Turner Classic Movies to Honor Six-Time Oscar(R) Nominee Deborah Kerr
October 18 2007 - 2:36PM
PR Newswire (US)
Sunday, Oct. 21, Double-Feature Tribute Includes Nominated
Performances In From Here To Eternity and Separate Tables ATLANTA,
Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will pay
special tribute to six-time Oscar(R) nominee Deborah Kerr, who
passed away today at the age of 86. On Sunday, Oct. 21, TCM will
present a special double feature of two of Kerr's most memorable
nominated roles. At 8 p.m., she stars as a lonely military wife who
seeks happiness through an illicit affair in From Here to Eternity
(1953), co-starring Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed.
And at 10:15 p.m., she plays a spinster who is completely dominated
by her mother while staying at an English seaside resort in
Separate Tables (1958), with Lancaster and Oscar winners David
Niven and Wendy Hiller. "Deborah Kerr was one of the great jewels
of the movie industry," said TCM host Robert Osborne. "Not only was
she an immensely gifted and versatile actress, but also someone who
made every film she touched better." Deborah Kerr bio from
TCMdb.com A gifted, sensitive Scottish-born leading actress,
Deborah Kerr landed her breakthrough screen role in 1940 as a
frightened Salvation Army worker in the fine, all-star adaptation
of the potent Shavian satire Major Barbara. Originally trained for
the ballet, she moved into stage acting and gained some experience
in British repertory theater before segueing to films. Although the
shy, quiet side would often remain in Kerr's later star persona,
she, like Greer Garson, gradually acquired a stiff-upper-lip
attitude as her native land's and later Hollywood's postwar
personification of the delicate yet strong, often impassioned
English rose. Kerr moved into leads in an adaptation of the
controversial novel that was England's equivalent of The Grapes of
Wrath, the touching study of Depression- era poverty, Love on the
Dole (1940). Although she did well in films, including the grim
Hatter's Castle (1941), it was really Kerr's lovely work in three
roles in the splendid Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger
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
gripping 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 (1947). With a string of performances
like these, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood beckoned
the graceful blonde star, and Kerr 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, Kerr 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 by Marni Nixon, and the heroine prevented from
making a crucial rendezvous with her lover in An Affair to Remember
(1957), based on Dunne's Love Affair. The actress' 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 Kerr and earlier classy, genteel heroines such
as Joan Fontaine was that the passions sparking Kerr's characters
were often of a more overtly sexual nature. As questions of sex and
censorship manifested themselves in the 1950s, her persona, prim
only on the surface, proved ideal for suggesting the torrid side of
romantic love. One of the most famous images of Kerr'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 college 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). In Separate Tables (1958), she played a
mother-dominated spinster, proving herself to be a radiant, sincere
and reliable actress. And since her appeal did not really depend
upon youthful beauty, she continued impressively into 1960s films.
Her work as governesses who encounter ghost-possessed charges in
The Innocents (1961) and free-spirited ones in The Chalk Garden
(1964) 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). Kerr
subsequently returned 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 problems
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(R) without ever winning (six
times), Kerr was given an honorary Oscar at the 1993 ceremonies.
Seven years later, it was confirmed that she was suffering with
Parkinson's disease and had been confined to a wheelchair. Turner
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