Changed Irene Airs New Life Views

HOLLYWOOD - In the space of a few short years Irene Dunne has emerged indisputably as a great lady.

 Today she is in the full flower of her beauty, a personage of great magnetism, of intelligence and charm; and in the capacity of ambassadress-at-large for Hollywood and its motion picture industry, she had proved herself a one-woman public relations project that millions couldn´t buy.

 In a manner it has been quite a metamorphosis, for just briefly before the war Irene and I sailed for Europe and she was terribly shy and self-conscious.

 "How now this change then?" I asked.

 "That, Hedda, is quite a story. A magazine writer did a story in which she described me as some sort of creature living far off, on a house on top of a distant hill. You know, just about the last person in the wide world you´d ever want to meet. I thought then, there´d better some changes made. You remember, I even used to avoid having interviews. I didn´t have anything to talk about.

 "Now, for example, I hate Communists. But I don´t believe in jumping on top of a soapbox, and stamping my feet and waving my arms and shouting.

 "I thought I could best fight by approaching from the other end, and showing in a small way by my own example, in supporting constructive causes.

 "I make film trailers, and appear on the radio and make transcriptions and have speaking tours and personal appearances all over the country. I go everywhere and meet an endless list of interesting people.

 "It seems to me," I said, "you´ve got yourself in a dozen different worlds. Let me see, now you´re honorary commander of the field army of the American Cancer Society, you´re chairman of the women´s devision of the American Heart Asso., and, well, it´s too long a list to go on about. In addition to that, you´re always being picked on somebody´s list of the 10 best-dressed women in America, or somebody like my friend, Sir Charles Mendl, is naming you as the most charming of al the charming women in the world. And besides, you do a full-time job as the wife of a very nice man I know named Dr. Francis Griffin, and as the mother of a 14-year-old budding young beauty named Frances, and you´re not a bad hostess, either. Have I overlooked something?" I demanded.

 "Hedda, my darling, you´re raving mad. But rave on, because I must admit I love it," she laughed.

 "What pet project of a script have you got up your sleeve?"

 "Ever since my experience with Madame Curie, I´ve been a trifle wary about cooking up stories."

 "What about New York? Would you do a play?"

 "Yes, of course, if it looked good," she said.

(The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, February 20, 1949)