A NEW DEANNA DURBIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1939, Page 7

A NEW DEANNA DURBIN

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE

Quite as important as Shakespeare’s seven ages in the life of man are the several stages in feminine adolescence —that is, in the growing up of a young girl. Someone has written that there is nothing more beautiful in life than the spectacle of a maid "thrilling in response to the immemorial charm of her sex." If this is true, it is fair to add that no actress in film life has done more to present, in beautiful tones, this spectacle of feminine adolescence, than has Deanna Durbin. At the age of sixteen she can look buck on five pictures built round her radiant personality, all of them concerned with that commonest of all occurrences, a girl growing up: and from this every-day (not always wonderful) material she and her pic-ture-makers have built up stories that have fur more human appeal than have film fantasies of the ordinary exotic or erotic class. It is true, of course. that the young girl romp whom fathers and mothers loved —the, Deanna, for instance, of "A Hundred Men and a Girl”--is slipping away ' from us. She is slipping away, becausej Deanna continues to grow up. which she cannot help doing. But even in this fifth picture—" Three Smart Girls Grow Up." she still has not reached the stage of mad. passionate love; she I merely figures as the arranger, or dis- | arranger, of her two sisters' love af- i fairs.

In her singing capacity she is heard several times in the picture, notably in Weber’s "Invitation to the Dance" and "The Last Rose of Summer"—the old sentimental favourite. which draws tears even from her sharegambling. "live-wire" father. New photographic methods are used in "Three Smart Girls Grow Up." along with a new make-up. The effort is to make the close-ups of faces very candid —some people will say too candid. The girls appear yellowy and large, certainly not willowy and petite. As in "Three Smart Girls," Nan Grey is one of the three sisters: the other sister is Helen Parrish. Nella Walker and Ernest Cossart are again mother and butler, much as in "Three Smart Girls," and the direction is the same.