Pop culture Q&A

October 30, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Pop culture Q&A

By Rich Heldenfels

Q. I have just discovered the Deanna Durbin videos and have five. How many did they put out on video or DVD? How about a thumbnail sketch of her life?

A. I am guessing that you came across one of the collections of Durbin movies released as part of Turner Classic Movies’ vault collections. One, the “Music and Romance Collection,” includes five of her movies. There also is a “Sweetheart Pack” of six films, and you may find some titles offered individually.

Born in Canada but raised in California, she was 14 when Hollywood came calling in the mid-’30s. Adept as a singer, she found success in a series of Universal pictures where she was, in critic David Thomson’s words, “a true teenage star, pretty, cheerful, clean and tuneful.” At the 1938 Academy Awards, she and Mickey Rooney received a special, shared Oscar “for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement.”

She continued acting into adulthood, though with less success than she had as a teen star. In a 1983 interview with film historian David Shipman, she said: “Just take a look at my last four films, and you’ll appreciate that the stories I had to defend were mediocre, near impossible. Whenever I complained or asked for story or director approval, the studio refused. I was the highest-paid star with the poorest material.”

In the late ’40s, she retired from films and moved to France with her third husband. She has for the most part stayed out of the public eye; the Shipman interview apparently is the only one she has given since retiring.

Q. Is the wife on “Homeland” the same actress who played the evil leader on “V”?

A. Yes. Morena Baccarin, who plays Jessica Brody on the Showtime drama “Homeland,” also played Anna in ABC’s recent revival of the thriller “V.”

Q. There is a movie, I believe from the 1970s, called “The April Fools,” and it starred Jack Lemmon, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Lawford, Jack Weston and many others of note. I always loved this movie, but it hasn’t been shown on television in a long while, and I was wondering if it was available for sale in any format, particularly on DVD.

A. From what I can find, the movie was released on VHS but has not made the transition to DVD.

Q. Who is Rossano Brazzi? He was in the movies “Count Your Blessings” and “Light in the Piazza.” Is he still living, married, Italian, French or Greek, and is he still in movies?

A. Brazzi was a movie actor in his native Italy from the ’30s through much of the ’40s. He became a Hollywood leading man of some renown in the ’50s and ’60s, when his films included the ones you mentioned as well as “The Barefoot Contessa,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Summertime” and “South Pacific.”

In the latter, he was Emile De Becque, but Emile’s singing was done by Giorgio Tozzi. “The Film Encyclopedia” says that he returned to Italy in the late ’60s, playing character roles in movies and sometimes directing.

He returned to American entertainment from time to time. And as The New York Times noted, Brazzi “made headlines in 1984 when he was among 37 people indicted in an investigation of international arms and drug smuggling. The case against him was later dropped.”

He died in 1994 at age 78.

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