With the technical skill of a legitimate lyric soprano, she was known for singing opera and semi-classical music, which is today called classical crossover.

Durbin was a child actress who made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday (1936), and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios.

Upon her retirement and divorce from Jackson in 1949, Durbin married producer-director Charles Henri David and moved to a farmhouse near Paris.

The younger child of James Allen Durbin and Ada Tomlinson Read, natives of Greater Manchester, England who relocated to Winnipeg, Canada, Deanna had an elder sister, Edith.

MGM casting director Rufus LeMaire heard about a talented young soloist performing with the Ralph Thomas Academy and called her in for an audition.

Also in 1936, Durbin began a radio collaboration with Eddie Cantor which lasted until 1938, when her heavy workload for Universal forced her to quit her weekly appearances.

However, Durbin was unhappy with the role, and that Universal had not given support to the career of her first husband, assistant director Vaughn Paul, whom she had married in April 1941.

[13] Wishing to move into more sophisticated material, They Lived Alone was re-tooled into The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1943), the World War II story of refugee children from China.

[14] She dabbled in other genres, such as the romantic comedy His Butler's Sister (1943) and the musical Western Can't Help Singing (1944), her only Technicolor film, which was produced on location in southern Utah and co-starred Robert Paige.

[15] Durbin continued her push to establish herself as a more dramatic actress with the film noir Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak and co-starring Gene Kelly.

In 1946, Durbin was the second-highest-paid woman in the United States, just behind Bette Davis;[7] her fan club ranked as the world's largest during her active years.

[20][21][22] Durbin's final four pictures — I'll Be Yours (1947), Something in the Wind (1947), Up in Central Park (1948), and For the Love of Mary (1948) — all reverted to her previous musical-comedy structure.

When her former producer Joe Pasternak tried to dissuade her, she told him, "I can't run around being a Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song—the highest-paid star with the poorest material.

[21][22] On December 21, 1950, Durbin married French director-producer Charles Henri David, who had previously directed her in Lady on a Train.

Durbin turned down several offers for a comeback, including a Broadway role as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady; she later said, "I had my ticket for Paris in my pocket.

"[27] In 1951, she was invited to play in London's West End production of Kiss Me, Kate, and in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film version of the same in 1953, and Sigmund Romberg's operetta The Student Prince in 1954.

Durbin acknowledged her dislike of the Hollywood studio system, emphasizing that she never identified herself with the public image that the media created around her.

Durbin's singing is featured in Alistair MacLean's 1955 novel HMS Ulysses, being broadcast over the wartime ship's internal communication system.

[32] She is also mentioned by the character Hatsumi in Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood (in chapter 8), when she says that her grandfather used to brag that he had met Durbin one time in New York.

"[34] Indian-Bengali film director Satyajit Ray, in his acceptance speech for an Oscar (Honorary – Lifetime Achievement) in 1992, mentioned Deanna Durbin as the only one of the three cinema personalities he recalled writing to when young who had acknowledged his fan letter with a reply.

In addition, Deanna Durbin inspired several opera singers, such as Joan Sutherland, who said about the ease of her singing, "I wish I knew how she did it".