Hollywood Icon Deborah Kerr Dies At 86
Posted October 18, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Deborah Kerr, known for one of Hollywood’s most famous on-screen kisses in “From Here To Eternity” died Tuesday. She was 86.
The star, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, passed away in Suffolk, England, according to her agent Anne Hutton.
For many she’ll be remembered best for her kiss with Burt Lancaster as waves crashed over them on a Hawaiian beach in the wartime drama “From Here to Eternity.”
Kerr’s forceful roles sometimes pushed the limits of Hollywood’s treatment of sex in movies during the ’50s.
She had the reputation of a “no problem” actress.
“I have never had a fight with any director, good or bad,” she said toward the end of her career. “There is a way around everything if you are smart enough.”
In “The King and I,” with her singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon, she was Anna Leonowens, who takes her son to Siam so that she can teach the children of the king, played by Yul Brynner.
Her Academy Award best actress nominations were for “Edward, My Son” (1949), “From Here to Eternity” (1953), “The King and I” (1956), “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” (1957), “Separate Tables” (1958), and “The Sundowners” (1960). Among her other movies is “An Affair to Remember” with Cary Grant.
In 1945 Kerr married Anthony Charles Bartley, whom she had met when he was a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force. They had two daughters and divorced in 1959. A year later she married novelist-screenwriter Peter Viertel with whom she lived on a large estate in the Swiss Alpine resort of Klosters and in a villa in Marbella, Spain.
Kerr leaves behind her husband, two daughters and three grandchildren.
Undated file photo taken during a scene of Fred Zinnemann’s 1953 film ‘From here to Eternity’ in Los Angeles shows US actor Burt Lancaster and British actress Deborah Kerr. (Photo Courtesy Getty Images/AFP)
