The Irene Dunne Site
The New Side to IRENE DUNNE
There's a side to Irene Dunne that has never been revealed before. And here's your chance to re-discover her
By IDA ZEITLIN
WITH a white polo coat belted around her, hands deep in pockets, Irene Dunne's eyes followed the curve of a grand staircase that swept majestically toward the rafters of the stage.
"What a pity," she sighed. "All my life I've yearned for a staircase like that, with me coming down it, trailing my long skirts behind. Now I've got the staircase - and look!"
She opened her coat to disclose a fetching trifle in blue, whose fringed skirt stopped midway between ankle and knee, and whose general spirit called for tripping rather than trailing. "It's a judgement on me," she murmured. "Once I was a lady-"
The serene face had undergone a subtle change. There was nothing you could point to except the faintest drooping of one eyelid over a blue-gray eye, and even that you weren't sure of. It was as if a pebble had been dropped into a quiet lake, to reveal from below a glint of dancing lights and shadows. Then the ripples had closed over them again. But in that flash you had glimpsed the prancing piccaninny of Showboat, wild Theodora, and Lucy, heroine of Columbia's The Awful Truth, who wears the blue gown and does outrageous things in the hope of proving to Cary Grant, her husband, what a nice girl she is.
Back in Cary's dressing room - loaned with a courtly bow, because her own reeked of fresh paint - Miss Dunne laughed at the minor sensation caused by her sallies into comedy and farce.
"What's it all about?" she wanted to know. "You wouldn't except a cook to go on making the same dish year after year. Why expect less of and actress? Besides, I don't know where I got this reputation for being so proper. I'm afraid I always had leanings toward the low." Her eyes under her long lashes were sparkling again.
"As a child, I confess I tried to hide them. My mother was a fine musician, and my father was all for my following in her footsteps. I'd hear him brag to friends about how I'd never play anything but the classics. It sounded pretty grand to me, so I never did play anything else - where he could hear me. But that didn't prevent me from sneaking to the piano as often as I could to try out the latest jazz number. You know, this never occurred to me before, but maybe that's how it started. Maybe I realized then that I wasn't quite the lady I ought to be, and that I'd better create the illusion to cover up."
WE CAN'T deny Miss Dunne the right to her little joke. The fact remains that, where the substance exists, there is no need for illusion. It's easy enough to understand the impression she makes. She has natural dignity. She meets you with friendliness, but she won't fall on your neck and call you darling. She assumes no movie star poses, yet you can't imagine even the brashest soul taking liberties with her twice. She acts, in short, like the woman of taste and breeding which she is. Only Hollywood sometimes seems startled to discover that you can have good manners and still remain what is known in these parts as a human being.
Not that Miss Dunne has let herself be bothered either by the earlier tales of her "coldness" nor the more recent hosannas to the "new Irene Dunne." She has her own sense of values that refuses to be swayed by every shifting wind. And instead of wrapping herself away from the drafts that blow on every movie star, she lifts her chestnut head to it and enjoys the breeze.
"You know what somebody said to me the other day? - and I still don't know how to take it. I'm trying to muster up courage to ask him what he meant. 'When I sit and talk to you,' he said, 'you're one person. The moment you go into action, you're another. Something seems to flow into you, something electric, vital. You simply generate,' he said." Her face turned solemn. "Now what d'you suppose he meant by that? Did he mean I was hollow until I started acting? I wouldn't blame him, you know. I have a way of relaxing between scenes, letting every thought and emotion drain out of me, till I probably look like a bump on a log. Or was it a pretty compliment to my acting?" She shook her head sadly. "I'll never know. I'll just have to take comfort in the thought that I do generate."
THERE's nothing showy about her humor. I doesn't pop and flash, but gleams from behind her gravity, with all the more tang for its soft-footed approach. As when she drew her brows together in mock bewilderment and told the story of her first meeting with the man who was to become her husband.
"I went to a party at the Cascades on New York's Biltmore Roof. I didn't want to go to that party. I struggled bitterly against going, I don't know to this day what made me go. But I went. I wore a red dress. I never wear red. But that night, for no reason I can give to you or myself, I wore a red dress. Dr. Griffin watched me all evening. I didn't know he was Dr. Griffin, and I thought he was watching me because of the red dress. One minute I'd vow never to wear red again and the next minute I'd defy him and think: 'Why not?'
"He got someone to introduce us. I danced with him. He asked me a lot of questions, and I answered them all." A faint smile came to her ligsp. She seemed to be remembering something. Her eyes held a faraway look, as she said: "I hadn't been around very much. I guess I must have been pretty naive.
"Then he asked if he might call. I said yes, when by all the rules of the book I should have been coy. But the rules didn't seem to matter at the time.
"Well, nothing happened - which was typical of Francis. I had no way of guessing that he'd gone out next day to look at engagement rings. Finally I heard this chipper voice over the phone. 'Remember me?' There was my second chance for a good rousing no. But- I did remember. And that was the beginning of the end." A smile that was charming in what it hid and revealed flitted over her face. She was silent for a moment. Then with apparent irrelevance she added: "New York's a very nice place," and laughed herself at the laugh that sally brought.
MISS DUNNE'S happy marriage is eight years old. Much of the time she is parted from her husband, whose work keeps him in New York when her takes her to Hollywood. She smiles at the notion that physical separation could bring harm to their marriage.
"I think a lot of silly theorizing id done on that subject, especially where actors and actresses are concerned. When a woman marries an engineer or anyone else whose work takes him away from home, you don't immediately get that headshaking, whispering chorus of my, my, and how long do you suppose it will last? But somehow the notion has got abroad that it doesn't take much to ruin an actress's marriage.
"Well, in my marriage I'm not an actress. I'm just such another woman as those whose job it is to cook and take care of the children. And talking of children," a soft light grew in her eyes, "we have Mary Frances now.
"If two people love each other, there's something deep and fundamental about their love that seperation can't touch. If they're afraid, it's because they are not sure of themselves or each other. And that can drive them farther apart unde the same roof tghan any distance in miles.
"I don't say I advocate separation in marriage. I do say that, when circumstances make it necessary, it needn't hurt your marriage. While I'm on a picture, I'm not much good as hostess or companion. I get home from the studio, tumble into bed, wake up and go to the studio. So long as we know that the other is well and happy in his work, we're content. I know I'm close in his thoughts, as he is in mine. And we both know that the moment either of us is free, he'll go flying back to the other."
MARY FRANCES has blue eyes, shaded by very dark lashes, and golden hair - she's not quite two. Her name is Mary for her mother, whose middle name is Marie, Frances with an e instead of an i for her father. They call her Missy. "I was so in love with a baby in New York named Missy," explains Miss Dunne, "that I insisted on calling her Missy even before we found her. Even when I thought she was going to be a boy.
"We've always had the idea of taking a baby, and we've always definitely wanted a boy. But it's a much more complicated business than you realize, until you've gone into it. You decide to devote your life to a child, and you want to be reasonably sure that the child will in some way be able to accept it. So you ponder and discuss and investigate and consider and can't make up your mind. After this had been going on for a while, I'd say to Francis: 'Look at my aunt and uncle.' And he'd say: 'You look at them and take heed.' You see, I have an aunt and uncle who've talked all their lives about adopting a baby and never got around to it. They're in their fifties now, and probably never will. So when we found Mary Frances, who particular setup seemed to fit so beautifully into our family, we decided we'd been all wrong about wanting a boy."
Characteristically, Miss Dunne won't have the baby publicized. "She's too young to have her picture in the paper," she smiles. She did bring a photograph to the studio one day - the photograph of a child so lovely that Leo McCarey, the director, insists her face has been haunting him ever since.
THERE'S nothing wraithlike about Missy, however. Though she may look like an angel, temperamentally she's the bouncing type, and accepts the fact with complacence, having dubbed herself "the buthy bee." Up at six every morning to breakfast with Mimi, as she calls her mother, the day is one long round of thrilling activity, of squealing, shouting, tumbling and general joy. Daddy will play roughhouse with her, and if there's anything more charming than the combination of Daddy and roughhouse, Missy has yet to meet it. Mimi will sing Scooter for her - otherwise known as Schooldays, and her favorite song. "Again." she cries, and Mimi sings it again. After Mimi has sung it through a long series of "agains," her daughter notes the symptoms of a certain reluctance to continue. But she has an almost certain cure for that. She cocks her head like the beguiling minx she is, wrinkles her nose in an alluring smile and pleads: "Again - Mimi darleen."
On their eighth wedding anniversary, Dr. Griffin was in New York, his wife in Hollywood. Except for a long-distance call, there could be no celebration till he returned. It happened, however, that the wedding anniversary of Leo and Mrs. McCarey fell on the same day. The company got wind of it, and as the day's work ended, the strains of the wedding march were heard, a handsome cake was brought in with ceremony and presented to the director.
McCarey is a close friend of the Griffins. He knew it was their anniversary, too. With a little smile, he handed the knife to Miss Dunne. Smiling back, she slid it into the cake. "To the McCareys," she said. Only her friend knew that the second knife-thrust was dedicated to Dr. Francis and Missy and their Mimi darleen.
(Motion Picture, November 1938)