RIP Deborah Kerr 1921 - 2007

When I heard about the death of Deborah Kerr I let out a little gasp. The reason being that I have this undying affection/obsession with classic movie stars. Whenever one of them leaves us for good I feel the link we have to classic movies slipping farther and farther away.

I've personally only seen Deborah in three of her movies: "The Prisoner of Zenda", "From Here to Eternity" and "The King and I", I still feel that she made a big contribution to the movie industry.

In "From Here to Eternity" Deborah and Burt Lancaster snog in the sand while the tide rolls over them. The scene itself is white hot and apparently I'm not the only one with this opinion. The MPAA banned photos of the kiss with the surf washing over Lancaster and Kerr as they thought it was too erotic. Many film prints had shortened versions of the scene because projectionists would cut out frames as souvenirs.

The thing about this scene is that with Deborah Kerr the public had come to expect to see her as a virtuous woman, a mother, a 'good girl'. And yet here she was, playing against type, having an affair with a man her husband worked with. It shows her true strength as an actor, to be believable in a role you might not be able to imagine her in.

I'm sad that she's gone but I'm very happy that she left something behind for us to remember her by.