Versatile Irene Dunne - Her Work Analysed

IRENE DUNNE, one of the most versatile and charming of Hollywood stars, visited England recently following on the successful screening there of her big productions, "Magnificent Obsession" and "Show Boat." The impressions she made on an English interviewer are recorded below and are of added interest in view of the release of "Show Boat" in Perth in October.

 Miss Dunne, he wrote, had a striking unusualness that makes you wonder what she really thinks - how she ever came to be a film star. Not that there is anything aloof about her - anything of the Sphinx or the Garbo. She is one of the sincerest women you could meet. What makes her so startingly unusual is the fact that she does not fit into any part of the Hollywood pattern. 

 You cannot imagine her occupying any position in the Hollywood scheme of things. An American journalist recently wrote an article about Miss Dunne and called it "Lowdown on a Lady." It was a good title. Irene Dunne is a lady. She has nothing of Hollywood about her. She looks exactly what, in the other half of her life, she is: the cultured wife of a successful New York doctor. 

                                                    "A Bad Start"

 Hollywood did not give her a very good start. Her first picture in Hollwood was a cheap musical comedy called "Present Arms." She blushed when I mentioned it and said:"Oh my! How on earth did you know about that?" The blush might well have been saved for the people who cast her in the film. It was all about the Marines - hearty Flagg and Quirt stuff in doubtful taste, with charming Miss Dunne singing the vulgar theme song called "Leathernecking."

 "Fortunately," she told me. "It was released at a time when all the cinema managers were pasting notices on their advertisements, saying: 'This is not a singing film.' So my songs were cut and the picture wasn't shown anywhere much." Now, whenever you ask her what was the first film she made she treats herself with a little white lie and answers: "Cimarron." It still remains her favourite film. Both because the picture itself was so successful and because it was in it that she learnt to act.

 "You see," she explained, "I never had any acting training at all. I graduated from the Chicago College of Music, got a job by sheer good luck in the stage show 'Irene,' and then went into Ziegfeld's production of 'Show Boat.' It was there that I was 'spotted' and taken to Hollywood - never having done any more serious acting than any other musical comedy leading lady." 

 Miss Dunne is not only an actress capyble of sincere and moving performances in straight roles; she has also an amazing aptitude for character work. She has given us many demonstrations of this. In "Back Street" (her second favourite picture) she grappled triumphantly with a sombre role in a down-to-earth drama. In "This Man Is Mine" she blossomed with a youthful vividness and flair for light comedy that provided another shattering glimpse of the many-sided Dunne personality. There you are: light comedy and emotional drama all in one breath. You just can't pin her down, this woman with the delightful mezz-soprano voice, the depth and sincerity of a really talented dramatic actress, the vivacity of a born comedienne, the versatility of a character artist.

 Perhaps because of all this things - perhaps because she doesn't fit into the Hollywood pattern - she hasn't always played the roles that she deserved to have. I can think of many pictures - "No Other Woman," "Behold We Live," "The Age Of Innocence" - in which she was lamentably treated by story and direction. But Miss Dunne is in a position to insist that she gets the right part now. She is a shrewd business woman; she acted as her own manager for a time. She will say frankly, if you ask her whether she would consider playing in a British picture:"I really couldn't say. You have to be so very certain of so many things - story, director, cameraman, technicians - before you can take a chance like that."

                                                A Good Contract

 She has made a point of getting herself a contract (Claudette Colbert, Miss Dunne thinks is the only other person in Hollywood who has one like it) under which she will make four seperate pictures for four seperate studios during the coming season. "It's a gamble that can work out two ways," she said to me. "The way I hope it will go is that my pictures will be better because no studio will have the worry of finding more than one good story for me in one year. But there's always the chance, of course, that none of the studios will take pains over me because I am only making one picture for each of them."

 The firs film, at any rate, is fixed. It will be the life of Mme. Curie, for Universal, a subject which Miss Dunne believes will have much of the appeal of "Cimarron" with its story of undying love between a man and his wife. After that she will alternate musical pictures with dramatic ones. It doesn't sound much when you say it quickly, does it? "Alternate musical pictures with dramatic ones." Yet just think of Grace Moore playing the lead in "Back Street" - or Hephurn coping with the Jerome Kern songs in "Show Boat." It's all in the year's work to versatile, unclassifiable Irene Dunne.

(The West Australian, August 21, 1936)