LOS ANGELES (AP) — Deanna Durbin, the teen sensation whose sparkling soprano voice and girl-next-door looks made her a star during Hollywood’s Golden Age, has died, a family friend said Wednesday. She was 91.

Durbin died on about April 20 in a village outside Paris where she had lived, out of public view, since 1949, family friend Bob Koster of Los Angeles told the Associated Press. Koster’s father, Henry Koster, directed six of Durbin’s films. Bob Koster did not know the cause of death.

At the height of her career, the Canadian-born Durbin, who made her first feature, “Three Smart Girls,” at age 13, was among the highestpaid actresses.

Her fans included Winston Churchill, who said she was his favorite star according to biographer William Manchester, and Anne Frank, who had Durbin’s photo pasted on the wall in the secret quarters where she and her family hid in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

In 1938 she received an honorary Academy Award for her “significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth.”

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