong, a community-minded figure, usually working-class, a bit of an imp, and always holding the most secret ace in her back packet: her voice.
At some point, in every Deanna Durbin film, no one will listen to her pleas, all else will fail, she’s tried everything–and so she bursts into song. And, everyone is undone. And, everything falls into place.
That is glorious. That is an ephemeral sense of rightness that can be impossible in the world. So, we seek it out in the stories we make and the stories we drink up.
In my world, Deanna Durbin was the example and the ideal: build a loving community, wear fun clothes, talk as fast as you want, be chaotic and scheme a little bit, and when all else fails–start singing opera arias! My brothers can attest that the last one is not well-received without Deanna’s voice to match.
That never stopped me from playing a cassette of her greatest hits and loudly and defiantly singing along to the title song from Can’t Help Singing (1944). That film is a technicolor whirl that lives in my brain in its entirety.
Her entire filmography lives in my brain thus. Earlier this year, I watched Nice Girl? (1941) for the first time since I was a kid, and I was shocked to discover how much of it I remembered visually and even more how much I remembered who I was and what I was thinking and feeling when I used to watch it as a kid. How small and contained I felt, and how Deanna seemed to be on screen urging me to be open and large and unstoppable.
When I was ten, I got to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve for the first time ever. This event was shared with my childhood best friend, and we watched Lady on a Train (1945) for the first time and although she lives several states away from me now, we can still say to one another in passing, “It’s a pipe!” and know exactly what is meant.
When I was twelve, I finished my Deanna Durbin filmography at last by seeing Christmas Holiday (1944). I could not imagine anything more melancholy than her recording of “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year.”
When I was fourteen, I mailed her a meandering letter of my adoration. I had written literally a dozen letters for years and never mailed them. I finally mailed this one–naturally without a self-addressed stamped envelope or anything for her to sign or anything. It felt too presumptuous. I just sent my letter off to France, and called it good. Not too many weeks later, I received this in return.
It felt entirely natural that my cinema guardian should know even fleetingly of my existence. I loved that it was a press still for His Butler’s Sister (1943), my favorite of her films. When she sings Puccini’s “Nessun dorma” as the finale and runs toward the camera as it dollys back–my heart stops every time. I remember playing it once while cleaning my apartment, and needing to stop the vacuum to weep. Human existence, amiright?
When I was nineteen, Deanna Durbin died, and I tried to write about her.
When I was twenty-four, I sat at a TCMFF screening of Three Smart Girls on 35mm, and when the film opened on her singing face, the audience erupted into applause, and I burst into tears.
I keep writing about crying over Deanna Durbin, which is horrible because she was genuinely one of the funniest performers working, and so utterly full of life. The grandiose energy is why she feels so vital. That energy is why she is constantly rediscovered and championed by audiences again and again. I am delighted every time I see someone like, “Deanna Durbin??? What the heck!”
I have tried for years to write about Deanna Durbin. I wrote posts on my teenage blog, on old movie message boards, Letterboxd films, rando tweets. I always think I can tackle my feelings and my perceptions of her and finally contain it into words that actually convey what I want to express. I thought I could do it today. Ahh hubris! I suppose I will need to return another time with more words.
I am twenty-seven now, the age she was when her final film was released. What does it mean that I am older now than my cinema ghost?
I will take comfort and joy and delight from her cinematic presence, and I will remember that stories and storytellers fill this human life with color. Our cinema ghosts stay with us.
originally published on The Classic Film Collective on 01/02/2022.