Jane Darwell

Jane Darwell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to Motion Pictures, at 6735 Hollywood Boulevard. Deanna Durbin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1722 Vine St. She died from a heart attack in Woodland Hills, California and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. David died in Paris on March 1, 1999. Always popular within the film industry, her final role as the old woman feeding the birds in Mary Poppins was personally given to her by Walt Disney. Since then she has resisted all offers to perform and has refused to be interviewed, steadfastly asserting her right to privacy. By the end of her career she had appeared in more than 170 films, including Huckleberry Finn (1931), Roman Scandals (1933), Jesse James, The Rains Came, Gone With the Wind (all 1939), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Caged (1950). The couple moved to Paris, France with Durbin stating she would never return to show business.

She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), a role she was given at the insistence of the film's star, Henry Fonda. She retired from public life in 1950, after her marriage to Charles David, who had directed her in Lady On A Train. Short, stout and plain faced she was quickly cast in a succession of films usually as the mother of one of the major characters. By the late 1940s Durbin had tried to assume a more sophisticated film persona in such films as the whodunnit Lady On A Train (1945), but the public preferred her as the sweet and wholesome adolescent she had come to represent. After a 15 year absence from films, she resumed her film career in 1930 with a role in Tom Sawyer, and her career as a Hollywood character actress began. Her second marriage, to Felix Jackson, a writer, in 1945, produced her only child, Jessica Jackson, and ended in divorce in 1949. She appeared in almost twenty films over the next two years before returning to the stage. She married an actor, Vaughn Paul, in 1941 and they were divorced in 1943.

She began her acting career in theater productions in Chicago and made her first film appearance in 1913. In 1939 she received a special Academy Juvenile Award, along with Mickey Rooney. Born Patti Woodward in Palmyra, Missouri, Darwell originally intended to become a circus performer, however her family objected and she compromised by becoming an actress. Durbin was quickly signed to a contract with Universal Studios and the huge success of her films were reported to have saved the studio from bankruptcy. Jane Darwell (October 15, 1879 – August 13, 1967) was an American theater and film actress. Hollywood legend has recorded that he instructed his staff to "drop the fat one" and that they had dismissed Durbin, misunderstanding that Mayer had in fact intended to terminate the contract of Garland. Mayer felt he did not need two young female singers under contract.

Durbin was released from her contract shortly thereafter as studio executive Louis B. She made her first film Three Smart Girls in 1936. Changing her name to Deanna Durbin at the commencement of her career, Durbin signed a contract with MGM Studios in 1936 and made her first film appearance in a screen test with another contractee, Judy Garland. Deanna Durbin (born Edna Mae Durbin on December 4, 1921 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) was a popular singer and actress in Hollywood films.