In the little wooden one-roomed school-house on the Universal lot where Mrs. West teaches under-age starlets such as Nan Gray, Billy Burrud, and Mlle. Durbin, Deanna is considered a conscientious student, able and intelligent.  The secret of Deanna's entire success, in the eyes of her teacher, is her exceptional ability to concentrate.  She has already completed her studies in Latin.
    "Now I'm taking French," Deanna informs you.  "After that I shall study Italian, Spanish, German...  I'll need all those languages for my music.  No, I don't know any operas yet;  only arias from them.  Italian seems so easy to sing and read after studying Latin, but I can't say the same for French.  I'm having a little difficulty in learning it."
    If Deanna, sitting in the school room at study, clad in sweater, skirt, "bobbie" sox, crepe-soled Oxfords, the eternal calot atop her curls, is known as a conscientious student, she is also known as a strong-minded one, too.  In fact, if you were to lodge any complaint at all against the one hundred pound starlet you might list obstinacy as it.  But it's probably not a bad idea to be tenacious.  Many older Hollywood stars with less talent than Deanna have succeeded on that one attribute.
    The school room often becomes a clinic of life under the able guidance of Mrs. West.

    It is not surprising that this talented youngster, recently insured by her studio for half a million dollars, enjoys leaving the make-believe world of the studios for lunch at the corner drug store (to avoid studio cafe autograph seekers) in this genial, matter-of-fact company.  Lunch finished, Deanna spends a restful fifteen minutes in the swing in her teacher's sunny backyard near the studio.  Says Mrs. West:  "I often say I am in the movies, but not of them."  This sums up her philosophy completely.  During Mrs. Durbin's recent ill health Mrs. West acted for five weeks as Deanna's chaperon on location and at the studio.  A veteran of thirteen Universal years, Mrs. West found it a pleasure.
    Chaperoning Deanna must be a cinch.  There are few complications;  no "boy trouble."  Deanna likes boys, never goes out to parties alone with them, meets them in groups, sees much of two boy cousins, one of whom has endowed her with a collection of sixty "swing" records.  No, she couldn't tell you her favorite piece, says this tactful young lady.  There'll be no chance for later repudiation here.  She is no way a provincial.  She has been, in big parties, to the Trocadero, Vendome, and the Hollywood show spots.  On occasional nights she stays up until midnight if she has been gadding or to a concert;  usually she is in bed by nine-thirty, and asleep shortly thereafter.
    Anyone entrusted with La Durbin's care would probably talk herself blue in the face to convince the child to eat a larger breakfast.  And all that would happen is that Deanna would drink an extra glass of orange or grapefruit juice.  "I don't like breakfast," she tells you with dimpled and smiling decision, "but I do like lunch and dinner."  After breakfast she'd probably make a tour of her pets, Tippy, the black mutt she bought;  two of the three Three Smart Girl turtles (one died) and the Eddie Cantor turtle carrying a load of painted flowers and the comic's name on his back.  Someone brought "Eddie" to Deanna from the Pomona State Fair.  And the parakeet.
    Probably the most difficult chore a duenna would face would be keeping the hurricane of rumor and dissension from reaching the little girl's ears.  Already, as is customary, the locusts are after the child's reputation.  "Why shouldn't she sing well?" the hum is.  "She is not fourteen, she is seventeen years old."  Remembering that Jackie Cooper in his heyday and Shirley Temple at the beginning of hers, were rumored to be dwarfs, Deanna's omniscient manager, Jack Sherrill, who ranks the little singer as one of his greatest discoveries, only laughs.  He has proof of her birth, and he is only awaiting the proper time to wave it under a few noses.
    More annoying to Sherrill, who has conducted Deanna's career from its beginning, are the suits (there are three at the moment) of people who as "co-discoverers" of Durbin claim a share in her fortunes.  But out of his years of experience in managership he knows how to handle them.  Anyway, what is there for him to split?  At the end of a cinema year and a half, the child is only drawing $300 a week on a contract that started at $150.  A new agreement just negotiated with Universal raises the rate, and gives her a bonus after each film.  This new document has five and one-half years to go.  Eddie Cantor has forty-five weeks of her exclusive radio time.

    In the middle of the maelstrom rests the Cause, nibbling at her finger nails when she gets excited, which is every now and then (radio premieres, et cetera), despite her outward appearance of poise.  Quite unspoiled, sweet (we're liable to get maudlin) Deanna still looks back upon her appearance at the late Irving Thalberg's dinner at the Trocadero as the most dramatic moment of her life.
    "I sat next to Rosa Ponselle," says this embryonic opera star, "and sang, and the next morning Mr. Thalberg sent me a huge basket of flowers.  There were seven dozen American beauty roses," counting them off on her fingers... "loads of gladiola, and around the handle were fastened little white orchids - my first orchids.  I sat right down and wrote Mr. Thalberg a note thanking him for them, and do you know that he answered, immediately?  It wasn't long after that he died..." she added in a lower tone.
    The critical kudos and women's club compliments may add several feathers to Deanna's cap, as the old saying has it, but a very special feather, it seems, should go to her for staying so happily balanced, amiable and unspoiled in the face of the wholesale admiration that she inspires.

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