Irene Dunne

[movieman1957]

December belongs to Irene.

I've always liked Irene. Maybe the first thing I saw her in was "Life With Father." I'm not sure if I knew her or Powell at the time. I really enjoyed it.

Biggest surprise - "Showboat." What a lovely voice.
Biggest find - "Theodora Goes Wild."

[mrsl]

I think my favorite Irene Dunne, of whom I'm not a really big fan, is actually The White Cliffs of Dover where she ages from about 17 to 45 or so. Although she retains her love of her American heritage, she also developes a love of her adopted England. She does it all very well.

Anne

[feaito]

Irene Dunne is one of my favorite movie stars.

I think that the first time I saw her was in "Penny Serenade", a film which has become a perennial favorite of mine. In fact it's in my top 25 films list.

I agree with Chris in that "Theodora Goes Wild" has been one of the biggest discoveries I've made. What a grand comedy!

Other favorites: "The Awful Truth", "The Age of Innocence", "My Favorite Wife", "Anna and the King of Siam", "Life with Father", "High, Wide and Handsome", "Roberta", "Love Affair" and "Ann Vickers".

I also liked her very much in "Stingaree". Odd, but engrossing film anyhow.

Last friday I watched the FOX DVD edition of "Anna and the King of Siam", which I hadn't seen in years and I still think it's the best adaptation of the novel so far. Dunne's perfect as Mrs. Owens; she's the definitive Anna in my opinion.

Irene Dunne is the epitome of the truly classy talented movie star, a kind of predecessor of Deborah Kerr. She was good at drama, musical, romance, comedy, etc. She was indeed versatile.

Another thing that has always startled me is that so many of her films have been object of remakes. Years ago I made up this list having this issue in mind:

http://tinyurl.com/2ajcko

[melwalton]

She should have done more singing. ( I just avoided a bad pun ) . She was great in "Roberta' and 'Showboat' I liked that song ('Tonight is Mine') from 'Stingaree' nice tune.

[charliechaplinfan]

I agree with Feaito, although I haven't seen as quite as many films I think she is a fantastic actress and I wish she was better known today.

[jdb1]

I'm not a big fan of Dunne's, but I do like her in some things better than others. I find her a very uneven actress, and I suppose the material, the director and her co-stars in each film made a difference. I've never found her to be one of those who could "do it all."

[knitwit45]

I think her best movie was I Remember Mama. She seemed so much more approachable. She wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy, but certainly a loving mother, wife and sister. Her scenes with Oskar Homolka were a joy. She never let him push her around, either as Mama, or as an actress.

[Classic Redhead]

Irene was wonderful! I love her best in "I Remember Mama"

[Classic Redhead]

[Classic Redhead]

[Classic Redhead]

I really like her films with Cary Grant.

[Classic Redhead]

Irene Dunne (December 20, 1898 - September 4, 1990) was a five-time Academy Award-nominated American film actress and singer of the 1930s and 1940s. Born Irene Marie Dunn in Louisville, Kentucky to Joseph Dunn, a steamboat inspector for the United States government, and Adelaide Henry, a concert pianist/music teacher from Newport, Kentucky, Irene Dunne would later write, "No triumph of either my stage or screen career has ever rivalled the excitement of trips down the Mississippi on the river boats with my father." She was only eleven when her father died in 1909. She saved all of his letters and often remembered and lived by what he told her the night before he died: "Happiness is never an accident. It is the prize we get when we choose wisely from life's great stores."[1]

After her father's death, she, her mother and younger brother Charles moved to her mother's hometown of Madison, Indiana. Dunne's mother taught her to play the piano as a very small girl. According to Dunne, "Music was as natural as breathing in our house."[1] Nicknamed "Dunnie," she took piano and voice lessons, sang in local churches and high school plays before her graduation in 1916.

She earned a diploma to teach art, but took a chance on a contest and won a prestigious scholarship to the Chicago Musical College. She had hopes of becoming an opera singer, but did not pass an audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company.

Dunne turned to musical theater, making her Broadway debut in 1922 in Zelda Sear's The Clinging Vine.[2] The following year, Dunne played a season of light opera in Atlanta, Georgia. Though, in her own words, Dunne created "no great furor," and by 1929 she was playing leading roles in a successful Broadway career, grateful that she was never in the chorus line.

Dunne met her future husband, Francis Griffin, a New York dentist, at a supper dance in New York. Despite differing opinions and battles that raged furiously,[1] Dunne eventually agreed to marry him and leave the theater. They were wed on July 16, 1928.

Dunne's role as Magnolia Hawks in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat was the result of a chance meeting with showman Florenz Ziegfeld in an elevator the day she returned from her honeymoon. Dunne was discovered by Hollywood while starring with the Chicago company of the musical in 1929. She signed a contract with RKO and appeared in her first movie in 1930, Leathernecking, an early musical. She moved to Hollywood with her mother and brother, and maintained a long-distance marriage with her husband in New York until he joined her in California in 1936. That year, she re-created her role as Magnolia in what is considered the classic film version of Show Boat.

During the 30s and 40s, Dunne blossomed into a popular screen heroine in movies such as Back Street (1932), and Magnificent Obsession (1935). The first of several films she made opposite Charles Boyer, Love Affair (1939) was one of her best. She sang "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in the 1935 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film version of the musical Roberta. She possessed an exceptional aptitude for comedy. The unique Dunne trademark flair for combining elegance and madcap comedy is seen at its best in such films as Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937) and My Favorite Wife (1940), the latter two opposite Cary Grant. Other notable roles include Anna Leonowens in Anna and the King of Siam (1946), Lavinia Day in Life with Father (1947), and Martha Hanson in I Remember Mama (1948). In The Mudlark (1950), Dunne was nearly unrecognizable under heavy makeup as Queen Victoria. She retired from the screen in 1952, after It Grows on Trees, a comedy about a couple who discover that money does grow on trees, at least in their back yard.

She continued with television performances on Ford Theatre, General Electric Theater, and the Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, remaining active as an actress until 1962.

Dunne commented in an interview that she had lacked the "terrifying ambition" of some other actresses and said, "I drifted into acting and drifted out. Acting is not everything. Living is." In 1957, Dwight David Eisenhower appointed Dunne one of five alternative U.S. delegates to the United Nations in recognition of her charitable works and interest in conservative Catholic and Republican causes. In her retirement, Dunne devoted herself primarily to civic, philanthropic, and Republican political causes. In 1965, Dunne became a board member of Technicolor, the first woman ever elected to the board of directors.

Dunne remained married to Dr. Griffin until his death on October 15, 1965. They lived in Holmby Hills, California in a Southern plantation-style mansion that they designed. They had one daughter, Mary Frances (née Anna Mary Bush), who was adopted in 1938 from the New York Foundling Hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity of New York.[4] Both Dunne and her husband were ordained Knights of Malta.

One of her last public appearances was in April 1985, when she attended the dedication of a bust in her honor at St. John's (Roman Catholic) Hospital in Santa Monica, California, for which her foundation, The Irene Dunne Guild, had raised more than $20 million.

Dunne died peacefully at her Holmby Hills home in Los Angeles, California in 1990, and is entombed in the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California. Her personal papers are housed at the University of Southern California.

Dunne has been described as the best actress to never win an Academy Award. She received five Best Actress nominations during her career: for Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948).

In 1985, she was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, Lifetime Achievement for a career that spanned three decades and a range of musical theater, the silver screen, Broadway, radio and television. Other honors include the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University in 1949, the Bellarmine Medal from Bellarmine College in 1965 and Colorado's Women of Achievement in 1968. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6440 Hollywood Blvd. and displays in the Warner Bros. Museum and Center for Motion Picture Study.

[Classic Redhead]

[Classic Redhead]

This is my favorite photo of Irene