 |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
News
|
|||
|
News
|
Dateline: 18th October, 2007
Deborah Kerr (1921 - 2007) Actress Deborah Kerr died on Tuesday 16th October at the age of 86. She had lived in Switzerland since 1960 and, some years ago, was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. When her condition worsened, she moved back to England, to Surrey, to be near to her family. She was born Deborah Jane Kerr Trimmer in Helensburgh in Argyll and Bute on the orthern shore of the Firth of Clyde. When she was a child, the family moved to the south of England and she was sent to a boarding school in Bristol. She had always been keen on performance and took ballet lessons but realised that she was too tall to dance professionally and changed to acting. Her first professional parts were at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park where she was spotted by film director Robert Atkins and talent scout John Gliddon, and she was offered a five year film contract in 1939. She was offered the part of Jenny Hill in the film of Shaw's Major Barbara. The director Gabriel Pascal suggested that she should bet more acting experience and so she worked for a while at the Oxford Playhouse. Major Barbara began filming in 1940 and was released in 1941. Love On the Dole followed the same year, followed by the lead in Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and then she appeared in Black Narcissus in 1947, the film that made her an international star. She still made the occasional stage appearance, including a six onth run in Shaw's Heartbreak House with Robert Donat and Edith Evans and in 1954 appeared on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy for which she won the Sarah Siddons Award for Best Actress. She reprised the role on film two years later. She is possibly best known for From Here to Eternity, in which she had a very (for the time) torrid love scene with Burt Lancaster, and The King and I, where she played opposite Yul Brynner, although she did not sing. All in all, she appeared in 51 films and was Oscar-nominated six times, finally receiving an honorary award in 1994. She was also nominated for four BAFTAs, one Emmy and five Golden Globes, winning two. She also won three New York Film Critics Circle Awards. She was made a CBE in 1997.
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
|
||
|
|
