The Irene Dunne Site
A Warm Reception For Irene Dunne
BY BARBARA SALTZMAN
STILL TREASURED - A fan seeks autograph from Irene Dunne at AFI tribute in San Gabriel
The movie audience's love affair with Irene Dunne - the stylish actress who was one of Hollywood's biggest stars before she voluntarily stepped out of the spotlight in the early 50s - was rekindled over the weekend and the sparks glowed as strongly as they ever had.
It was a rare public appearance for the actress, who journeyed to St. Gabriel's Civic Auditorium Saturday evening to join the third of the American Film Institute's "Best Remaining Seats" tributes to the palaces and people who glimmered during Hollywood's golden days.
In the shadow of the 200-year-old San Gabriel Mission, the capacity audience of 1.500 rediscovered or glimpsed for the first time the style that made Dunne one of the mayor stars of the '30s and '40s. Shown were clips from "The Awful Truth," the 1937 romantic comedy in which Dunne co-starred with Cary Grant, and, in it's entirety, "Love Affair," the sugary tale of shipboard romance that paired her with Charles Boyer in 1939. Both films earned her two of her five Academy Award nominations for best actress.
Dunne still has warm memories of "Love Affair."
"Everybody loved everybody else," she recalled. It has stayed one of her favorites partly because "it was such a happy, happy film" in the making. Much of its unabashed sentimentality and fated encounters, however, were the products of countless rewrites, she said, because director Leo McCarey, who co-wrote the story with Mildred Cram, never knew what to do with the principals once their romantic (and amusing) ocean voyage reached its destination.
One of the film's most sentimental moments, a scene with a 7-year-old pig-tailed orphan, produced one of the evening's most sentimental moments. The "orphan," Dona Lester Thorman, now a grown woman who still enjoys small roles in films, and Dunne saw each other for the first time in 40 years across a sea of faces in the Spanish mission-styled auditorium, as the AFI's Michael Webb introduced Thorman from the audience.
"She was the little girl who lost her voice and couldn't sing," Dunne explained to applause as she waved to Thorman.
Dunne reminisced about other aspects of the two decades she spent before the cameras as members of the enthralled audience asked about stars, studios and directors with whom she had worked. One asked her favorite role.
"This will surprise you," the actress mused. "'I Remember Mama'(1948)... I thought that she was a wonderful woman. It was probably the only time I played a real character part." She received her last Oscar nomination for that role.
Clips from "The Awful Truth" verified Dunne's affinity for the screwball comedy of the 30s, wherein she blossomed as something of a cross between Katharine Hephurn and Gracie Allen.
"Comedy was always extremely easy for me. Because it was easy, it never was as satisfactory as the more serious roles," she admitted.
Initially Dunne had hoped for a career as singer.
"That was my greates love in life. I never wanted to come to Hollywood," she recalled. "I wanted to be a singer."
After graduating from the Chicago College of Music and going to New York where she met members of the Metropolitan Opera, "I found I didn't have some of the equipment to go into grand opera," she said.
She settled for singing in "Showboat"(1936), in nonmusicals like "Love Affair" and did some light opera. She made only six records, all songs by Jerome Kern.
As slim and charming in her mid-70s (film biographies place her birth year variously as 1901 and 1904) as she was in her 30s and 40s, Dunne presented a public face that in no way dissapointed a public that adored her in her youth.
And she certainly seemed not to dissapoint the youth of today, dozens of whom stood respectfully in line to ask for her autograph as she sat in the European-style loge section before the film even began, carefully asking each his or her name.
All in all, she said, she had no regrets.
"I was quite happy with my career," she said. At the height of her stardom she enjoyed a stature not accorded many and was one of the few allowed to free-lance out as a contract RKO player, a situation that gave her a broader range of roles than many others.
Dunne did confess a few dissapointments, however.
"I remember crying an entire weekend because I didn't get a part in 'Holiday'," she said. Ann Haring starred in that 1931 film.
And when "Bells of St. Mary's" was being made, she came close to ending up with Ingrid Bergman's role, she said.
"It seemed that Ingrid Bergman was taken ill and they didn't think she would recover in time. I remember going upstairs and taking a towel and putting it over my head to see how I would look as a nun... but Ingrid got well."
Members of the audience, who had earlier wandered through the auditorium's courtyard, sipping champagne served over strawberries, standing under the courtyard's still producing grape arbor, dispelled any misgivings Dunne might have had about today's audience remembering the star of yesterday.
"I must tell you I appreciate your reception of me," she said, touched by the outpouring of sentiment. "It was so terribly warm."
(Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1979)