Background
Dunne, Irene was born on December 20, 1901 in Louisville. Dunne had a happy family life until her father died when she was eleven.
Dunne, Irene was born on December 20, 1901 in Louisville. Dunne had a happy family life until her father died when she was eleven.
She studied at Chicago College Music.
She went into musical comedy, rising slowly to the role of Magnolia in the touring production of Show Boat. By 1930, she was under contract to RKO, initially as a singer. But her first film, Leathernecking (30, Edward Cline), was stripped of its songs. Then Richard Dix chose her to play Sabra Cravat opposite him in Cimarron (31, Wesley Buggies). That proved a huge success, and Sabra is really the heart of what is a soggy Western. So Dunne was set up as an actress.
She worked hard at RKO, but not always in good material: Bachelor Apartment (31, Lowell Sherman); Consolation Marriage (31, Paul Sloane); as the crippled teacher in Symphony of Six Million (32, Cregoiy La Cava); and Thirteen Women (32, George Arehainbaud). She had a great success at Universal as the secret mistress in Back Street (32, John M. Stahl), and suffering and sacrifice seemed to appeal to her—Dunne herself approved of the character’s unself-pitying acceptance of her life. This sort of role was repeated in The Secret of Madame Blanche (33, Charles Brabin): If I Were Free (33, Elliott Nugent); The Silver Cord (33, John Cromwell), where Joel McCrea nearly gives her up for his mother; very good in Ann Vickers (33, Cromwell), where she plays Walter Huston's mistress with unusual intelligence; and This Man Is Mine (34, Cromwell). The seiies was topped off by her blind woman in Magnificent Obsession (35, Stahl).
That Dunne is worthy, but not overly interesting. She sang at last in Stingaree (34, William Wellman), and got into a series of musicals: Sweet Adeline (35, Mer\yn Le Roy); with Astaire and Rogers in Roberta (35, William A. Seiter), singing Jerome Kerns “Yesterdays” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”; and repeated her stage role in Show Boat (36. James Whale).
She did not want to do Theodora Goes Wild (36, Richard Boleslavskv), in a Sidney Buchman script from a Mary McCarthy story. But she did it, and a great comic talent w'as revealed in the story of a woman who writes a best-selling book and falls in love with her New York illustrator (Melvyn Douglas).
At Paramount, she did High, Wide and Handsome (37, Rouben Mamoulian), singing “The Folks Who Live on the Hill" (Kern again). But Columbia and Leo McCarey grabbed her for The Awful Truth (37), for which she got her third Oscar nomination (Theodora and Cimarron had preceded it).
So she was established in musicals, melodrama, and high comedy—that versatility had few rivals. Still, she was forty and the decade was ending uneasily. She had more success, but nothing as bracing as The Aw ful Truth: Joy of Living (38, Tay Garnett); Invitation to Happiness (39, Ruggles); nominated again for the wonderful Love Affair (39, McCarey—with Charles Boyer), one of the most influential of romances; When Tomorrow Comes (39, Stahl); with Grant again in My Favorite Wife (40, Garson Kanin), which has the first feel of retread; very touching in the weepy Penny Serenade (41, George Stevens); Unfinished Business (41, La Cava); Lady in a Jam (42, La Cava); rather awkward with Spencer Tracy in A Guy Named Joe (43, Victor Fleming); The White Cliffs of Dover (44, Clarence Brown)—in Greer Garson territory; Together Again (44, Charles Vidor); and Over 21 (45, Vidor).
She was with Rex Harrison in Anna and the Ling of Siam (46, Cromwell), and she had considerable success sentimentally in Life With Father (47, Michael Curtiz) and 1 Remember Mama (48, Stevens), and a fifth nomination. But staidness was in sight: Never a Dull Moment (50, George Marshall) did not live up to its title; and then in The Mudlark (50, Jean Neguleseo), she put on makeup, years, and dignity to play Queen Victoria. She was unrecognizable and the film was a folly— perhaps it had snob appeal for her. After It Grows on Trees (52, Arthur Lubin), she retired and turned to political volunteer work, with special interest in the United Nations
There are times in her work when respectability shows: she was staunch as both Republican and Catholic, and she favored what she regarded as serious roles— drama and weepies—as opposed to the comedies for which she is treasured. Stanley Cavell once wrote of The Awful Truth that "if one is not willing to yield to Irene Dunne’s temperament, her talents, her reactions, following their detail almost to the loss of one’s own identity, one will not know, and will not care, what the film is about.”
Richard Schickels obituary tribute noted, “She always knew how to put a man in her place, but at the same time leave him room to maneuver out of it .” In two very different films with Cary Grant—The Awful Truth and Penny Serenade—she seems smarter or more knowing than Grant, yet graceful enough to watch him catch up, without letting him feel it. And Grant was testing company (he, too, revered her timing).
Then there is her age. For some time, it was believed that Dunne had been born in 1904, but 1898 is now taken as the true date. Which means that she was over thirty when she made her screen debut. Very few actresses cast in romance simply missed their twenties. (Jean Harlow never met her thirties.) Harder years followed: she sang in church choirs for money (her mother was a musician), she taught music herself, and studied at Chicago Musical College. In 1920, she failed an audition for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Married Francis Daughter of Griffin, July 16, 1928 (deceased 1965). 1 child, Mary Frances Griffin Gage.