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Kerr was the only person who was ever nominated for six Best Actress Academy Award nominations and lost them all (although Thelma Ritter had six Best Supporting Actress nods), but she was justifiably rewarded with a career achievement Oscar in 1994. Her acting Oscar noms were for EDWARD MY SON (1949), FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953), THE KING AND I (1956), HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON, SEPARATE TABLES (1958) AND THE SUNDOWNERS (1960).

During her highly successful 46-year career, Kerr received nine other major awards and 17 additional nominations for 12 of her 53 movies and TV projects, as well as several important stage honors. Three of her four BAFTA Best British Actress were for THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1955), TEA AND SYMPATHY (1956) and THE CHALK GARDEN (1964). She was nominated for the Best Female Performance Golden Laurel Award for THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964) earned the 1947 New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Award for BLACK NARCISSUS and I SEE A DARK STRANGER. Near the end of her career, Kerr was nominated for the 1985 Best Supporting Actress Emmy Award for A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE.

Kerr performed several foreign accents flawlessly in her films, including American, Irish and Scottish. 

To accurately recommend our five favorite Kerr films to you, we recently had the pleasure of watching (or re-watching) 15 of them, ranging from dramas to tear-jerkers to comedies Some of the films were better than others, but Deborah Kerr was always fascinating in them, bringing great feeling, detail and nuance to all her work.

Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer was born in Helensburgh, Scotland on September 30, 1921, the daughter of Kathleen Smale and Arthur Kerr-Trimmer, a naval architect and civil engineer who, as a soldier, had been gassed in World War I. An insecure, shy child, she gained confidence by staging and performing plays for her family. She originally trained as a ballet dancer, performing at Sadler’s Wells in 1938. Deborah also trained at a Bristol drama school run by her aunt. After appearing on stage and reading children’s stories on the BBC, Kerr signed a contract with legendary British director Michael Powell, who described her as “a plump little dumpling who was obviously going places.” Powell initially cast her as a hat-check girl in CONTRABAND, but her two-line role was cut from the final film. 

Kerr gained notice by playing three roles in Powell’s delightful 1942 movie THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP. According to Hollywood legend, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer saw her in BLIMP during its 1945 American run and exclaimed, “That girl’s a star; get her!”

Mayer brought her and first husband Anthony Bartley to Hollywood, where she played a society widow opposite Clark Gable in THE HUCKSTERS, which was quite successful. Her third American role, as the alcoholic wife of Spencer Tracey in EDWARD, MY SON (1949), earned her first Oscar nom.

 
In many of her first 30 roles, Kerr played cool, dignified, proper, reserved English ladies, whom Sir Laurence Olivier called “unreasonably chaste.” She once reflected, “I wore a halo of decorum and was just about as exciting as any oyster.“

But in 1953 she changed agents, and her new guy, Bert Allenberg, told her, “Deborah, for years now you’ve been playing the insipid English virgin, but I think I can get you the kind of roles you ought to have.”

The torrid, prone, full-body embrace and kiss between Kerr and Lancaster, amid pounding Hawaiian surf, became one of the most memorable (and most copied and spoofed) scenes in film history. It was so daring for the period that parts of it were snipped from the movie. “I don’t think anyone knew I could act until I put on a bathing suit,” Kerr later quipped.

I (Alan) thought the film was excellent and that it holds up well in 2008, even in today’s very different moral climate. There are fine Oscar-nominated performances by Kerr, Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra (who won best supporting actor) and Donna Reed (who took the supporting actress statuette). Daniel Taradasch’s Oscar and WGA award-winning script is excellent. And Ernest Borgnine makes a very creepy villain. 

I (Sharon) agree that FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is still a powerful film, and the passionate beach scene still sizzles. Kerr is surprisingly good as a sexy blonde, but the film really centers on Lancaster and Clift. 

Brynner, who had played the king of Siam on Broadway for four years, insisted on Kerr for the female lead onscreen. Although her songs were actually dubbed by Marni Nixon (who also did Audrey Hepburn’ tunes in MY FAIR LADY and Natalie Woods’ in WEST SIDE STORY), Kerr was magical in the role for which she has always been best remembered. The film justifiably remains one of the all-time boxoffice champs.

(Alan): I loved this wonderful musical at age 11 and went around the house singing the songs--particularly “Something Wonderful” and “It’s a Puzzlement.” Watching it 51 years later, I was again dazzled by its colorful spectacle, magnificent music and fine performances by Kerr and Brynner

(Sharon): I couldn’t agree more. I loved it! It’s beautiful and touching in every way, and so are Kerr’s and Brynner’s performances.

Back in 1954, Kerr had starred on Broadway in Robert Anderson’s highly praised play TEA AND SYMPATHY, winning the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance, and she successfully reprised the role of a schoolmaster’s wife who leads an insecure boy (John Kerr--no relation) into manhood in Vincente Minelli’s film two years later, earning a BAFTA Best Actress nom.

(Sharon): TEA AND SYMPATHY is one of my favorite Kerr films, and it’s one I’ve always remembered. The subject of a sensitive young boy being persecuted by jocks because he’s not macho enough is as compelling today as it was in the ‘50s. Kerr plays a wife neglected by her athlete husband. She feels sympathy for the mistreated boy, then finally beds him, saying the line that became famous: “Years from now, when you talk about this--and you will--be kind” She ends up leaving her husband. This was groundbreaking territory for women of that era.

“I suppose the part nearest me is Laura Reynolds in TEA AND SYMPATHY,” Kerr once said. “Of course playwright Bob Anderson didn't know it, but Laura Reynolds happened to be me. This was the ideal coming together of a part and an actress: the same attitude to life, a certain shyness and a deep compassion for people who are being persecuted for anything.”

Kerr was Oscar-nominated and won her second New York Film Critics award as a nun stranded on a Pacific island with marine Robert Mitchum in 1957’s HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON. When filming started, Mitchum feared that Kerr would be too much like the prim characters she’d often played before, until she swore at director John Huston--and Mitchum laughed so much he almost drowned.

Kerr earned her final Oscar nom for one of her greatest performances, as the matriarch of an Australian sheep-driving and -shearing family, in THE SUNDOWNERS (1960), once again alongside Mitchum. She performed the tough, earthy role entirely without makeup, revealing her great natural beauty. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and took three other major honors.

(Alan): Kerr, Mitchum, Peter Ustinov and Oscar-nom Glynis Johns were terrific in this rich, surprising epic shot in great Aussie locales. It was both poignant and funny, with lots of engaging minor characters and a good script by Isobel Lennart (FUNNY GIRL). 

(Sharon): I was surprised at how detailed and insightful a film about Australian sheep drivers could be! The strong performers make it very entertaining, especially Kerr as the stern but loving wife who holds the family together.

Kerr worked steadily throughout the 1960s, but often in secondary roles, such as the wife. After 1969’s THE ARRANGEMENT flopped, she retired from the screen and moved to Switzerland. She continued to work in television and on stage, however, until 1986.

In 1994, three years after accepting a special BAFTA Award, Deborah made her final public appearance, accepting a Career Achievement Oscar from Glenn Close. After the audience was treated to a montage of her movies, a frail Kerr emerged from behind the screen to a standing ovation from her peers. 

“I have never been so terrified in my life,” she declared, “but I feel better now, because I know I am among friends. Thank you for giving me a happy life.”

From 1992 until her death, Deborah Kerr was the patron of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection.

In 2002, it was announced that she was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Her fans sent her tons of supportive letters, and later her doctors declared that this massive outpouring of love had slowed her degeneration.

Deborah Kerr died at age 86 in Suffolk, England on October 16, 2007. She was one of the most beloved and respected actresses of the second half of the 20th Century, and, happily, many examples of her rare talent exist in her movies.

TWO KERR QUOTES

“When I was under contract to MGM, the cinema’s job was solely entertainment, and it served that public need. Now the cinema functions as psychiatrist, politician, message maker, money maker and, incidentally, entertainer. But I suppose it’s no good regretting that things are different.” (1969).

“All the most successful people seem to be neurotic. Perhaps we should stop being sorry for them and start being sorry for me--for being so confounded normal.”

© Alan Waldman and Sharon Waldman (February 3, 2008)

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