Trivia: Entertainer Judy Garland was both one of the greatest and one of the most tragic figures in American show business. The daughter of a pushy stage mother, Garland and her sisters were forced into a vaudeville act called the Gumm Sisters (her real name), which appeared in movie shorts and at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. It was clear from the outset that Judy was the star of the act, and, as such, was signed by MGM as a solo performer in 1936. The studio adored Garland's adult-sounding singing but was concerned about her puffy facial features and her curvature of the spine. MGM decided to test both Garland and another teenage contractee, Deanna Durbin, in a musical "swing vs. the classics" short subject entitled Every Sunday (1936). The studio had planned to keep Durbin and drop Garland, but, through a corporate error, the opposite took place. Nevertheless, MGM decided to allow Garland her feature film debut in another studio's production, just in case the positive audience response to Every Sunday was a fluke. Loaned to 20th Century Fox, Garland was ninth-billed in Pigskin Parade (1936), but stole the show with her robust renditions of "Balboa" and "Texas Tornado." Garland returned to MGM in triumph and was given better opportunities to show her stuff: the "Dear Mr. Gable" number in Broadway Melody of 1938, "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart" in Listen, Darling (1938), and so on. When MGM planned to star 20th Century Fox's Shirley Temple in The Wizard of Oz, Garland almost didn't get her most celebrated role, but the deal fell through and she was cast as Dorothy. But even after this, the actress nearly lost her definitive screen moment when the studio decided to cut the song "Over the Rainbow," although finally kept the number after it tested well in previews. The Wizard of Oz made Garland a star, but MGM couldn't see beyond the little-girl image and insisted upon casting her in "Hey, kids, let's put on a show" roles opposite Mickey Rooney (a life-long friend). Garland proved to the world that she was a grown-up by marrying composer David Rose in 1941, after which MGM began giving her adult roles in such films as For Me and My Gal (1942) -- although still her most successful film of the early '40s was in another blushing-teen part in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Once very popular on the set due to her infectious high spirits, in the mid-'40s Garland became moody and irritable, as well as undependable insofar as showing up on time and being prepared. The problem was an increasing dependency upon barbiturates, an addiction allegedly inaugurated in the 1930s when the studio had Garland "pepped up" with prescription pills so that she could work longer hours. Garland also began drinking heavily, and her marriage was deteriorating. In 1945, she married director Vincente Minnelli, with whom she had a daughter, Liza, in 1946. By 1948, Garland's mood swings and suicidal tendencies were getting the better of her, and, in 1950, she had to quit the musical Annie Get Your Gun. That same year, she barely got through Summer Stock, her health problems painfully evident upon viewing the film. Before 1950 was half over, Garland attempted suicide, and, after recovering, was fired by MGM. Garland and Vincente Minnelli divorced in 1951, whereupon she married producer Sid Luft, who took over management of his wife's career and choreographed Garland's triumphant comeback at the London Palladium, a success surpassed by her 1951 appearance at New York's Palace Theatre. Luft strong-armed Warner Bros. to bankroll A Star Is Born (1954), providing Garland with her first film role in four years. It was Garland's best film to date, earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and allowed her a wealth of songs to sing and a full range of emotions to play.Riding high once more, Garland was later reduced to the depths of depression when she lost the Oscar to Grace Kelly. Her subsequent live appearances were wildly inconsistent, and her film performances ranged from excellent (Judgment at Nuremberg [1961]) to appallingly undisciplined (A Child Is Waiting [1963]). Her third marriage on the rocks, Garland nonetheless pulled herself together for an unforgettable 1961 appearance at Carnegie Hall, which led indirectly to her 1963 weekly CBS series, The Judy Garland Show. As with most of the significant moments in Garland's life, much contradictory information has emerged regarding the program and her behavior therein; the end result, however, was its cancellation after one year, due less to the inconsistent quality of the series (it began poorly, but finished big with several "concert" episodes) as to the competition of NBC's Bonanza. Garland's marriage to Sid Luft, which produced her daughter Lorna, ended in divorce in 1965, and, from there on, Garland's life and career made a rapid downslide. She made a comeback attempt in London in 1968, but audiences ranged from enthusiastic to indifferent -- as did her performances. A 1969 marriage to discotheque manager Mickey Deems did neither party any good, nor did a three-week engagement at a London nightclub, during which Garland was booed off the stage. On June 22, 1969, Judy Garland was found dead in her London apartment, the victim of an ostensibly accidental overdose of barbiturates. Despite (or perhaps because of) the deprivations of her private life, Garland has remained a show business legend. As to her untimely demise, Ray Bolger summed it up best in his oft-quoted epitaph: "Judy didn't die. She just wore out."

Trivia: Along with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly was the most successful song-and-dance man in film history, a towering figure in the development and enduring success of the movie musical. Born August 23, 1912, in Pittsburgh, PA, he initially studied economics, funding his education by working alternately as a soda jerk and a brick layer. With brother Fred, he also gave dancing lessons. In 1937, the Kelly brothers both unsuccessfully sought choreography work in New York. A year later, however, Gene was cast in the chorus of Leave It to Me, and in 1939 he graduated to a small role in the revue One for the Money. A more prominent performance in the drama The Time of Your Life caught the attention of Richard Rodgers, who cast him as the titular Pal Joey. Kelly left Broadway for Hollywood when David O. Selznick offered him a contract, immediately loaning him to MGM to star opposite Judy Garland in 1942's For Me and My Gal. At the insistence of producer Arthur Freed, MGM bought out the remainder of Kelly's Selznick contract, and cast him in the 1943 war drama Pilot No. 5.After the musical Du Barry Was a Lady, Kelly appeared in the all-star Thousands Cheer. The Cross of Lorraine, a Resistance drama, quickly followed. MGM then loaned him to Paramount for the Rita Hayworth vehicle Cover Girl and also allowed him to share choreography duties with an up-and-coming Stanley Donen, who continued on as his assistant; the result was a major critical and commercial hit, and while the follow-up, Christmas Holiday, passed by unnoticed, 1945's Anchors Aweigh -- which cast Kelly opposite Frank Sinatra -- earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, confirming his brilliance as a dancer and choreographer as well as solidifying his increasing power at the box office. In 1944, Kelly had starred in Ziegfield Follies, but the picture did not see the light of day until two years later. In the interim he served in the Navy, and upon returning from duty starred in 1947's Living in a Big Way. For 1948's The Pirate, Kelly teamed with director Vincente Minnelli, followed by a turn as D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers. Next, in the 1948 Rodgers-and-Hart biography Words and Music, he teamed with Vera Ellen for a performance of "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue."In 1949, Kelly and Donen contributed the original story for Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Later that year, the duo was handed the directorial reins for the classic On the Town, a groundbreaking, exuberant adaptation of the Betty Comden/Adolph Green/Leonard Bernstein Broadway smash. Black Hand (a Mafia drama) and Summer Stock (another collaboration with Garland) followed before Kelly reteamed with Minnelli for 1951's masterful An American in Paris, one of the most acclaimed musicals in Hollywood history. In addition to seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, it also earned Kelly a special Oscar in honor of "his versatility as actor, singer, director, and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film." After the stop-gap It's a Big Country, Kelly and Donen mounted 1952's Singin' in the Rain, arguably the most honored and beloved musical in the canon; a tale of Hollywood set as the silent era gave way to the sound era, it represented an unparalleled zenith for the musical comedy genre, and Kelly's centerpiece performance of the title song remains among the most indelible sequences in film. From this peak, however, there was seemingly nowhere else to go but down: Kelly traveled to Europe to qualify for tax exemption, and there shot a lifeless German thriller, The Devil Makes Three. In Britain, he began work on a planned all-ballet project, Invitation to the Dance, but the picture was never completed. Finally shown in its unfinished state in 1956, it received disastrous critical notice. In the U.K., Kelly also starred in Seagulls Over Sorrento before returning stateside for Minnelli's disappointing Brigadoon. Again working with Donen, he co-directed 1955's It's Always Fair Weather. A slight return to form, it performed poorly at the box office, another sign of the impending demise of the Hollywood musical. Kelly also directed and starred in 1957's whimsical The Happy Road, but after headlining George Cukor's Les Girls, MGM told him they had no more musicals planned for production, and he was freed from his contract. A number of independent projects were announced, but none came to fruition. Instead, Kelly starred in 1958's Marjorie Morningstar for Warners and then directed the romantic comedy The Tunnel of Love.In between appearing as a reporter in 1960's Inherit the Wind, Kelly returned to the stage: In 1958, he directed a Broadway production of the musical Flower Drum Song and two years later choreographed a Parisian ballet based on Gershwin's Concerto in F. He also appeared frequently on television, starring in a series based on Going My Way. In 1964, Kelly returned to film, appearing with Shirley MacLaine in What a Way to Go! Two years later, he starred in Jacques Demy's musical homage Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. He also continued directing, most famously 1969's Hello Dolly!, but was largely inactive during the 1970s. In 1980, he starred opposite Olivia Newton-John in the much-maligned Xanadu, but the performance was his last for the big screen. Kelly later starred in a pair of TV miniseries, 1985's North and South and Sins, but then spent his remaining years in retirement, out of the spotlight. Gene Kelly died February 2, 1996, at the age of 83.

Trivia: Character actor Eddie Bracken is best known for his roles as lovable, befuddled losers and nervous hayseeds. As a child, he acted and sang on stage and in vaudeville and nightclubs; he also appeared in four "Our Gang" comedy shorts and in six episodes of the "New York Kiddie Troopers" series. As a juvenile, he worked on Broadway and with touring shows, then made his film debut with Too Many Girls (1940). Bracken is best known for his work as a shy bumbler in two light Preston Sturges comedies, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero (both 1944); in the latter he appeared as Norval Jones, the character that established his "type" and which (he would later complain) ruined his film career by restricting the sorts of roles he was offered. In the early '50s his career ground to a halt and he quit making movies in 1953, going on to do much touring stage work with his wife, the former Connie Nickerson. During the early 70s he lost $2 million in a failed scheme to create a chain of stock theaters. He returned briefly to Hollywood in 1983 to appear as a Walt Disney send-up in National Lampoon's Vacation.

Trivia: Gloria DeHaven was the daughter of the popular "polite comedy" stage-and-film team of Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven. DeHaven made her screen debut as one of Paulette Goddard's younger sisters in Charles Chaplin's Modern Times, on which her father was assistant director. In her teen years, DeHaven secured work as a band vocalist, which led to singing parts in such film musicals as Best Foot Forward (1943), Step Lively (1944) and Summer Holiday (1948). Under contract to MGM from 1940 to 1950, the vivacious and talented DeHaven was the studio's all-purpose ingenue, acting opposite everyone from William Powell to Red Skelton. She later starred in a series of Technicolor musicals at 20th Century-Fox. When musicals fell out of public favor, DeHaven's film career waned and she turned her energies to performing in nightclubs, summer-stock and on the TV-guest-star circuit. During the 1970s and 1980s, she made cameo appearances in a few films; later she was also seen on a semi-regular basis on the TV series Ryan's Hope, Nakia and Murder She Wrote. In 1997, DeHaven returned to feature films with a co-starring role opposite Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon and Dyan Cannon in Martha Coolidge's Out to Sea. She died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: Scratchy-voiced American character actress who appeared in dozens of Hollywood vehicles following years on the Chautauqua and Orpheum circuits, Marjorie Main eventually worked with W.C. Fields on Broadway, where she appeared in several productions. Widowed in 1934, she entered films in 1937, repeating her Broadway stage role as the gangster's mother in Dead End (1937). Personally eccentric, Main had an almost pathological fear of germs. Best known among her close to 100 film appearances, most for MGM, are Stella Dallas (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Too Hot to Handle (1938), The Women (1939), Another Thin Man (1939), I Take This Woman (1940), Susan and God (1940), Honky Tonk (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Murder, He Says (1945), The Harvey Girls (1946), Summer Stock (1950), The Long, Long Trailer (1954), Rose Marie (1954), and Friendly Persuasion (1956). Starting with their appearances in The Egg and I (1947), which starred Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, Main and Percy Kilbride became starring performers as Ma and Pa Kettle in a series of rural comedies.

Trivia: Growing up in the squalid Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Phil Silvers used his excellent tenor voice and facility for cracking jokes to escape a life of poverty. He was discovered as a young teen by vaudevillian Gus Edwards who hired him to perform in his schoolroom act. Silvers' singing career ended when his voice changed at 16, whereupon he took acting jobs in various touring vaudeville sketches. During his subsequent years in burlesque, he befriended fellow comic Herbie Faye, with whom he would work off and on for the rest of his career. While headlining in burlesque, Silvers was signed to star in the 1939 Broadway musical comedy Yokel Boy. This led to film work, first in minor roles, then as comedy relief in such splashy 1940s musicals as Coney Island (1943) and Cover Girl (1944). Silvers became popular if not world famous with his trademark shifty grin, horn-rimmed glasses, balding pate, and catchphrases like "Gladda see ya!" He returned to Broadway in 1947, where he starred as a turn-of-the-century con man in the Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn musical High Button Shoes. In 1950, he scored another stage success as a Milton Berle-like TV comedian in Top Banana, which won him the Tony and Donaldson Awards. From 1955 through 1959, Silvers starred as the wheeling-dealing Sgt. Ernie Bilko on the hit TV series You'll Never Get Rich, for which he collected five Emmy awards. Upon the demise of this series, Silvers stepped into another success, the 1960 Styne-Comden-Green Broadway musical Do Re Mi. The failure of his 1963 sitcom The New Phil Silvers Show marked a low point in his career, but the ever scrappy Silvers bounced back again to appear in films and TV specials. In 1971, he starred in a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (nine years after turning down the original 1962 production because he felt the show "wouldn't go anywhere."). He collected yet another Tony for his efforts -- then suffered a severe stroke in August of 1972. While convalescing, Silvers wrote his very candid autobiography, The Laugh Is on Me. He recovered to the extent that he could still perform, but his speech was slurred and his timing was gone. Still, Silvers was beloved by practically everyone in show business, so he never lacked for work. Phil Silvers was the father of actress Cathy Silvers, best known for her supporting work on the TV series Happy Days.

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

Trivia: Spindly musical comedy performer Carleton Carpenter was a professional magician and Broadway actor when he was signed to an MGM contract in 1949. In his second film, Three Little Words, Carpenter was paired with Debbie Reynolds, who, in the role of boop-a-doop girl Helen Kane, sang "I Wanna be Loved by You." MGM liked the chemistry generated between Carpenter and Reynolds, obligingly casting them in larger roles in Two Weeks With Love (1950); it was in this film that the twosome performed the tongue-twisting ditty "Abba Dabba Honeymoon." Carpenter went on to give straight dramatic performances in such films as Sky Full of Moon (1952) and Take the High Ground (1953) before returning to the stage. While he would occasionally resurface in films and on television, Carleton Carpenter was better known in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as a best-selling mystery novelist; one of his more popular books, Deadhead, was adapted into a short-lived Broadway musical.

Trivia: One of the girl dancers encountered by the Three Stooges on a Broadway rooftop in Rhythm and Weep (1946), exotically beautiful Nita Bieber had been a dancer since the age of five and toured with the USO prior to making her screen debut with Columbia Pictures. She also turned up in the 1947 Bowery Boys comedy News Hounds, where a voiced desire to watch her figure gets the expected response from Leo Gorcey, and then signed a seven-year deal to dance in MGM musicals. Bieber later founded her own dance company in Las Vegas and appeared with such major acts as Frank Sinatra, Josephine Baker, and April Stevens.

Trivia: Actor Hans Conried, whose public image was that of a Shakespearean ham, was born not in England but in Baltimore. Scrounging for work during the Depression era, Conried offered himself to a radio station as a performer, and at 18 became a professional. One of his earliest jobs was appearing in uncut radio adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, and before he was twenty he was able to recite many of the Bard's lengthier passages from memory. After several years in summer stock and radio, Conried made his screen debut in Dramatic School (1938). Conried's saturnine features and reedy voice made him indispensable for small character roles, and until he entered the service in World War II the actor fluctuated between movies and radio. Given a choice, Conried would have preferred to stay in radio, where the money was better and the parts larger, but despite the obscurity of much of his film work he managed to sandwich in memorable small (often unbilled) appearances in such "A" pictures as Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942), The Big Street (1942) and Passage to Marseilles (1944). While in the army, Conried was put in charge of Radio Tokyo in postwar Japan, where he began his lifelong hobby of collecting rare Japanese artifacts; the actor also had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of American Indian lore. As big-time radio began to fade during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Conried concentrated more on film work. He was awarded the starring role in the bizarre musical 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1952), written by his friend Dr. Seuss; unfortunately, the studio, not knowing how to handle this unorthodox project, cut it to ribbons, and the film was a failure. Later he was engaged for a choice co-starring role in Cole Porter's Broadway musical Can Can; in addition, he became a favorite guest on Jack Paar's late-night TV program, popped up frequently and hilariously as a game show contestant, and in 1957 made the first of many special-guest visits as the imperishable Uncle Tonoose on The Danny Thomas Show. Cartoon producers also relied heavily on Conried, notably Walt Disney, who cast the actor as the voice of Captain Hook in the animated feature Peter Pan, and Jay Ward, for whom Conried played Snidely Whiplash on The Bullwinkle Show and Uncle Waldo on Hoppity Hooper. In 1963, Jay Ward hired Conried as the supercilious host of the syndicated comedy series Fractured Flickers. Conried cut down on his TV show appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, preferring to devote his time to stage work; for well over a year, the actor co-starred with Phil Leeds in an Atlanta production of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Just before his death, Conried was cast in a recurring role on the "realistic" drama series American Dream, where he was permitted to drop the high-tone Shakespearean veneer in the gruff, down-to-earth part of Jewish oldster Abe Berlowitz.

Trivia: Wizened character actor Paul E. Burns tended to play mousey professional men in contemporary films and unshaven layabouts in period pictures. Bob Hope fans will recall Burns' con brio portrayal of boozy desert rat Ebeneezer Hawkins in Hope's Son of Paleface (1952), perhaps his best screen role. The general run of Burns' screen assignments can be summed up by two roles at both ends of his career spectrum: he played "Loafer" in D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930) and "Bum in Park" in Barefoot in the Park (1967).

Trivia: As a young girl, Joanne Tree Winship was a film and early television actress, but when she grew up, she became a Broadway actress and finally ended up a journalist at The New York Postcovering everything from fashion shows and lifestyles, to the profiles of artists performing at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Born and raised in New York City, Tree launched her film career at ten with a bit part in Nancy Drew - Detective (1938). From there she appeared in numerous other youth-oriented pictures, including Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941) and First Love (1939). Tree also appeared in the Andy Hardy film series. Tree headed for Broadway shortly after hitting her teens and appeared in numerous plays. She became a journalist after marrying United Press senior editor Frederick M. Winship. Tree was also heavily involved with charity work and was in charge of arranging benefits for the New York City Opera and other institutions representing the arts. After suffering a long illness the 73-year-old Tree passed away on August 20, 1997, in New York City.

Trivia: Child actor Teddy Infuhr made his first screen appearance as one of Charles Laughton's kids in 1942's The Tuttles of Tahiti. Long associated with Universal Pictures, Infuhr garnered a great deal of critical attention for his brief appearance as a mute, semi-autistic pygmy in Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman (1944). Later on, he showed up as one of the anonymous children of Ma and Pa Kettle (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride) in Universal's The Egg and I; when the Kettles were spun off into their own long-running movie series, Infuhr remained with the backwoods brood, usually cast as either George or Benjamin Kettle. One of his many free-lance assignments was Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), in which the poor boy suffered one of the most horrible deaths ever inflicted upon a movie juvenile. Teddy Infuhr's film career came to a quiet close in the early 1950s. He died in June 2007 at age 70.

Trivia: With her scrawny body and puckered-persimmon face, Almira Sessions successfully pursued a six-decade acting career. Born into a socially prominent Washington family, Sessions almost immediately followed her "coming out" as a debutante with her first stage appearance, playing a sultan's wizened, ugly wife in The Sultan of Sulu. She briefly sang comic songs in cabarets before pursuing a New York stage career. In 1940, she traveled to Hollywood to play Cobina of Brenda and Cobina, an uproariously if cruelly caricatured brace of man-hungry spinsters who appeared regularly on Bob Hope's radio show (Elvia Allman was Brenda). Sessions' first film was the 1940 Judy Garland vehicle Little Nellie Kelly. Until her retirement in 1971, she played dozens of housekeepers, gossips, landladies, schoolmarms, maiden aunts, and retirement-home residents. Usually appearing in bits and minor roles, Almira Sessions was always given a few moments to shine onscreen, notably as an outraged in-law in Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), the flustered high school teacher in the observatory scene in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and the hero's inquisitive neighbor in Willard (1971).

Trivia: In the '30s, tall, sandy-haired, deep-voiced American actor Eddie Dunn was frequently cast as a laconic police officer in the 2-reelers of comedy producers Hal Roach and Mack Sennett. The actor's feature-film roles consisted mainly of small-town bullies, prison guards, bartenders, military policemen and private detectives. Eddie Dunn was last seen in a fleeting role as a sheriff in the 1950 MGM musical Summer Stock.

Trivia: In films from 1921 through 1952, white-maned American character actor Erville Alderson was most closely associated with D.W. Griffith in his early movie years. Alderson played major roles in Griffith's The White Rose (1932), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924). In D.W.'s Sally of the Sawdust (1926), Alderson performed double duty, playing the merciless Judge Foster in front of the cameras and serving as assistant director behind the scenes. During the talkie era, the actor showed up in "old codger" roles as sheriffs, court clerks and newspaper editors. You might remember Erville Alderson as the crooked handwriting expert (he was crooked, not the handwriting) in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as Jefferson Davis in the Errol Flynn starrer Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Trivia: Canadian actress/singer Deanna Durbin learned at a very early age that she was blessed with a strong and surprisingly mature set of vocal chords. After studying with coach Andres de Segurola, Durbin set her sights on an operatic career, but was sidetracked into films with a 1936 MGM short subject, Every Sunday. This one-reeler was designed as an audition for both Durbin and her equally youthful co-star Judy Garland; MGM decided to go with Durbin and drop Garland, but by a front-office fluke the opposite happened and it was Durbin who found herself on the outside looking in. But MGM's loss was Universal's gain. That studio, threatened with receivership due to severe losses, decided to gamble on her potential. Under the guiding influence of Universal executive Joseph Pasternak, Durbin was cast in a series of expensive, carefully crafted musicals, beginning in 1936 with Three Smart Girls. This and subsequent films--notably One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) -- craftily exploited Durbin's remarkable operatic voice, but at the same time cast her as a "regular kid" who was refreshingly free of diva-like behavior. The strategy worked, and Durbin almost single-handedly saved Universal from oblivion; she was awarded a 1938 special Oscar "for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth," and when she received her first screen kiss (from Robert Stack) in First Love (1939), the event knocked the European crisis off the front pages. Durbin remained popular throughout the first years of the 1940s, but when the box-office receipts began to flag, Universal attempted to alter Durbin's screen image with such heavy dramas as The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1942) and Christmas Holiday (1944); unfortunately, these films failed to make the turnstiles click. In 1945, Durbin had her best "grown up" role in the murder mystery Lady on a Train (1945), which allowed her to dress a bit more glamorously than in previous appearances. By this time, however, Durbin was tired of filmmaking, and began exhibiting a conspicuous lack of interest in performing. After For the Love of Mary (1948), Durbin retired, escaping to France with her third husband, Lady on a Train director Charles David. She so thoroughly disappeared from public view that rumors persisted she had died. Actually, as one writer has pointed out, the "Deanna Durbin" that fans had known and loved had died, to be replaced by a fabulously wealthy matron who had absolutely no interest in the past. Though she lived in comfortable anonymity for her last five decades, Durbin retained her fervent fan following and gained a whole new following thanks to exposure of the vintage Durbin films on cable TV and video. She died in 2013 at the age of 91.

Trivia: Following in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather (Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount Studios), Arthur Loew Jr. produced many feature films. Unlike his powerful forebears, he did not run a studio. Loew did, however, serve as the chairman of the Arizona State Motion Picture and Television Advisory Board following his retirement.