Deanna Durbin
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Edna May Durbin (December 4, 1921 – April 17, 2013), known professionally as Deanna Durbin, was a Canadian-born American lyric soprano and actress, who moved to the United States with her family in infancy. She appeared in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s. Additionally, she performed mostly classical concerts and recitals as well as concerts with semi-classical and popular music. She specialized in opera arias, art song, and semi-classical songs, which is today known as classical crossover. Durbin was a child actress who made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday (1936), and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Pictures. She achieved success as the ideal teenaged daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) and One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937). Her work was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy, and led to Durbin being awarded the Academy Juvenile Award in 1938. As she matured, Durbin grew dissatisfied with the girl-next-door roles assigned to her and attempted to move into sophisticated non-musical roles with film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945). These films, produced by frequent collaborator and second husband Felix Jackson, were not as successful; and she continued in musical roles. Upon her retirement and divorce from Jackson in 1949, Durbin married producer-director Charles Henri David and moved to a farmhouse near Paris. She withdrew from public life, granting only one interview on her career in 1983.