DEANNA DURBIN

Deanna Durbin was a Canadian juvenile actress and singer from the 1930s to the 1940s. In 1935, when she was just 13 years old, she sang an operatic aria at a Hollywood benefit, and Universal Studios was so impressed, they signed her to a long term contract (which turned out to be a wonderful move on their part)! She was studying opera with the Spanish opera star Andres de Segurola, but she dropped that when she started movies. Some of her movies include: Mad About Music, It Started with Eve, Three Smart Girls Grow Up, One Hundred Men and a Girl, and Every Sunday. In the early 1940s, she was Universal's biggest star and in 1947 she was the highest paid female star in Hollywood. Deanna abruptly retired from acting in 1948 at the age of 26 and withdrew from public life. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 91.