A Star Is Born

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One fateful day in 1940, a would-be actress named Deborah Kerr (rhymes with star) was sitting in a London restaurant with an acquaintance of British Producer-Director Gabriel Pascal. When Pascal himself was introduced, he promptly chanted in his richest Magyar overtones: "Sweet lady, you have a spiritual face."

That, as some Englishmen would say, tore it. For, as a result of that brief encounter, the bigwigs of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are now immodestly slapping their own backs with the fervor of flagellant monks. They have acquired, little Miss Kerr, and they suspect that she might be the biggest thing that has happened to M-G-M since Greer Garson.

Somewhat more modestly, Miss Kerr will very soon be exposed to U.S. cinemaddicts. The exposure is a clever little British-made melodrama about Nazi spies in Ireland called The Adventuress (Eagle-Lion; English title: I See a Dark Stranger). Whatever the result of this more critical encounter, few who see her can miss the fact that Cinemactress Kerr carries The Adventuress as effortlessly as a hat box. Almost nobody at all will miss the fact that Cinemactress Kerr looks like everything Englishmen mean when they become lyrical about roses. Given this primary stuff that stars are made of, it is clear that Deborah is well on her way to becoming, as quickly as possible, the brightest and best movie star that the biggest and most proficient star factory in the world can make of her.

Dawning Luminary. The origins of this dawning luminary lay in biographical penumbra beyond the visual range of Hollywood scouts. She was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, Sept. 30, 1921. Her family was neither down-&-out nor well-to-do. Her Scottish father's handsomeness was distilled, in her, to a gentle beauty. She still shows the benign effects of a limpid childhood and shines quietly with another unpurchasable endowment—an ineradicable gentility. Thanks to an ex-professional aunt in Bristol, Deborah, early in life, had several years' stiff training as an actress. Later she took a whirl at ballet. But her well-padded, 5 ft.-7 in. frame was a bit bulky for ballet, and realizing, as she now says, that "this [indicating her face] was the only thing I had to work with," she began hunting jobs on the stage.

She read children's stories over the BBC. She took part in open-air Shakespeare productions in Regent's Park, rising from walk-ons to lines like "Will you go hunt, milord?" There was one incandescent moment when Producer-Director Michael Powell noticed her in an agent's office (he remembers her as "a plump little dumpling who was obviously going places") and wrote a bit for her into Contraband. But the bit wound up on the cutting-room floor. So Deborah continued to live at a Y.W.C.A. on 35 shillings ($7) a week and spent most of her waking hours being turned out of producers' offices. By the time Gabriel Pascal saw her, plain living and plenty of walking had etherealized the dumpling to that lithe spirit which Pascal singled out.