Why did the public forget about Deanna Durbin so quickly?

For starters, her movies don't really hold up today. Most people would be hard-pressed to name a single Deanna Durbin movie, something that would not be true of, say, Judy Garland.

DEEANTA DURBING

Because she was a boring actress who made boring films!

Jeanette MacDonald was more interesting, and even made a couple of classics. Durbin isn't even the most fondly remembered virginal screecy soprano of the 1930s.

She retired in the late 40's and kept her life private to the very end. There are some people that get a taste of the business and ultimately don't like it and walk away.

Wasn't she really a little boy with no balls?

Because she led a quiet and respectable life, tending her French rose garden and raising her kid. Let's face it, it's trainwrecks like Monroe, Garland and Elizabeth Taylor that tend to get forever embedded into the public mind, but that has more to do with their numerous antics and less with their actual talent.

Durbin would probably be more famous today if she died on her toilet seat in her 40's but alas she died peacefully aged 91, outliving pretty much all of her peers.

We've had this thread before, talking about how Deanna Durbin was so much more talented than Judy Garland blah blah blah. We have a Deanna Durbin troll. To paraphrase Mama Rose in Gypsy, if she could have been she would have been.

She would have been fabulous in Kiss Me Kate

Judy Garland's lasting fame has nothing to do with her having died on a toilet seat in her 40s, you fucking idiot.

Also her singing style fell out of popular taste.

Fascism is back, maybe Deanna will get a revival.

Deanna had the misfortune to be under contract to Universal, perhaps the least imaginative of the old Hollywood studios. Her films quickly became routine, cookie-cutter vehicles with similar plots -- though almost all of them were good money-makers, and the bean counters did not see any reason to change the formula. The did the same thing with all their stars: Maria Montez, Abbot & Costello, etc.

Ironically, one role Deanna might have been very good in was Julie in Show Boat, but Universal sold the rights to MGM in the mid-40s, which remade it in 1951. Another problem was that Deanna didn't really do anything but sing (although beautifully) - unlike Garland, who could sing and dance in splashy production numbers, and was paired with musical leading men like Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Even Deanna rivals like Jane Powell were showcased to better advantage in their MGM vehicles - some of which were direct remakes of Deanna's old films! MGM also planned its musicals to feature multiple specialty performers, so carrying the film didn't weigh completely on any one star's shoulders, whereas Deanna was the whole show in her films. She wisely cashed in and lived comfortably the rest of her life.

The fact that Deanna chose to drop completely from the public eye after leaving Hollywood - no concerts, no TV appearances, no papparazzi - helped ensure her being quickly forgotten.

I read she had a bad hand injury or something, so she simply sang and held her hand. They say Judy would imitate this misfortune mocking her.

R12, the one time Deanna got a major musical talent to play opposite her, it was Gene Kelly in Christmas Holiday, a film noir change of pace for Durbin, who plays a singing (ahem) "hostess" in a house of ill repute.