Best of Deborah Kerr

21 November 2008

1Comments | Comment on this Article

Deborah Kerr was one of the greatest talents to ever grace the silver screen, back when stars really were stars, enjoying a career that spanned forty six years.

Appearing in some of cinemas most iconic movies, including From Here to Eternity and The King and I her career saw her receive six Best Actress Academy Awards but never won. So here at FemaleFirst we look back over her impressive career to uncover her best on screen performances.

An Affair to Remember

In this legendary tearjerker, the world's most eligible bachelor (Cary Grant) is set to marry an heiress. But unfortunately for his bride-to-be, while he's travelling alone on a luxury liner he meets Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) and realizes he's engaged to the wrong woman--and she's engaged to the wrong man.

They finally agree to spend six months apart; if they still love each other at the end of that time, they will reunite at the top of the Empire State Building. But the path of true love does not always run smooth, and tragedy threatens to tear the couple apart.

On the day of their rendezvous, Terry is struck by a car and crippled. Nickie waits all the day long, even in the rain. Not wanting to burden him, Terry doesn't contact him, leading him to believe she has changed her mind about their love. The couple remains separated until fate again intervenes.

It may seem a dated story today as two people fall so deeply in love yet wait for six months before they do anything about it but it’s the sentimentality factor and the intervening of fate that makes this such a much loved movie.

Despite being remade, in a way, with Sleepless in Seattle An Affair to Remember still remains one of cinema’s classic love stories.

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).