Discovery.

I consider myself pretty much an expert on films before 1960. (All right, not an expert, but I know tons more than most people.) But there is a very large gap in my film education which I only began to fill last night. While I have heard the name Deanna Durbin all my life, I was not familiar with this actress and lyric soprano and not aware of having seen any one of her movies until last night. The film was 1941's It Started With Eve. While the title is totally illogical, the film was funny, charming and innovative. I won't tell you the plot, but try to see it. The revelation to me was how beautiful, talented and endearing Deanna was. I could see why, at one point, she was considered the highest paid woman in the United States. And why she was a leading box office star for so many years, who was credited for saving Universal Studios from bankruptcy.  Obviously fame didn't go to her head since she retired in 1949.  A year later, she married film producer-director Charles Henri David and they moved to a farmhouse near Paris where, I am guessing, she lived a fulfilling life. Deanna Durbin David died this April at the age of 91.