Irene Dunne

                Irene Dunne's latest triumph is "White Cliffs of Dover."

SECURE and serene amid starlets and Grables, still playing a wide range of roles, most of them younger than her biographical years, still the sought after, not the seeker - is IRENE DUNNE.

 Which should prove something in Hollywoodd - or perhaps about Irene. For time was when anyone in her forties was through with glamour and had to be content with character roles or sit in her boudoir and leaf through her cliippings book. 

Hollywood shook its head at anyone nearing the thirties and as for the FORTIES, Allah forbid.

 But here is Irene achieving a dramatic triumph in "White Cliffs od Dover," having dittoed in "A Guy Named Joe," and about to do "Tomorrow is Forever" with George Brent.

 Then for the fun of it (and fun a la Dunne if you recall "Roberta" and "The Awful Truth" can be hilarious) Irene may impersonate Columnist Louella Parsons in the picturization of Louella's book "The Gay Illiterate."

                                                 Nice Mixture 

 How does she keep on being a top star?  

 She's been smart enough to vary her roles and never get typed. While she has plenty of what is widely known as sex appeal she hasn't depended on that attribute to get her by. She's given the movie fans a neat, smart mixture of sex, fun, laughs, tears.

 Still single-chinned, unlined and willowly, prettier than most of the babies breaking into the movies because she's never been a candle-on-both-ends-burner! The night spots have not been haunted by lovely Miss Dunne and her husband. Neither have scandal sheets focused on her.

 In 1928 she exchanged "I do's" with Dr. Francis Griffin and they're probably still holding hands and listening to the radio in front of their fireplace - at least that's columnist's supposition because Reno has never been mentioned about them.

 Of recent years they've stepped out a bit more, but still decorously. And pretty youngsters in their teens look at Irene and hope the years treat them so beautifully.

 Miss Dunne came to Hollywood for singing roles but she didn't stay in them. Against a big field she won the part of Sabra Cravat in Edna Ferber's "Cimarron."

                                              1904 is the Date.    

 She's a Blue Grass belle born in Louisville, Ky. and she doesn't mind that the date, 1904, is recorded. Father was Joseph Dunne, builder of steamboats on the Ohio river, which gave her background for her role of Magnolia in "Show Boat" both on the stage and in the movies.

 Equipped with a diploma and a teaching certificate in art, Irene was on her way to take a teaching job when she decided to enter a song contest at Chicago Musical college. She sang "The Swallow," a perennial favorite with coloraturas, and won a year's scholarship.

 She was in New York on a vacation  when she was given the leading role in the road company of the musical comedy "Irene." Followed more education, then the lead in the "Clinging Vine." She played a season of light opera in Alanta, Ga., another one in St. Louis. Another lead came for her in "Sweetheart Time."

 Irene just seemed to gravitate to leads or vice versa. Anyway she never knew a chorus line nor a hall bedroom of getting down to coffee and doughnuts or maybe just coffee.  

It was about this time that Dr. Griffin entered her life by way of a supper dance at the Biltmore hotel. She noticed him, he noticed her, he finally found a mutual friend to do the introducing.

 But there it stopped for a spell. He was a slow campaigner.

 In fact it was six weeks before he got around to using the telephone. Then it was three years before they were married one hot day in July, 1928.                            

Starlets look at Irene in poses like that and hope the same for them                                               as the Hollywood years roll along.

                                              Enter Ziegfeld

 Irene had agreed to leave the theater. But here enters the late Florenz Ziegfeld. He was going to do "Show Boat" and wanted Irene.

 Dr. Griffin (a dentist) agreed to two careers might flourish in one family if gently handled - so he went on with his drilling and she with her trilling. 

 Of course Hollywood followed hard on the heels of Ziegfeld, and Irene's career stretched from coast to coast.

 It has taken interviewers of Hollywood damsels a long time to get aquainted with Irene. From her sparkling laugh, her intimate voice, her easy manners in her screen roles you'd never guess she is shy. And because she didn't and wouldn't say much about herself when she arrived in Hollywood, busy interviewers gave her up as colorless, aloof and horrors! a LADY.

 Over a period of years in which she piled up successes, they have found out she is colorful, warm-hearted and a LADY. They were right in one aspect.

                                                  Fancy Facts

 Miss Dunne has done a great deal of hospital and canteen work, loves to raise dahlias and played lots of golf until she made a hole in one. That jinxed her. It left her to critical of the carefree game she used to play.

 The Griffins have an adopted daughter, Mary Frances, whom they call Missy. The whole family is now settled down cozily in Beverly Hills.

 Over a period of years columnists have tricked her into disclosing some details of her behind-the-front-door life. She calls her husband not pet names (lucky man), she likes to read a half hour in bed before going to sleep, her favorite reading is current novels.

 She is fond of dancing, operas by Puccini, symphony music by Liszt. She likes to be well-dressed. 

(Oakland Tribune, Magazine Pictorial, Section "Human Interest and Fiction, Sunday, July 16, 1944)

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