Doll-A-Day 2023 #242: Deanna Durbin

   Yesterday we saw some celebrity dolls. And recently you saw this picture. 

Today we're going to concentrate on another celebrity doll that was in that picture. She's Deanna Durbin. That's her on the far right. Deanna Durbin was a child actress and singer, who went on to a successful adult career. She's next to two other child stars: Shirley Temple to her immediate left, and Margaret O'Brian, to Shirley's immediate left.

Deanna Durbin was born Edna Mae Durbin, in Winnipeg Canada, in 1921. She was a singing prodigy and was taking voice lessons by the age of ten. She developed a perfect soprano voice, far beyond her years. She made her first film appearance was in the 1936  movie "Every Sunday". She and Judy Garland were cast in the movie together, as sort of a screen test, so the big wigs at MGM could decide which young singer/actress to keep. Garland was signed, but Durbin's contract option had expired by then. Instead she was signed by Universal, who renamed her Deanna.

  She made many musicals in the 1930's and '40's. Supposedly her movies were so successful that they saved Universal from bankruptcy. She was so popular that there were paper dolls and other products made with her name and image on them. Ideal made several Deanna Durbin dolls. 

You can see that the doll in blue and white still has it's original tag, with Durbin's picture on it.

  The doll is from 1938. She's 21 inches tall, and is wearing her original dress. The smaller doll to the left, in pink and purple, is also a Deanna Durbin doll. As was the practice at the time, the dolls would also have originally had a pin like this one.

The larger doll has six teeth and a felt tongue in her open mouth. Her eyes are sleep eyes with hair lashes.

 

This Deanna Durbin doll, (on the right), also by Ideal, from 1938, is a smaller size, but the dolls also came in several sizes, as large as 24 inches tall.

  The Deanna Durbin doll at the back, left, is very large.

   In 1936, at the age of 15, she auditioned to be the voice of Snow White. She didn't get the role, because Walt Disney thought her voice was 'too old'! It must have been pretty advanced, because that year she was also offered an audition by the Metropolitan Opera. She felt she needed more voice lessons and didn't accept. In 1938 she won a Juvenile Oscar. (You can read my post about Juvenile Oscars HERE. ) She wanted to make more serious movies as she grew older, btu the public preferred her in musicals. In 1946 she was the second highest paid woman in the country, after Bette Davis. She was married three times, and after marrying her third husband she retired in 1949, and moved to a farm in the countryside near Paris. She lived the rest of her life there, and died in 2013, at the age of 91.

  Those are today's doll. See you again tomorrow.