Nothing's going to change my world

I thought this post was going to discuss Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, which I saw this past weekend. However, when I found out this afternoon that Deborah Kerr died, I decided to change gears and remember Kerr.

In his autobiography, A Life in Movies, British director Michael Powell reflected on the special relationship he shared with Deborah Kerr (pronounced Carr - "Kerr rhymes with star," as early studio press releases claimed): “I realized that Deborah was both the ideal and the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for ever since I had discovered that I had been born to be a teller of tales and a creator of dreams” (413). Powell’s observation about what he perceived as a dual identity – at once ideal and earthly – fittingly characterizes a quality of Kerr’s screen identity in British films, which Powell himself helped crystallize: the struggle between two identities to form one complex screen persona.

Kerr first came to the public’s attention portraying Jenny in Pascal’s Major Barbara (1940). Even in her first few roles, Kerr’s obvious beauty and star quality stood out. A contemporary review remarked:

She certainly attracts the attention of everybody who comes near her, for she is
what they call a "Botticelli blonde"---reddish-gold hair, light blue eyes, and a
face capable of expressing "spiritual wistfulness."… She is a lovely girl. She
is crystal fresh in quality. She has intelligence, and that uncommon quality of
common sense which endear the best young American actresses to the world's
audiences.

(Picture Post 7 December 1940)

She was likely best remembered for her role as Anna in The King and I, but Kerr leaves behind a substantial body of critically acclaimed work: Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and Black Narcissus (1947), Korda's Perfect Strangers (1945) From Here to Eternity (1953, and The Innocents (1961) to name but a few.