
Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, From Here to Eternity. With Deborah Kerr, it’s not the bare shoulders that matter. It’s the eyes.
I won’t argue with that description (except to point out that this English Rose was born in Scotland), but all the same I wonder if any of those labelers have ever watched Deborah Kerr on screen other than the “Shall We Dance?” sequence in The King and I.
Then there are those who have seen two Deborah Kerr scenes: “Shall We Dance?” and the kissing-on-the-beach bit in From Here to Eternity.
Shocking! Who would have guessed that the cool, red-headed British lady could be so fiery?
Well, anyone who has paid any attention to Deborah Kerr’s performances in most of her movies, whether before or after her Hawaiian beach frolics.
At an early age, when I first saw Deborah Kerr on film – a television showing of the aforementioned The King and I, or perhaps in John Huston’s Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison – I was impressed by her class, her gentility, her looks, her warmth, and her boundless honesty as a performer.
From then on, I made a point of watching as many of Kerr’s films as I could get my hands on. In fact, she quickly became one of my top half-dozen or so performers; one who, like fellow favorites Edward G. Robinson, Claude Rains, Anna Magnani, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Pierre Fresnay, Vivien Leigh, Barbara Stanwyck, was just about incapable of giving a poor performance. (I am good with math, even though my list of half-dozen favorites includes about two dozen names.)
Deborah Kerr: Dangerous Undercurrent
As I matured, I came to realize that a strong – often dangerous – undercurrent of emotions, yearnings, and desires was running beneath that genteel surface. Deborah Kerr exuded class, that is indisputable; but she also happened to be one of the most emotionally and sexually complex screen performers, whether female or male. That is what made her so compelling.
“Why does this gentle, sensitive widow who we are led to believe was in love with her […] husband conceive an interest in an arrogant, militaristic boor?” New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther inquired about Kerr’s war nurse falling for William Holden’s “rough, tough, ruthless major” in George Seaton’s 1956 melodrama The Proud and Profane. “What hunger in her delicate well-bred being fatally forces her to him – other than the obvious three-letter hunger …?”
Indeed, Kerr’s particular brand of female complexity has been relatively rare on film. Patrician women – think Greer Garson (Kerr’s English Lady predecessor at MGM), Irene Dunne, Madeleine Carroll, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly – have generally been either “asexual” (i.e., desexualized) or sexually unthreatening, their sensuality bowdlerized either in the screenplay or in the editing room.
Particularly in American movies, most actresses who have played sympathetic characters – including Hollywood’s wide array of “family friendly” sex symbols – have displayed charm, humor, pathos, and, at times, romantic yearning, but little-to-no raw erotic hunger. Think Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Jean Arthur, Olivia de Havilland, Myrna Loy, Joan Fontaine, Jeanne Crain, Marilyn Monroe, Shirley MacLaine (her happy hookers were thoroughly desexualized), Kim Novak, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep.
True, you most likely won’t find Deborah Kerr labeled a sex goddess anywhere, but that’s merely because her sexual allure, apart from the beach scene in From Here to Eternity, was hardly obvious.
Unlike overgrown little girls such as Marilyn Monroe, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield, or Brigitte Bardot, Kerr looked and acted like a mature woman even in her 20s. In other words, there was nothing kittenish about Deborah Kerr; she didn’t pout.
Unlike Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Lizabeth Scott, or Susan Sarandon, Kerr’s seething sensuality had nothing to do with sultriness, come-hither looks, or bare body parts.
Unlike Simone Simon, Jane Greer, the latter-day Barbara Stanwyck, and other (French or American) film noir dames, or Theda Bara and assorted film vamps of the last hundred years, Deborah Kerr wasn’t on screen solely to bring some horny dolt to ruin. To the contrary, her characters may have been sexually (and therefore socially) dangerous – very few of us can cope with the depths of erotic desire – but they were invariably sympathetic.
For Doris Day sex was gooey joke; for Mae West it was saucy joke, but a joke nonetheless. For Betty Grable it was a couple of shapely legs and lots of feathers (more recently, the same goes for Julia Roberts – minus the feathers). For Joan Bennett it was murder, her own or somebody else’s. For Greta Garbo and Anna Magnani it was all-consuming romantic passion.
For Ginger Rogers it was chewing gum. For Lana Turner it was a tight sweater and even tighter shorts. For the older Joan Crawford it was the castration of her male partner. For Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis it was a meaningless three-letter word. But for Deborah Kerr, it was sex, directly from the core, even if somewhere along the way to the surface that raw, unbridled energy got entangled in centuries of Don’t, It’s sinful, It’s wrong.
Kerr’s burning desires were oftentimes subtle, but they could be detected through quivering lips, a nervous hand gesture, an intense gaze – perhaps distraught, perhaps fearful, perhaps soulful. As a 10- or 11-year-old, I failed to notice those telling details, but it didn’t take me all that long to understand what was really going on inside the minds and bodies of Deborah Kerr’s poised and classy characters.
Considering how conflicted so many of her heroines were, it should come as no surprise that Kerr’s characters were quite frequently sexual outlaws, in thought if not necessarily in deed.
Deborah Kerr: Lured to sensual, macho men
First of all, Deborah Kerr’s refined women had a yen for sensual, macho men. In addition to the aforementioned The Proud and Profane, she fell for hunky, sweaty Stewart Granger in King Solomon’s Mines (1950). Six years later, she was filled with repressed attraction for Yul Brynner’s bald, bare-chested King of Siam – a non-white object of desire, to boot – in The King and I. And there were many others, in all different sorts of social, cultural, and psychological settings.
In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s stunning Black Narcissus (1946), Kerr is an Irish nun who, while at a monastery in the Himalayas, discovers that she has strong feelings – i.e., sexual urges – for a handsome, virile doctor played by David Farrar. Now, compare Kerr’s dark, torn performance in Black Narcissus – or in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), in which she plays a nun who lusts/has feelings for earthy Robert Mitchum – to Audrey Hepburn’s nun, pining for Peter Finch in Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959). Hepburn is excellent as the conflicted nun, but unlike Kerr she never comes across as a woman on the verge of an erotic breakdown.
Deborah Kerr movies: with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity
As an unhappily married woman having a torrid affair with an army officer shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Deborah Kerr is equally powerful in one of her best-remembered movies, From Here to Eternity (1953), stealing the romantic melodrama from her male co-stars. Fred Zinnemann’s Academy Award-winning blockbuster marked one of the rare times when Kerr’s physique played a part in her erotic persona, as she parades around Hawaii in Lana Turner-type shorts and frolics on the wet sand with brawny Burt Lancaster.
Less obvious is Kerr’s headmaster’s wife in Tea and Sympathy (1956), who, despite her discreet clothing and demeanor, ends up seducing one of her husband’s teenage students. It’s all for a good cause, of course – the “sensitive” adolescent thinks he may be gay – though it’s hardly the type of behavior society would look kindly upon. Additionally, Kerr makes it clear that she isn’t going to lie down with young and handsome John Kerr (no relation) merely out of charity.
But best (i.e., most dangerous) of all is her Christian governess in Jack Clayton’s superb The Innocents (1961), seeing ghosts and sexual misconduct everywhere. When the governess receives a good-night kiss on the lips from a pre-teen boy – who she suspects is having a ghost-induced incestuous relationship with his younger sister – Kerr’s look of shock, confusion, and hmmm… This feels good! is nothing short of masterful.
Most of Deborah Kerr’s other classy ladies also displayed socially dubious – if not downright unacceptable – characteristics and/or found themselves in (sexually) delicate circumstances.
Deborah Kerr: A Series of Sexually Delicate Events
In Perfect Strangers (1945) Kerr feels that her marriage to Robert Donat will be too dull after the excitement of the war effort. In I See a Dark Stranger (1946), she is an Irish spy wooed and pursued by Trevor Howard. In If Winter Comes (1947), she considers reigniting an affair with the now-married Walter Pidgeon. In Edward My Son (1949), she is Spencer Tracy’s alcoholic, sexually and emotionally frustrated wife, and neglectful mother to their reckless son. In Young Bess (1953), she has a ménage à trois of sorts with Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons (as Queen Elizabeth I). And in An Affair to Remember (1957), she has a memorable romantic liaison with Cary Grant while committed to another man.
Kerr becomes involved with aging playboy David Niven in Bonjour Tristesse (1958, right, with Jean Seberg), much to his daddy-fixated daughter’s dismay. That same year, she can also be found in love with Niven’s “sexually inappropriate” major in Separate Tables. As columnist Sheila Graham, she has an affair with married man (and alcoholic) Gregory Peck (as F. Scott Fitzgerald) in Beloved Infidel (1959).
There’s more: Deborah Kerr is a governess who may have been a murderess with lesbian tendencies in The Chalk Garden (1964). She is the object of desire of defrocked priest Richard Burton in The Night of the Iguana (1964). She uses contraception pills (or so she thinks) in Prudence and the Pill (1968). And is suicidal Kirk Douglas’ distant wife in The Arrangement (1969), in which her character has a discreet nude scene.
All that in addition to extra-marital liaisons with Van Johnson in The End of the Affair (1956) and Burt Lancaster in The Gypsy Moths (1969). In the latter film, Kerr appears bare-breasted in a sex scene. (A body double was supposedly used for the full nudity shot.)

The Innocents communion: Christian Deborah Kerr, possessed Martin Stephens.
Later on, in the television miniseries A Woman of Substance (1984) and its follow-up, the TV movie Follow the Dream (1986), Deborah Kerr played a former kitchen maid-turned-businesswoman who didn’t reach the top by being all chaste and poised along the way. (Jenny Seagrove played the character as a young woman.) And once at the top, Kerr’s tycoon does whatever she feels necessary to remain there.
Admittedly, Deborah Kerr didn’t create any of those characters all by herself. She did, however, bring them to life in ways that most performers, regardless of gender, would be either unwilling or unable to do. And even though Kerr once complained of her early “goody goody” roles, she surely knew what was going on inside those deceptively prim and proper women she played prior to From Here to Eternity. And just as surely, it was no coincidence that she would incarnate so many more such characters for the rest of her 45-year career.
Now, as much as I admire Elizabeth Taylor’s and Maggie Smith’s performances in, respectively, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), I wish Kerr had played the female leads in those two psychological dramas. In the former, as the blowsy, foul-mouthed, sexually and emotionally frustrated housewife, she would have let out what had been kept repressed in most of her other film roles; in the latter, as the strict, sexually repressed teacher and ardent Mussolini admirer, she would have had a role tailored to her screen persona.
Deborah Kerr: Perfect for Pasolini, Buñuel, Hitchcock, Almodóvar, Malle
With the appropriate change in settings, I could also see Deborah Kerr as the mother in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), being seduced by Terence Stamp’s mysterious visitor; as an older version of Catherine Deneuve’s kinky housewife in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour (1967); as the beautiful mother inspiring lust in her teenage son in Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart (1971); or, had it been made 10 or 20 years earlier, as a lawyer who gets turned on by murder in Pedro Almodóvar’s Matador (1986).
Kerr would even have made Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) watchable. And had she starred in both Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) – in the James Stewart roles – perhaps those two movies would have merited all the praise that has been bestowed upon them.
Kerr’s women were dangerous because – like nearly all of us – they offered the world a veneer of propriety belying countless socially unacceptable urges. Those, in turn, could lead to a whole array of fates worse than death: social ostracism, emotional despair, psychological fragmentation, and scariest of all, facing up to one’s own inner core.
How many actresses could have been ideal heroines for Pasolini, Malle, Buñuel, Hitchcock, and Almodóvar, five disparate talents who have explored the hidden corners of human sexual desire?
Deborah Kerr was one.
13 comments
Miss Kerr in the roles she actually had as mentioned here was a ball of fire, sometimes banked by Hollywood restrictions against which she bridled. She actively and vocally complained about Hollywood’s treatment of sexuality, especially later in her career. And you’re right – those eyes! She’d burn hole right through the film. Her role in The Gypsy Moths, a really emotional and adult role indeed, was a capstone on a long career of having been a measured yet sexual actress. There may not be another actress of her era who had as many sexualized yet nuanced roles, and even fewer who had them as a mature woman. All that and she had a great body as well.
OH MY GOODNESS! You are a genius! I have always been a very big fan of Ms. Kerr but really only saw about 7 of her films. Most of the films I viewed when I was under 20 years old. I am positive that I did sense the excitement of Ms. Kerr’s acting style, but I did not spend a lot of time thinking about it.
Fast forward 25 years….I decide I want to watch Beloved Infidel. I have also recently made a decision to follow my dream and find employment in the theater or film industry. I just started to study the acting process and film history, etc. So, I am already looking to find female role models whom I can study in detail.
I really did not know what hit me! After the movie was over I was literally shaken up and so very intense. I knew immediately that she was incredible and I had found my MUSE. However, I really was struggling to put my finger on the elements that were so very powerful.
The next film that I watched was Tea & Sympathy. Seriously, I was overwhelmed by the humanity and the tenderness of her performance, but at the same time I was fired up! The sexual undertones in that film were insane. The internal struggles just pour out of her in these subtleties of which I could not even identify because I couldn’t take my eyes off hers. It was hands down ( and I have seen many films, I am real old movie fan) the single most powerful experience I have ever had watching any movie. It did help that I am very close to embodying the character of, Laura Reynolds, so I was on high alert. I know now that what made it over the top for me was that Deborah also closely identified with this character.
This article is just perfect, you were able to put into words all the elements that I really couldn’t identify completely. The word that I was not using or not identifying for whatever reason was erotic.
For me, she is the number one actress of last century and this century! I hope that I can learn some of her techniques, but honestly she is so masterful in her craft that I am very guarded about success.
I could go on gushing over her for hours and hours, because I have never seen a comparable performance. The complexity and undercurrent of what is going on in there and how she is able to get you to see it is a mysterious thing indeed. Some elements are very obvious and others are very subtle, I see many of them both throughout but this ability is just unmatched.
In the last week I have watched about 14 of her films. I have only seen one stinker. Three others just took my breath away. I spent a great deal of time researching her person, to find that I do indeed have many things in common with her. We both have a very strong sense of humanity and the suffering of another person really disrupts all of the senses. It is some of her core principals as a human that allow her to reach so deep into that place and she can just open up so incredibly wide to eeak out the elements she needs for a performance.
I even ran across an article where she talked about her perfume and the level of importance it plays in subtly revealing elements of your inner person. The way she described aligned perfectly with the way I choose my scent, it was pretty wild. She did note the brand, so I looked it up and was presented with a version the same 2 scents I currently wear on the daily. Both of my perfumes include Karma by LUSH orange/citrus, Patchouli, the 2nd Hermes L’Orange Verte includes orange/citrus, patchouli, bergamot, mint and lemon and Deborah Kerr’s favorite is called Norell it contains white flower, orange/citrus, patchouli, mint and Jasmine. I could not have picked one that matched my palette better if I tried! Really remarkably strange. So, I have new scent to add to my fleet ;) and I aspire to smell as much like my MUSE as possible. haha
blah blah blah, I could go on and on about how she has shaken me up through her performances. It has really been a bit life altering for me.
I think she could do anything at all. Hitch would have been lucky to have her. The ability that she has to emotionally reach through that camera and put you in the moment is just remarkable. She is seething with all kinds of stuff. You are right it is all just right below the surface. I would be hard pressed to point out all of the subtle things that happen because I get so engrossed in her performance.
I just had to tell you how much I appreciate your writing this. You have really helped me a tremendous amount. There will never be anyone like her. I have another 30 films to watch!
You are just wonderful!!!! Nikki
You think Grace Kelly was asexual? Hah hah hah hah HAH.
Did Deborah Kerr appear in the 1946 movie “Stairway to Heaven”?
@Dom S.
No, that was Kim Hunter.
Hey Gaurav,
First of all, thanks for writing. Glad you enjoyed the Deborah Kerr post.
Now, what about Deborah Kerr replacing Ingrid Bergman in “Notorious,” or “Under Capricorn,” or “Spellbound”? Quite a bit of “repressed emotion” in those movies, no?
I think Alec Guinness was a brilliant actor. But really, most actors then (and now) tend to play the same types of roles over and over again. It’s relatively rare for someone to break the mold, try something new, and fully succeed (careerwise) at it. Barbara Stanwyck comes to mind. Joan Bennett, too. There haven’t been many others, I don’t think.
Thanks again for writing and sharing your thoughts.
Andre,
An excellent post, though I don’t agree with all of your conclusions. Nonetheless, I enjoyed your article and your conclusions were well argued. I however can’t see Deborah Kerr as taking on the role in any of Hitchcock’s films, since Hitchcock’s women tend to be (usually) cold, statuesque blondes which Deb certainly isn’t – she has far too much repressed emotion that simmers beneath.
However, I can see her in some of Hitch’s greatest (and consequently least known) films such as The Wrong Man and Shadow of a Doubt where Vera Miles also did an excellent job. Of course, the above two films are my personal favourites and I daresay, not everyone’s cup of tea but I find them more interesting than Vertigo, Notorious, Dial M for Murder, etc among others.
It would have been interesting if any of male roles had been substituted for a female role as you mentioned, but that would have been far too radical and consequently would’ve run into trouble. In place of James Stewart I can think of any number of fine actors such as James Mason, Ronald Colman (10 years younger), etc.
And lastly, I just wanted to comment on stereotyping – Deb was seen as the personification of the English rose. Sadly, at least one other actor suffered from a similar case of stereotyping – Alec Guinness.
Alec Guinness was either the (stereo)typical British gentleman in Lean’s films or a fixture in Ealing comedies. My own feeling is that, like Deb, although in a very different way, there was much more to him that the roles he played and if given the opportunity, I feel that his true talent could have been expressed to its fullest.
I’d be interested in hearing your opinion regarding this.
Oh, and “The Journey” is another one that is absolutely fabulous. There was this smoldering thing between her and Yul Brynner that was pretty mesmerizing. They do not make them like that anymore.
I just found this article a couple of days ago and was delighted that someone else saw what I truly love about the lovely Miss Kerr. I’m in the process of viewing all of her movies (I think that I’ve seen nearly 40 in six weeks!) and her talent was phenomenal. I’m now a HUGE fan. All you have to do is pay attention to her eyes and what she did with her those lovely, delicate hands to get a feel for what is really going on inside the different characters she played. I can’t get enough of “The Chalk Garden”, “The Night of the Iguana”, Tea and Sympathy” and “Black Narcissus”. All four, I think, have that undercurrent of the “danger” you write about that is truly powerful. Although, I have to admit that I didn’t get the same impression that you did regarding “The Chalk Garden”. However, I agree wholehearted about how exciting it would have been to see her in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” even though I’m a huge Maggie Smith fan as well. Great article even if I am four years late in reading it.
If you want to see one of the more believable erotic screen kisses ,then watch ‘The Journey’ with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner
– An overlooked gem of a film-I think its one of her best performances and definitely his- in russian forsooth! -Their chemistry is intense
and Yul Brynner in black leather-what else is there
Andre,
Thank goodness, I was begining to think I was the only person to think of Kerr as sexy rather than a “great lady”. She was even a sexy nun. I think her sex appeal was really natural, she just always
seemed like a real woman and not like an actress trying to play a real woman. I also agree with you about the sexless sex icons in films. Marilyn Monroe has sex appeal but is was usually one
dimensional in her films, like most sex icons, Marilyn was cute but she only came across to me as sexy in a few films, one of those being the THE MISFITS. The longing liquid eyes did it for me rather then the undulating curves.
But I just can’t see Kerr in a Hitchcock film. It’s just so hard to envision, not that she wouldn’t be good, but definately (as early as the 30?s) had a type and she wasn’t it at all. Not a frozen beauty,
but from the obituraries in the Associated press you’d be inclined to think so. Under another director I can picture her in some of those
roles, but Hitchcock had a love of the statuesque frozen beauty. Kerr was much too warm and inviting. Although I am curious as to what you find lacking in VERTIGO & REAR WINDOW aside from Jimmy Stewart;)
I think Deborah represented sex in real life.
Back to the sex goddesses of the silver screen I agree with you about their limitations a child-women, vamps, frozen glamour goddesses and such. I love Marlene Dietrich but she was stuck in one persona (but WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION & TOUCH OF EVIL prove her range) I think actors like to be comfortable, but a few mavericks in Hollywood like
to challenge themselves. Only a few *sigh*. More Meryl less Russell(I should have another Oscar) Crowe. Wasn’t he better before he won? And sexier?
Marcus
Hey, David,
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the Deborah tribute and “Beyond Paradise.” (I couldn’t put it down, either — you know, if you have a deadline you gotta deliver…)
(And thanks for letting me know about the problems with the editor at altfg dot com address. I’ll look into that.)
More details via private e-mail.
I enjoyed your tribute to Deborah Kerr almost as much as your book, Beyond Paradise, I couldn’t put it down. How can I get my copy signed? I would gladly send it to you and include return postage etc. I tried contacting you via editor at altfg dot com but it comes bad as a bad address, thanks David