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Deborah Kerr

Deborah Kerr in colour Allan Warren.jpg
Kerr in 1973, by Allan Warren
Born
Deborah Jane Trimmer

(1921-09-30)30 September 1921
Hillhead, Glasgow, Scotland
Died 16 October 2007(2007-10-16) (aged 86)
Botesdale, Suffolk, England
Resting place Alfold Cemetery, Alfold, near Guildford, Surrey, England
Occupation Actress
Years active 1937–1986
Known for The King and I
From Here to Eternity
An Affair to Remember
Tea and Sympathy
Separate Tables
Black Narcissus
The Innocents
The Sundowners
Spouse(s)
(m. 1945; div. 1959)

(m. 1960)
Children 2
Relatives Lex Shrapnel (grandson)

Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE (30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007), known professionally as Deborah Kerr (/kɑːr/), was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

During her international film career, Kerr won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Anna Leonowens in the musical film The King and I (1956). Her other major and best known films and performances are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1947), Quo Vadis (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953), Tea and Sympathy (1956), An Affair to Remember (1957), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Separate Tables (1958), The Sundowners (1960), The Innocents (1961), The Grass Is Greener (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1964).

In 1994, having already received honorary awards from the Cannes Film Festival and BAFTA, Kerr received an Academy Honorary Award with a citation recognizing her as "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance".

Early life

Deborah Jane Trimmer was born on 30 September 1921 in Hillhead, Glasgow, the only daughter of Kathleen Rose (née Smale) and Capt. Arthur Charles Kerr Trimmer, a World War I veteran and pilot who lost a leg at the Battle of the Somme and later became a naval architect and civil engineer. Trimmer and Smale married, both aged 28, on 21 August 1919 in Smale's hometown of Lydney, Gloucestershire.

Young Deborah spent the first three years of her life in the west coast town of Helensburgh, where her parents lived with Deborah's grandparents in a house on West King Street. Kerr had a younger brother, Edmund ("Teddy"), who became a journalist. He died, aged 78, in a road rage incident in 2004.

Kerr was educated at the independent Northumberland House School, Henleaze in Bristol, and at Rossholme School, Weston-super-Mare. Kerr originally trained as a ballet dancer, first appearing on stage at Sadler's Wells in 1938. After changing careers, she soon found success as an actress. Her first acting teacher was her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who worked at a drama school in Bristol run by Lally Cuthbert Hicks. She adopted the name Deborah Kerr on becoming a film actress ("Kerr" was a family name going back to the maternal grandmother of her grandfather Arthur Kerr Trimmer).

Early career

Early theatre and film

Kerr's first stage appearance was at Weston-super-Mare in 1937, as "Harlequin" in the mime play Harlequin and Columbine. She then went to the Sadler's Wells ballet school and in 1938 made her début in the corps de ballet in Prometheus. After various walk-on parts in Shakespeare productions at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London, she joined the Oxford Playhouse repertory company in 1940, playing, inter alia, "Margaret" in Dear Brutus and "Patty Moss" in The Two Bouquets.

Kerr's first film role was in the British production Contraband (US: Blackout, 1940), aged 18 or 19, but her scenes were cut. She had a strong support role in Major Barbara (1941) directed by Gabriel Pascal.

Film stardom

Kerr became known playing the lead role in the film of Love on the Dole (1941). Said critic James Agate of Love on the Dole, "is not within a mile of Wendy Hiller's in the theatre, but it is a charming piece of work by a very pretty and promising beginner, so pretty and so promising that there is the usual yapping about a new star".

She was the female lead in Penn of Pennsylvania (1941) which was little seen; however Hatter's Castle (1942), in which she starred with Robert Newton and James Mason, was very successful. She played a Norwegian resistance fighter in The Day Will Dawn (1942). She was an immediate hit with the public: an American film trade paper reported in 1942 that she was the most popular British actress with Americans.

Kerr played three women in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). During the filming, according to Powell's autobiography, Powell and she became lovers: "I realised that Deborah was both the ideal and the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for". Kerr made clear that her surname should be pronounced the same as "car". To avoid confusion over pronunciation, Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer billed her as "Kerr rhymes with Star!" Although the British Army refused to co-operate with the producers—and Winston Churchill thought the film would ruin wartime morale—Colonel Blimp confounded critics when it proved to be an artistic and commercial success.

Powell hoped to reunite Kerr and lead actor Roger Livesey in his next film, A Canterbury Tale (1944), but her agent had sold her contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. According to Powell, his affair with Kerr ended when she made it clear to him that she would accept an offer to go to Hollywood if one were made.

In 1943, aged 21, Kerr made her West End début as Ellie Dunn in a revival of Heartbreak House at the Cambridge Theatre, stealing attention from stalwarts such as Edith Evans and Isabel Jeans. "She has the rare gift", wrote critic Beverley Baxter, "of thinking her lines, not merely remembering them. The process of development from a romantic, silly girl to a hard, disillusioned woman in three hours was moving and convincing".

Near the end of the Second World War, she also toured Holland, France, and Belgium for ENSA as Mrs Manningham in Gaslight (retitled Angel Street), and Britain (with Stewart Granger).

Alexander Korda cast her opposite Robert Donat in Perfect Strangers (1945). The film was a big hit in Britain. So too was the spy comedy drama I See a Dark Stranger (1946), in which she gave a breezy, amusing performance that dominated the action and overshadowed her co-star Trevor Howard. This film was a production of the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat.

Her role as a troubled nun in the Powell and Pressburger production of Black Narcissus (1947) brought her to the attention of Hollywood producers. The film was a hit in the US, as well as the UK, and Kerr won the New York Film Critics Award as Actress of the Year. British exhibitors voted her the eighth-most popular local star at the box-office in 1947. She relocated to Hollywood and was under contract to MGM.

Hollywood

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Deborah Kerr in Young Bess trailer
Kerr in Young Bess (1953)

Kerr's first film for MGM in Hollywood was a mature satire of the burgeoning advertising industry, The Hucksters (1947) with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. She and Walter Pidgeon were cast in If Winter Comes (1947). She received the first of her Oscar nominations for Edward, My Son (1949), a drama set and filmed in England co-starring Spencer Tracy.

In Hollywood, Kerr's British accent and manner led to a succession of roles portraying refined, reserved, and "proper" English ladies. Kerr, nevertheless, used any opportunity to discard her cool exterior. She had the lead in a comedy Please Believe Me (1950).

Kerr appeared in two huge hits for MGM in a row. King Solomon's Mines (1950) was shot on location in Africa with Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson. This was immediately followed by her appearance in the religious epic Quo Vadis (1951), shot at Cinecittà in Rome, in which she played the indomitable Lygia, a first-century Christian.

She then played Princess Flavia in a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) with Granger and Mason. In between Paramount borrowed her to appear in Thunder in the East (1951) with Alan Ladd.

In 1953, Kerr "showed her theatrical mettle" as Portia in Joseph Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar. She made Young Bess (1953) with Granger and Jean Simmons, then appeared alongside Cary Grant in Dream Wife (1953), a flop comedy.

From Here to Eternity and Broadway

Kerr departed from typecasting with a performance that brought out her sensuality, as "Karen Holmes", the embittered military wife in Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity (1953), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The American Film Institute acknowledged the iconic status of the scene from that film in which Burt Lancaster and she romped illicitly and passionately amidst crashing waves on a Hawaiian beach. The organisation ranked it 20th in its list of the 100 most romantic films of all time.

Having established herself as a film actress in the meantime, she made her Broadway debut in 1953, appearing in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Kerr performed the same role in Vincente Minnelli's film adaptation released in 1956; her stage partner John Kerr (no relation) also appeared. In 1955, Kerr won the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago during a national tour of the play. After her Broadway début in 1953, she toured the United States with Tea and Sympathy.

Peak years of stardom

Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember trailer
Kerr in An Affair to Remember (1957)
Robert Mitchum Deborah Kerr Heaven Knows Mr. Allison 1957 (cropped)
With Robert Mitchum in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Thereafter, Kerr's career choices would make her known in Hollywood for her versatility as an actress. She played the repressed wife in The End of the Affair (1955), shot in England with Van Johnson. She was a widow in love with William Holden in The Proud and Profane (1956), directed by George Seaton. Neither film was much of a hit. However Kerr then played Anna Leonowens in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I (1956); with Yul Brynner in the lead, it was a huge hit. Marni Nixon dubbed Kerr's singing voice.

She played a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) opposite her long-time friend Robert Mitchum, directed by John Huston. It was very popular as was An Affair to Remember (1957) opposite Cary Grant.

Kerr starred in two films with David Niven: Bonjour Tristesse (1958), directed by Otto Preminger, and Separate Tables (1958), directed by Delbert Mann; the latter movie was particularly well received.

She made two films at MGM: The Journey (1959) reunited her with Brynner; Count Your Blessings (1959), was a comedy. Both flopped, as did Beloved Infidel (1959) with Gregory Peck.

Later films

Deborah Kerr 4
Kerr in The Sundowners (1960)

Kerr was reunited with Mitchum in The Sundowners (1960) shot in Australia, then The Grass Is Greener (1960), co-starring Cary Grant. She appeared in Gary Cooper's last film The Naked Edge (1961) and starred in The Innocents (1961) where she plays a governess tormented by apparitions.

Kerr made her British TV debut in "Three Roads to Rome" (1963). She was another governess in The Chalk Garden (1964) and worked with John Huston again in The Night of the Iguana (1964).

She joined Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in a love triangle for a romantic comedy, Marriage on the Rocks (1965).

In 1965, the producers of Carry On Screaming! offered her a fee comparable to that paid to the rest of the cast combined, but she turned it down in favour of appearing in an aborted stage version of Flowers for Algernon. She replaced Kim Novak in Eye of the Devil (1966) with Niven, and was reteamed with Niven in the comedy Casino Royale (1967), achieving the distinction of being, at 45, the oldest "Bond Girl" in any James Bond film, until Monica Bellucci, at the age of 50, in Spectre (2015). Casino Royale was a hit as was another movie she made with Niven, Prudence and the Pill (1968).

She made The Arrangement (1969) with Elia Kazan, her director from the stage production of Tea and Sympathy. She returned to the cinema one more time in 1985's The Assam Garden.

Theatre

She abandoned the medium at the end of the 1960s, with one exception in 1985, in favour of television and theatre work.

Kerr returned to the London stage in many productions including the old-fashioned, The Day After the Fair (Lyric, 1972), a Peter Ustinov comedy, Overheard (Haymarket, 1981) and a revival of Emlyn Williams's The Corn is Green. After her first London success in 1943, she toured England and Scotland in Heartbreak House.

In 1975, she returned to Broadway, creating the role of Nancy in Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape.

In 1977, she came back to the West End, playing the title role in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida.

Television

Kerr experienced a career resurgence on television in the early 1980s when she played the role of the nurse (played by Elsa Lanchester in the 1957 film of the same name) in Witness for the Prosecution, with Sir Ralph Richardson. She also did A Song at Twilight (1982).

She took on the role of the older Emma Harte, a tycoon, in the adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance (1984). For this performance, Kerr was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Kerr rejoined old screen partner Mitchum in Reunion at Fairborough (1985). Other TV roles included Ann and Debbie (1986) and Hold the Dream (1986), the latter a sequel to A Woman of Substance.

Personal life

Kerr's first marriage was to Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley RAF on 29 November 1945. They had two daughters, Melanie Jane (born 27 December 1947) and Francesca Ann (born 18 December 1951, who married to the actor John Shrapnel). The marriage was troubled, owing to Bartley's envy of his wife's fame and financial success, and because her career often took her away from home. They divorced in 1959.

Her second marriage was to author Peter Viertel on 23 July 1960. In marrying Viertel, she became stepmother to Viertel's daughter, Christine Viertel. Although she long resided in Klosters, Switzerland, and Marbella, Spain, Kerr moved back to Britain to be closer to her own children as her health began to deteriorate. Her husband, however, continued to live in Marbella.

Death

The grave of Deborah Kerr, Alfold churchyard in Surrey
The grave of Deborah Kerr, Alfold churchyard in Surrey

Kerr died aged 86 on 16 October 2007 at Botesdale, a village in the county of Suffolk, England, from the effects of Parkinson's disease. She is buried in a family plot at Alfold Cemetery, Alfold, Surrey.

Within three weeks of her death, her husband Peter Viertel died of cancer on 4 November. At the time of Viertel's death, director Michael Scheingraber was filming the documentary Peter Viertel: Between the Lines, which includes reminiscences concerning Kerr and the Academy Awards.

Work

Film

Year Title Role Director Notes
1940 Contraband Cigarette Girl Michael Powell scenes deleted
1941 Major Barbara Jenny Hill Gabriel Pascal
Love on the Dole Sally Hardcastle John Baxter
1942 Penn of Pennsylvania Gulielma Maria Springett Lance Comfort
Hatter's Castle Mary Brodie
The Day Will Dawn Kari Alstad Harold French
A Battle for a Bottle Linda (voice) animated short
1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Edith Hunter
Barbara Wynne
Johnny Cannon
Powell and Pressburger
1945 Perfect Strangers Catherine Wilson Alexander Korda
1946 I See a Dark Stranger Bridie Quilty Frank Launder
1947 Black Narcissus Sister Clodagh Powell and Pressburger
The Hucksters Kay Dorrance Jack Conway
If Winter Comes Nona Tybar Victor Saville
1949 Edward, My Son Evelyn Boult George Cukor
1950 Please Believe Me Alison Kirbe Norman Taurog
King Solomon's Mines Elizabeth Curtis Compton Bennett
Andrew Marton
1951 Quo Vadis Lygia Mervyn LeRoy
1952 Thunder in the East Joan Willoughby Charles Vidor
The Prisoner of Zenda Princess Flavia Richard Thorpe
1953 Julius Caesar Portia Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Young Bess Catherine Parr George Sidney
Dream Wife Effie Sidney Sheldon
From Here to Eternity Karen Holmes Fred Zinnemann
1955 The End of the Affair Sarah Miles Edward Dmytryk
1956 The Proud and Profane Lee Ashley George Seaton
The King and I Anna Leonowens Walter Lang singing dubbed by Marni Nixon
Tea and Sympathy Laura Reynolds Vincent Minnelli
1957 Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Sister Angela John Huston
An Affair to Remember Terry McKay Leo McCarey
1958 Bonjour Tristesse Anne Larson Otto Preminger
Separate Tables Sibyl Railton-Bell Delbert Mann
1959 The Journey Diana Ashmore Anatole Litvak
Count Your Blessings Grace Allingham Jean Negulesco
Beloved Infidel Sheilah Graham Henry King
1960 The Sundowners Ida Carmody Fred Zinnemann
The Grass Is Greener Lady Hilary Rhyall Stanley Donen
1961 The Naked Edge Martha Radcliffe Michael Anderson
The Innocents Miss Giddens Jack Clayton
1964 The Chalk Garden Miss Madrigal Ronald Neame
The Night of the Iguana Hannah Jelkes John Huston
1965 Marriage on the Rocks Valerie Edwards John Donohue
1966 Eye of the Devil Catherine de Montfaucon J. Lee Thompson
1967 Casino Royale Agent Mimi/Lady Fiona McTarry John Huston
Val Guest
1968 Prudence and the Pill Prudence Hardcastle Fielder Cook
1969 The Gypsy Moths Elizabeth Brandon John Frankenheimer
The Arrangement Florence Anderson Elia Kazan
1985 The Assam Garden Helen Graham Mary McMurray

Television

Year Title Role Notes
1963 ITV Play of the Week Moira Episode: Three Roads to Rome
1982 BBC2 Playhouse Carlotta Gray Episode: A Song at Twilight
1982 Witness for the Prosecution Nurse Plimsoll Television movie
1984 A Woman of Substance Emma Harte Miniseries
1985 Reunion at Fairborough Sally Wells Grant Television movie
1986 Annie and Debbie Ann Television movie
1986 Hold the Dream Emma Harte Miniseries

Theatre

Year Title Role Venue
1943 Heartbreak House Ellie Dunn Cambridge Theatre, London
1953 Tea and Sympathy Laura Reynolds Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York City
1972 The Day After the Fair Edith Lyric Theatre, London
1975 Seascape Nancy Shubert Theatre, New York City
1977 Long Day's Journey into Night Mary Tyrone Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles
1977 Candida Candida Albery Theatre, London
1978 The Last of Mrs. Cheyney Mrs. Cheyney Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center, Washington DC
1981 Overheard Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
1985 The Corn is Green Miss Moffat The Old Vic, London

Radio

Year Program Episode/Source
1944 A Date with Nurse Dugdale BBC Home Service, 19 May 1944.
Guest star role in the penultimate episode.
1952 Lux Radio Theatre King Solomon's Mines
1952 Hallmark Playhouse The Pleasant Lea
1952 Hollywood Sound Stage Michael and Mary
1952 Suspense The Colonel's Lady
1952 Hollywood Star Playhouse Companion Wanted

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

Year Category Work Result
1950 Best Actress Edward, My Son Nominated
1954 From Here to Eternity Nominated
1957 The King and I Nominated
1958 Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Nominated
1959 Separate Tables Nominated
1961 The Sundowners Nominated
1994 Honorary Oscar -- Won

She is tied with Thelma Ritter and Amy Adams as the actresses with the second most nominations without winning, surpassed only by Glenn Close, who has been nominated eight times without winning.

British Academy Film Awards

Year Category Work Result
1956 Best British Actress The End of the Affair Nominated
1958 Tea and Sympathy Nominated
1962 The Sundowners Nominated
1965 The Chalk Garden Nominated
1991 Special Award -- Won

Primetime Emmy Awards

Year Category Work Result
1985 Outstanding Supporting Actress - Limited Series A Woman of Substance Nominated

Golden Globe Awards

Year Category Work Result
1950 Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Edward, My Son Nominated
1957 Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy The King and I Won
1958 Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Nominated
1959 Separate Tables Nominated
Henrietta Award (World Film Favorite) -- Won

NYFCC Awards

Year Category Work Result
1946 Best Actress The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Love on the Dole Nominated
1947 Black Narcissus, I See a Dark Stranger Won
1956 The King and I, Tea and Sympathy Nominated
1957 Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Won
1960 The Sundowners Won

Honours

Deborah Kerr Star HWF
Kerr's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1709 Vine Street

Kerr was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1998, but was unable to accept the honour in person because of ill health. She was also honoured in Hollywood, where she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1709 Vine Street for her contributions to the motion picture industry.

Although nominated six times as Best Actress, Kerr never won a competitive Oscar. In 1994, Glenn Close presented Kerr with the Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement with a citation recognising her as "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance".

Kerr won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy" for The King and I in 1957 and a Henrietta Award for "World Film Favorite – Female". She was the first performer to win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Best Actress" three times (1947, 1957 and 1960).

Although she never won a BAFTA or Cannes Film Festival award in a competitive category, both organisations gave Kerr honorary awards: a Cannes Film Festival Tribute in 1984 and a BAFTA Special Award in 1991.

In September and October 2010, Josephine Botting of the British Film Institute curated the "Deborah Kerr Season", which included around twenty of her feature films and an exhibition of posters, memorabilia and personal items loaned by her family.

In September 2021, Kerr's grandsons, Joe and Lex Shrapnel, unveiled a memorial plaque at the former family home in Weston-super-Mare.

On 30 September 2021, on what would have been Kerr's one hundredth birthday, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Philip Braat, unveiled a memorial plaque in Ruskin Terrace, on the site of the nursing home where Kerr was born.

See also

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