The Irene Dunne Site
Irene Dunne: Saleslady For The UN
As alternate delegate she is playing the biggest role of her career, and it won't end when the General assembly adjourns.
by Joseph N. Bell
Irene Dunne, who has won just about every honor the entertainment industry can bestow, including five Academy Award nominations, recently experienced the high point of her career.
It happened not amid the cameras and lights of Hollywood but in the somber meeting halls of the United Nations. There, during the current session of the General Assembly, Miss Dunne has performed the most important role of her life, that of alternate United States delegate to the UN.
When I interviewed her in the delegate's lounge, her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm for the world peace organization. Still as trim and chic as the night she first played Magnolia in "Show Boat" back in the late '20s, Miss Dunne has found a totally unexpected part that excites her even more - and one to which she is adding warmth, maturity, and growing understanding of international problems.
"When you are a member of a 10-men team," she says, "you can only get to know a small part of what's going on in the UN. But that part is dramatic and exciting beyond words. Nothing in Hollywood has quite the same quality, for at the United Nations all the problems of the world parade before your eyes."
News of her appointment came as a complete surprise to Irene. She was at her home in Holmby Hill, Calif., when she received a phone call from the White House.
"It was Sherman Adams, assistant to the President," she recalls. "When he asked me if I would serve on our UN delegation, it was one of the few times in my life I was almost speechless."
It took some rearranging of her busy life, but this was one role Irene Dunne wasn't going to miss. Soon after the call from Adams, she was on her way to Washington for the delegate briefing, which precedes each session of the General Assembly. She found herself in distinguished company which included Congressmen A.S. Carnahan of Missouri and Walter Judd of Minnesota; Dr. Herman Wells, president fo Indiana University; George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO; nationally attorneys Philip Klutznick and Geona Washington; plus Henry Cabot Lodge and his two permanent associates on the U.S. delegation, James Wadsworth and Mrs. Mary Lord.
Irene charmingly explains something about U.S. participation in the UN that isn't generally understood. The U.S. delegation (except for Lodge, Wadsworth, and Mrs. Lord) changes completely each session and is made up of a broad cross section of Americans, representing both political parties and every race, creed and religion.
Selection as one of the seven alternate U.S. delegates requires not so much familiarity with the problems being discussed as it does outstanding Americanism. Irene Dunne is the first entertainer to be selected - a tribute both to her charm and to the high concept of public service she has demonstrated many times in the past.
During the three months the General Assembly is in session each year, the delegates' expenses and nominal per-diem salary are paid by the U.S. government. It means taking three months out of busy personal lives to devote to the cause of better world understanding and relationships.
Says Irene:"You never for a moment forget that war and peace and life itself are at stake. When I go back home after this session of the General Assembly, I'll be an enthusiastic saleslady for the UN as an essential force world peace in this age of atoms and outer-space moons."
Working in public affairs is no new experience to Irene. She's been active in Republican party affairs in California for many years. And she's been even more active in bipartisan humanitarian efforts which have won her awards from such organizations as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the American Mothers Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation, and Notre Dame University. She also has been married to one husband, Dr. Francis Griffin, since 1928 and raised a daughter who is married and lives in San Francisco. Irene represents the Hollywood that often goes completely unrecognized: the stable, thinking, public-minded citizens of the movie colony, who don't collect divorces, smoke marijuana, or crack up their cars - and thus don't generate sensational headlines.
"There are a great many thoughtful people in Hollywood," Irene says, "especially among the writers, directors, and technicians. I think they are aware of Hollywood's impact on people all over the world, but even they have no idea of how tremendous that impact is. I know now - from talking with the other UN delgates. And I'm going home and try to tell the people back there what an important contribution Hollywood can make, or how much harm it can do. I hope that someone listens, and that before long a film can be made about the UN. It needs desperately to be better understood by people everywhere. A good motion picture about it could greatly increase that understanding."
Time and again the far-reaching impact of Hollywood was brought home to Irene Dunne at the UN. Dozens of delegates from all over the world sought her out to say how much they enjoyed her movies. One member of the Indian delegation was familiar with every film she'd ever made - including some that she herself had forgotten, or would have preferred to have forgotten.
This led to one embarrassing moment. Some years back, Irene played Anna in "Anna And The King Of Siam", a motion picture which gave a sympathetic but rather controversial portrayal of the king. Remembering apprehensively some of her "criticisms" of the king, she found herself rather self-consciously avoiding the delegation from Thailand (formerly Siam). Finally Prince Juan from Thailand cornered her, complimented her on her film work, and made small talk for some minutes. Then he brought up the movie about the ruler of Siam.
"He said he thought the part of the King was inaccurate and left a wrong impression in the minds of the audience, but except for that it was a fine picture. And he complimented me for my work in it," Irene recalls. "I only wish other international disputes could be settled as easily and amicably."
The alphabetical seating arrangement in the UN committee meetings has the delegate from Russia (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) sitting between the United States and England (United Kingdom). Through these contacts and casual meetings in the delegates' lounge, Miss Dunne has found the Russians generally friendly and easy to talk with. They are about the only delegates, though, who haven't mentioned her films; delegates from the other Soviet-bloc countries seemed quite familiar with them.
Miss Dunne sees the job of a UN delegate as involving three main areas of responsibility.
First, a delegate must get to know as many of the other 820 delegates as is physically possible, to learn their viewpoints and interpret America to them. This isn't just a matter of winning a few individual friends for your own satisfaction.
Most of these people have influence back home. If they get to know the problems of the other peoples and understand them better, they can have an effect upon national feelings and government policies.
As Irene points out:" Before you can get along with people, you have to know them. You have to overcome your own biased and stereotyped ideas about people who are'different'; you have to learn what motivates other people, the reasons for their actions, and the intensity of their feelings. Our work here reminds me of the song from "The Kind and I" - 'Getting to Know You'. It's so simple, and yet so fundamental in international relations today."
The second job of a delegate is more than work: to study, learn, and take an active part in complicated international problem-solving. Each delegate sits on one of the UN committees dealing with specific, international problems. Miss Dunne was asked to work on the committee dealing with the 10 trust territories administered by the UN.
Her first speech was on the trusteeship problem of Southwest Africa. She was briefed by State Department Officials and given reading material on the issue, a dispute between the UN and the Union of South Africa, which feels that the UN has no legimate interest in Southwest Africa.
When a retinue of native people in bright-colored shirts and flowing white robes appeared before the trusteeship committee, Irene wasn't watching a group of Hollywood extras in a remake of "'The Desert Song". She was looking at real people, pleading a real cause - freedom. This empressed her more than a quarter-century of Hollywood ever had.
On Oct. 2, before an audience, quite dissimilar to any Miss Dunne had ever known, she made her first UN committee speech, summarizing the U.S. position on the Southwest Africa question. It was a routine sort of diplomatic address, but it gave her a tremendous thrill.
Her first platform appearance in the main arena - the UN General Assembly - was to announce United States financial pledges for the UN refugee-relief programs. She wasn't nervous.
"This was real", she pointed out, " I suppose people are not so nervous, when they are not playing a part."
Once he has completed his tour of duty, a delegate becomes a salesman for the UN. This is his third area of responsibility. He goes back to his home and his job and helps to interpret the United Nations to his fellow citizens. Irene is prepared to embrace this task enthuisastically. And the UN needs saleswomen of her competence and charm, because only public opinion can support the UN and make it effective. It can never impose his will against a member state, levy a tax, or enlist a soldier. It exists through the sufferance of the peoples of the world who are earnestly seeking an instrument capable of achieving and maintaining world peace.
"Don't ever doubt your own importance in this effort for peace", Miss Dunne says," for you and people like you throughout the world make up public opinion, and only this can achieve lasting results in peace-making. I firmly believe that the UN has several times averted war in the last decade. Along with all the other humanitarian programs it administers, this makes the UN one of the greatest bargains in human history. It costs each American citizen 42 cents a year - or the equiavalent of what 10 hours of World War 2 cost us."
"The UN", she concludes, "is tremendous. I certainly caught the fever for world understanding since I've been here. You know what I like to do when my work is finished? I'd like to take a trip around the world and renew the aquaintances I've made at the UN and get to know and understand more people from other nations - and maybe help them to know us better. I may do it, too."
If she does, Irene Dunne will be the most attractive good-will ambassador ever to hit the road for the United States. And from what I saw of the other delegates' feelings toward her, she'll be gratefully received whereever she goes.
(Family Weekly, January 12. 1958)