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1 article from 2007

18 October 2007 | IMDb News

Deborah Kerr, the elegant, red-headed actress best known for her roles in The King and I and From Here to Eternity, died Tuesday (10/16) of Parkinson's disease in Suffolk, England. She was 86. Kerr was born in Scotland in 1921. A former ballet dancer, she acted on the stage as well but was quickly put before the cameras. She was 20 when she was cast in a supporting part in Major Barbara, opposite Rex Harrison and multiple roles in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp as Blimp's (and the directors') ideal woman. Her next role for Powell, a lead part as a Catholic nun in Black Narcissus five years later, made her a star and got the attention of Hollywood. On contract with MGM, she was often cast as a refined paragon of womanly virtue, appearing as the virtuous Lygia in Quo Vadis?, the headstrong Beth in King Solomon's Mines, and Portia, the noble wife of the equally noble Brutus (James Mason) in Julius Caesar. Kerr went decidedly against that typecasting when she landed the part of the adulterous Karen Holmes, who has an affair with one of her husband's subordinates, played by Burt Lancaster, in 1953's From Here to Eternity. Kerr and Lancaster's lusty beachside romp, one so intense that they seem oblivious to the pounding waves about them, became one of the most notorious and famous kisses in movie history, perhaps all the more so due to Kerr's established image of reserve and civility. She went on to return to that image in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's musical The King and I. Marni Nixon was dubbed in for Ms. Kerr's singing voice, but it was all Deborah filling the screen as the prim but level-headed Anna Leonowens. The film was a smashing success and earned nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Though her co-star, Yul Brynner won for Best Actor, Kerr was not to win for Best Actress (that went to Ingrid Bergman for Anastasia). Indeed Kerr was never to win an acting Oscar though she was nominated six times in twelve years. Kerr followed King with more memorable roles, including Terry McKay, the vibrant, witty woman with whom Cary Grant has An Affair to Remember, the matriarch of an Australian family of sheep-drovers in The Sundowners, a nun again, shipwrecked with a hard-living Marine (Robert Mitchum) in Heaven Knows, Mr. Alison, and a governess utterly unable to comprehend her charges in The Innocents. Kerr acted sporadically thereafter and moved to Switzerland for many years before returning to the UK in the face of her illness. Married twice, she is survived by her second husband, screenwriter Peter Viertel, two children from her first marriage, and three grandchildren. In 1994 she received an honorary Oscar for being "An artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance." -Keith Simanton, IMDb

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1 article from 2007