Concentration Necessary For Screen Success

 To Irene Dunne, Hollywood suggests an oasis in the desert, a South Sea island or a quiet village where one can get away from the hustle of modern life.

 Miss Dunne finds i the most peaceful spot in the world because there alone she can attend to the business of acting without anything to distract her. It is only when she steps from the cinema city into the outside world that she finds herself in a madhouse of autograph hunters, police lines, starring crowds, interviewers, photographers, modistes, beauticians and kindred distractions. In Hollywood she is able to concentrate, and concentration is the mainspring of her screen success.

 Miss Dunne´s latest picture "When Tomorrow Comes," which she made with Charles Boyer, who also co-starred with her in the recent hit "Love Affair."

 Making a picture with John M. Stahl as director is a pretty tense business and Miss Dunne had need for all her knack of concentration to keep her screen character in tact as Stahl shot each scene time after time in his meticulous manner. Under pressure of this repetition, the other players resorted to horseplay between "takes" to lessen the nerve strain. Irene Dunne never joined in the frivolity. Neither did she dissaprove of it. She just kept apart, thinking her way through the script.

 "I suppose concentration is so necessary for me because in my case acting is more a question of thinking than feeling." she said to friends on the set. "I try to analyse everything I do all the time, and then, when I get a role, I try and fit my findings about myself into the character I play. I suppose it sounds silly, but this trick analysis has become such a habit with me that I even do it during accidents. About a month ago I tumbled down stairs at home and as I went clattering down I found I was catalogueing my feelings - no, I don´t mean the physical bumps - but fear and so on, for possible use in a picture."

 Living and working in Hollywood, Miss Dunne can continue this absorption without being distracted, for all those around her are as saturated with picture making as she is. She can shop, garden, or play golf without attracting any attention, for folks are too familiar with stars to stare at them in Hollywood. That´s why she likes it.

 In "When Tomorrow Comes" Irene Dunne plays the role of a young business girl who falls hopelessly in love with Charles Boyer, a famous pianist, without knowing his true identity. Supporting cast includes Barbara O´Neil, Nelia Walker, Onslow Stevens, Nydia Westman and Fritz Feld.

(Kilmore Free Press, Thursday 19 October 1939)