'You're a Lady!' I Sneered, And Irene Dunne Winced

 I told Irene Dunne to her face last night that in one respect she's lousy.

 "You're lousy copy," I told her.

 "I always was," she said. She didn't even hang her head. If she had the pink ostrich feathers on her hat would have dropped into my goulash. 

 "I've lived with the same husband - my own - for almost 16 years, and I don't get into night club fights, so I'm very bad newspaper copy," she said.

 "Furthermore," I said, "you're a lady."

 That hurt her. She winced.

 "Oh, no. I'm not," she protested.

 "Go WAWN!" I sneered. "You can SAY you're not, but you are, it's common gossip. Prove you're not. Stand on your head or something."

 "Well," she gulped, "anyway, I'm not nearly as ladylike as some people around me in pictures. Some are much niced and sweeter."

 "SO!" I scoffed. "Just because they're are ladylike, you have to be. If they cut off their fingers, you'd cut yours off."

 Miss Dunne paused to try to think of an answer. This was at an MGM preview of "Meet Me in St. Louis," which she isn't in. "Even if I were a lady," she said, "it wouldn't be my fault. It would be my mother's and my grandmother's."

 "Listen, you lady, you," I said, and then I spoke to her about a recent American Magazine article by Jerome Beatty, "Lady Irene," proving she's a lady. "Deny THAT"! I challenged.

 "I got more nice mail from that," she said. "Maybe they like you to be a lady. Maybe we're needed to strike a balance in Hollywood what with all those -- "

 She hesitated.

 I looked around to see whether anybody was listening. Nobody was.

 "Messes," I whispered.

 "Yes," she said. "Being married to a non-professsional - I think that's how I get a reputation of sitting on a high hill looking down." She's married to Dr. Francis Griffin, and if I may whisper something to you, she's scandalized Hollywood and New York recently by appearing in public with him, even though he's her husband. She even had the brass to take him with her to Montreal on a Victory Bond campaign from which she returned yesterday. 

 "Miss Dunne," I said, "I noticed something else very bad about you. The women around here and the women I know like you. That's no good for an actress, you know?"

 "Well, I'm glad," she said, "because I think women drag the men in to the theatres. They're the bosses."

 I gave her up at that point, for the dame is obviously a hopeless case. How could I possibly do a story on her?

(New York Post, Friday November 3, 1944 - from Earl Wilson's nationwide syndicated column "It Happened Last Night")