Deborah Kerr dies

CNN has a story about the death of Deborah Kerr, the British actress who starred in a number of great movies from the 50's and early 60's.

I'm surprised Kerr never won an Oscar and never became "Lady Kerr". She was tremendous in From Here to Eternity and An Affair to Remember. Kerr projected the same nervous rage as Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn (say in My Fair Lady). It was that kind of rage that made the 60's possible and it's hard to miss in the popular culture of the 50's. But Kerr was also able to sublimate that intensity into a kind of luminous effect that lit up the screen despite the fact that she was no great beauty.

The magic of the movies I guess.

Kerr was great when matched up with powerhouse male actors like Cary Grant, Burt Lancaster, and Richard Burton because she was just as much a powerhouse as they were, if not more so.

Although there's a lot of great actresses today (and little commentary on that), the only one that I would see as achieving Kerr's kind of effect is Julianne Moore in movies like The End of the Affair.