Deborah Jane Kerr

Oct 19 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

DEBORAH KERR was the lovely Scottish lass who came to represent the epitome of "the English rose".

Her genteel propriety that spoke of refined teas on the lawns of some English stately home were typified in films such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Prisoner of Zenda and The King and I.

But it was her fiery sensuality in From Here to Eternity that gave the lie to any impression of primness and was the beginning of a number of more passionate roles.

Her versatility only added to the high regard she had won as a professional and made her one of the last great stars to come out of Hollywood’s heyday era.

With a summer home in Kloster, Switzerland, and a winter cottage in Marbella, Spain, Deborah Kerr had come a long way from the aspiring actress living on one bar of chocolate a day at the YWCA.

Born at Helensburgh, in Scotland, her father, Captain Arthur Kerr-Trimmer, a civil engineer, was invalided from World War I and later developed tuberculosis.

When he died, her mother took the 14-year-old Deborah and her brother to Bristol, where she struggled to make ends meet.

Originally, Deborah wanted to be a dancer but, after a year at Sadler’s Wells Ballet School, she decided she really wanted to act.

So she returned to Bristol and her aunt’s tuition at the Phyllis Smale Drama School and made her stage debut at 18 with walk-on parts at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

In 1945, she joined the Entertainments National Service Association (Ensa) and toured France, Belgium and Holland in the play Gaslight.

It was just a year later that she was "discovered" by Hollywood, the same year that Black Narcissus, in which she starred with Peter Finch, was released.

She moved to Hollywood with a £750-a-week contract with MGM and soon was being dubbed "The First Lady of Hollywood".

In 1953 she made From Here To Eternity with Burt Lancaster, famous for the torrid beach scene, parts of which were so daring at the time that they had to be cut out.

It changed her rather proper image forever.

Her allure continued and was made all the more legendary through her screen partnership with Robert Mitchum which began in 1957 in Heaven Knows Mr Allison.

Their performance on screen sparked off a chemistry that tantalised audiences.

In the early 60s they went on to make The Sundowners, then The Grass Is Greener.

Twenty years later they were reunited for the television film Reunion at Fairbrother in which they played wartime lovers who meet again after 40 years.

From 1972 she concentrated most of her efforts on the stage, despite her own admittance that she suffered very badly from first night nerves.

In 1986 she received one of the British film industry’s highest awards when she was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute.

Deborah Kerr was married twice. Her first husband was Battle of Britain hero Anthony Bartley, whom she married in 1945.

They had two daughters, Melanie and Francesca, but the marriage was dissolved in 1959.

She met the writer Peter Viertel on a film set in Vienna and they were married in 1960.

News of the actress’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease emerged around seven years ago. She returned to England to be near her family when her illness worsened.

Tragedy also hit the family in 2004 when Kerr’s 78- year-old brother, Edmund Trimmer, died following a road rage attack in Birmingham.

Deborah Jane Kerr, actress; born September 30, 1921, died October 16, 2007.