Personal Life
In Paris on December 21, 1950, Deanna Durbin, shortly after turning 29 years old, married Charles David, the producer-director of both French and American pictures who had guided her through Lady on a Train (1945). Durbin and David raised two children: Jessica (from her second marriage to Felix Jackson) and Peter (from her union with David).
Over the years, Durbin has resisted numerous offers to perform again, including MGM's offer to appear in the film versions of Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate (1953) and Sigmund Romberg's operetta The Student Prince (1954). In 1951, Durbin was invited to play in London's West End production of Kiss Me Kate, and was reportedly Alan Jay Lerner's first choice to portray Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 Broadway cast of My Fair Lady. Suggestions that Durbin sing at major Las Vegas casinos also went unfulfilled.
In 1983, film historian David Shipman was granted a rare interview by Durbin. In the interview, she steadfastly asserted her right to privacy and maintains that privacy today, declining to be profiled on Internet websites.
Durbin has made it known that she did not like the Hollywood studio system. She has emphasized that she never identified herself with the public image that the media created around her. She speaks of the Deanna "persona" in the third person and considers the film character Deanna Durbin a by-product of her youth and not her true self.
Durbin's husband of over 48 years, Charles David, died in Paris on March 1, 1999.
Read more about this topic: Deanna Durbin
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Picture the prince, such as most of them are today: a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people’s advantage, while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)