THE AMAZING MRS. HOLLIDAY
(Universal)
HIS new Deanna Durbin film seems to offer an exception to the rule of Nature mentioned above: that as
young things grow up they lose some of their charm, You might expect this rule to apply even more to a Hollywood starlet than to a Disney drawing: yet here is Deanna back on the screen after nearly two years’ absence, and in the interim she’s got married (am I right in saying that she’s also had a baby?); and to my mind she’s still as unspoiled and as charming as when she was frolicking around as the youngest of the Three Smart Girls. Of course she’s changed; there’s a touch of responsibility and gravity ‘about her now; but I know of no other actress, or actor either, for that. matter, .who has so successfully bridged the gap between childhood and maturity. This is a tribute to her own character; it is also a tribute to whoever had charge of her early training and who engrained in her then a sense of what is good taste and what. is bad. Fame, fortune, and adultation have, therefore, not been able to turn her head and spoil her manners. So, although The Amazing Mrs. Holliday isn’t an important film, it is an exceedingly pleasant one. It’s about a young school teacher in China who salvages a collection of war orphans and brings them to America, after having survived torpedoing in the Pacific. In order to keep her flock together under her motherly eye and get them past the immigration authorities, she pretends to be the widow of the wealthy old commodore of the ship that was sunk. Eventually, the old commodore himself, who wasn’t really drowned, turns up, but he, too, succumbs as readily as nearly everybody else to the charm and obvious sincerity of the impostor, adopts the orphans and bestows his blessing on the marriage of Deanna and. his grandson, I have heard it complained that Deanna doesn’t sing as much as in some of her other films. Perhaps there isn’t the quantity, but the quality of the singing is as good as ever; nothing very difficult or spectacular; mostly simple melodies, such as "Mighty Lak.a Rose" and "The Old Refrain," delivered simply and melodiously,
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19431015.2.46.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 225, 15 October 1943, Page 21
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379THE AMAZING MRS. HOLLIDAY New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 225, 15 October 1943, Page 21
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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