Irene Dunne

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Irene Marie Dunne (born December 20, 1898 in Louisville , Kentucky , † September 4, 1990 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American film actress . She was nominated five times for the Oscar for best actress . In the course of her film career, which lasted from 1930 to 1952, she played in a wide variety of genres, from westerns to musicals to screwball comedy . Her films that are still known today include Pioneers of the Wild West , The Terrible Truth , Chords of Love, and Anna and the King of Siam .

Life

In 1910, shortly after their father's untimely death, the family moved from Kentucky to Indiana. After high school, Dunne got the chance to teach music and arts in 1916. Instead, she took part in a tender from the Chicago Music College. After winning this competition, she was able to study there for a year before moving to New York City to fulfill her dream of a career as an opera singer. She sang twice in vain at the Metropolitan Opera . She returned to Chicago, where she appeared in the theater. From January 1929 to March 1930 she took on the female lead for a touring performance of the musical Showboat and was finally discovered by a talent scout for Hollywood . Irene Dunne signed a three-year studio contract in April 1930 with the newly founded studio RKO and made her screen debut in the musical Leathernecking . The contract, negotiated by her husband, guaranteed the actress a weekly salary of $ 1,000 for the first 52 weeks of the term, with pay increases of an additional $ 1,000 per week for the following two years.

She made her breakthrough with the lead role in the western Pioneers of the Wild West , for which she received her first of five nominations for the Oscar for best actress . Dunne was one of the studio's female stars alongside Ann Harding , Constance Bennett and Helen Twelvetrees . Her career took off with starring in Back Street , which hit the box office in 1932. Dunne played a suffering lover who sacrifices everything so as not to endanger her friend's family happiness. After this success, the actress was for some time committed to the melodramatic fate of women, but she occasionally played in dramas such as The Silver Cord from 1933 or the musical Stingaree , which she reunited with Richard Dix in 1934 .

Irene Dunne extended her contract with RKO in the spring of 1933 by two years at significantly improved conditions and the possibility of making films for other companies. After its expiry in 1935, it decided to only conclude contracts for a certain number of films with different studios, mostly on the basis of a reduced fixed salary combined with participation in box office results or net profits. This procedure, known as “free-lancing”, had already helped Cary Grant , Carole Lombard and Ronald Colman to achieve successful careers. Dunne took over in 1935 at Universal starring in the strip Magnificent Obsession , the Robert Taylor turned out great. In 1936 she was also filming for Universal, directed by James Whale Show Boat . Theodora Goes Wild , who tells the adventurous story of a small town teacher who writes a piquant novel under a pseudonym, established Dunne as a performer on screwball comedies . The actress was again nominated for an Oscar for best actress. As one of the very few filmmakers in Hollywood, she won the respect and esteem of studio boss Harry Cohn . Shortly thereafter, she made her first film with Cary Grant, The Terrible Truth , a classic of the screwball comedy genre. The actress took part in two less successful musicals in 1937/38. At Paramount , she worked on the expensive, prestige production High, Wide, and Handsome , directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and later that year on Joy of Living , which was produced at her former studio, RKO. Further successes in Restless Love , My Favorite Woman and Chords of Love made Dunne one of the highest paid actresses of the time. In 1939 she made $ 405,000. Louis B. Mayer saw in her a potential replacement for Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo and offered Irene Dunne the lead role in Mrs. Miniver , which she also declined. Instead, she appeared in the 1944 wartime dramas Battle in the Clouds and The White Cliffs of Dover .

After the war, Dunne gained prestige and critical acclaim with appearances in Over 21 , Reluctant Model and Anna and the King of Siam . Towards the end of the decade, she was seen as a great mother in the films Our Life with Father and Mystery of the Mother , which earned her another Oscar nomination. The attempt to reunite her with Cary Grant in Just For the Sake of My Wife in 1947 failed. Neither the comedy Never a Dull Moment nor the role of Queen Victoria in The Mudlark helped her gain new fans in 1950. She had her last appearance in 1952 in the comedy It Grows on Trees, which was produced with little effort . Irene Dunne then withdrew from the canvas. A few years later, she said about the reasons:

“I'm not sure why I withdrew. There was really no need. The scripts were still coming in. I compare my career to Mickey Mantle's . Like him, I went when I was still upstairs. Maybe it was just that I didn't feel like playing the second or third lead. I never wanted to play character roles. I slipped in and out of acting. "

Irene Dunne's hand and shoe prints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater

Later attempts to convince the actress to make a comeback failed. The offers included roles in We Are Not Angels and in Gigi .

In 1952, Irene Dunne tried to build a second career as one of the first established film stars on television. For Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Dunne hosted the introduction to the weekly 30-minute television game and occasional humorous recordings at the end of the program. The negative reactions from the fans and the actress' dissatisfaction with the format's lack of artistic development opportunities led to the termination of the collaboration after half a year. The attempt to give new impetus to her career on radio in 1952 with the serial story Bright Star , which revolved around the experiences of a reporter couple, played by Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray , ended after one year and 52 episodes.

The actress devoted herself to charitable organizations and numerous cultural activities in later years. In 1957 she appointed US President Dwight D. Eisenhower as US special envoy to the UN . In 1965 Irene Dunne was elected as the first woman to the Technicolor board of directors.

Private life

The actress was married to the dentist Francis Dennis Griffin from 1928 until his death in 1965. The couple had a long-distance relationship from 1930 to 1935 as Dr. Griffin initially continued his practice in New York. They adopted a daughter. Irene Dunne was a lifelong friend of Loretta Young and Rosalind Russell .

Filmography

Awards

Oscar for best leading actress

Nominations

Web links

Commons : Irene Dunne  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. in detail Wes D. Gehring "Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood", p. 25, printed here: [1]
  2. ↑ See Wes D. Gehring "Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood", p. 36
  3. ↑ cf. in detail here, p. 104 ff: [2]
  4. ↑ here: [3] and here [4]
  5. ↑ I don't know for sure why I retired when I did. I didn't have to quit. Scripts were still coming in. I compare my career to Mickey Mantle's. Like him, I quit while I was still at the top. Maybe it was simply because I didn't think I'd be happy playing second and third leads. I never wanted to be a character actress. I drifted into acting and drifted out.
  6. ↑ Irene Dunne on TV. In: The Irene Dunne Site. Archived from the original on September 5, 2016 ; accessed on April 19, 2019 (English).
  7. ↑ very detailed here: [5]
  8. ^ Joseph N. Bell: Irene Dunne: Saleslady for the UN. In: The Irene Dunne Site. Archived from the original on February 1, 2014 ; accessed on April 19, 2019 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Dunne, Irene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dunne, Irene Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater and film actress
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Louisville , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1990
Place of death Los Angeles , California