Best of Deborah Kerr - page 2

21-11-2008 10:17

From Here to Eternity

For many when you think Deborah Kerr you think From Here to Eternity and the iconic kiss with Burt Lancaster on the beach.

Based on the novel by James Jones the film follows the loves, hopes and dreams of those in a close-knit Army barracks in Hawaii shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Montgomery Clift portrays a former boxer who refuses to fight after blinding a friend in the ring and is sent to the remote outpost as punishment for his insubordination. Love and tragedy abound in this unflattering look at military life and American thought before the war.

The film was nominating thirteen Oscars winning eight, including Best Picture and Best Director. Despite the rave reviews the film received there was some controversy and explicit novel had to be considerably toned down to appease the censors of the time. For example, in the famous beach scene, it is less obvious that Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster's characters have actually been having sex.

King and I

The King and I was another of her more famous roles, and a personal fave, as she took on the part of Anna Leonowens opposite Yul Brynner's King of Siam.

Rogers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical, adapted from Margaret Landon's fact-based novel made it to the big screen in 1956.

It tells the true story of an English woman, Anna Leonowens, who comes to Siam as schoolteacher to the royal court in the 1860s. Though she soon finds herself at odds with the stubborn monarch, over time Anna and the King stop trying to change each other and begin to understand one another.

Over the years it has become one of the most loved musicals and with it's great opening reviews it went on to it went on to be nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, and winning five, including best Actor for Yul Brynner but Kerr missed out on Best Actress.

Seperate Tables

The 1958 movie Separate Tables was the film version of Terence Rattigan's 1955 West End hit features a stellar ensemble cast. The film follows the interplay of a group of lonely characters who are staying at a slightly shabby seaside hotel in Bournemouth.

The term "separate tables" refers to the practice of seating single guests at their own tables in the dining room, and serves as a metaphor for the characters' fear of intimacy.

Major Pollack (David Niven) is a retired officer who likes to wax eloquent about fanciful acts of heroism in WWII North Africa, and Sybil Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr) is a repressed spinster boxed in by an oppressive mother (Gladys Cooper). John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), a cynical, hard-drinking, occasional writer, is surprised by the sudden arrival of his ex-wife Ann (Rita Hayworth).

Though Ann's legendary beauty is dimmed by age, Ann and John both reach tentatively for some human contact.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw