Melanie Gall

This is a lousy book. Essentially this is a biography of singer/actress Deanna Durbin who is built up by putting down singer/actress Judy Garland. The author doesn't even bring up what might have happened if Durbin had remained at MGM and Garland went to Universal. Garland was hampered by a stagestruck mother who did not look out for her daughter's best interests. She allowed her daughter to be drugged by Mayer and those in power at MGM. Durbin not only had loving parents but a producer and director who tailored films for her to get her started and who looked out for her interests. Snide remarks on Judy's appearance in Broadway Melody of 1938 (page 61) says about Judy "And although she worked regularly for the next decade, Judy's dream of stardom was still a long way off". Guess the author did not know about 1939's Wizard of Oz which is still beloved today. I had to laugh out loud at the author's statement on page 98 talking about finding the next Durbin by saying "From Jean Harlow to Jane Powell to Kathryn Grayson, girls with classically trained voices were signed to studios and starred in films". Harlow was not a classically trained singer - even Jimmy Stewart said in the That's Entertainment film that Harlow was dubbed for her signing at MGM. Additionally, Harlow was starring in films long before Durbin and dead a year after Durbin's first feature release. On page 117, the author states that Artie "Shaw met Turner on the MGM backlot". Actually they were appearing together in the 1939 film, Dancing Co-Ed. On page 161, in discussing Anne Frank, the author states "Once discovered by the Nazis, she was shipped to Auschwitz where she her mother and sister died of typhus". Anne's mother died at Auschwitz but Anne and her sister were transferred to Bergen-Belsen where they died of typhus. However, time and time again, Durbin is built up at Garland's expense. If the author had concentrated on Durbin's career and post-film activities when she retired to France and included a filmography, the book would have been much better.… (meer)