Irene Dunne: Great Actress

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 until his death 15 October 1965. They had adopted a daughter Mary Frances Griffen in 1936.

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 1930s and 1940s, 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 was apprehensive about attempting her first comedy role, as the title character in Theodora Goes Wild (1936), but discovered that she enjoyed it.^[3] She turned out to possess 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 The Awful Truth (1937), My Favorite Wife (1940) and Penny Serenade (1941), all three 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.

Shortly after It Grows on Trees opened, she performed as the opening act on the 1953 March of Dimes showcase in New York City. While in town, she made her first appearance as the mystery guest on What's My Line?. She made television performances on Ford Theatre, General Electric Theater, and the Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, continuing to act 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."^[4]

1. 1. Hats, Hunches and Happiness, by Irene Dunne, Picturegoer Magazine, February 17, 1945
2. 2. The Clinging Vine, Internet Broadway Database
3. 3. Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies introduction to the film.
4. 4. Shipman, David, Movie Talk, St Martin's Press, 1988. ISBN; p 37

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