My Design for Living

                                  BY IRENE DUNNE

What is the design of living of a screen star? Where does the life of the star end and the life of the private individual begin? What are his chief interests, his favorite activities, his most cherished possessions, his greatest ambitions and hopes and fears?

 MOTION PICTURE has persuaded a number of representative stars to tell you. Irene Dunne is the first - and she is refreshingly frank and honest. After you read what she says, you will feel that you know her as you never have before. Next month, Kay Francis will give you a new idea of what it is to live in the spotlight. - Editor

THE present framework of my design of living is  - a square. It is bounded on one side by my career, on the other side (also of the Continent!) by my husband, on the third by my mother, and on the fourth by my music. That is not the order of their importance, of course. 

 In the foreground and background of the design are all ot the other vital and necessary things - travel: ships and 'planes and trains and cars and everything that goes; books and friends; golf; clothes and good talk; religion; New York - the skyline of New York is very much in the design. And hovering over the perspective always is my hope of altering the design a trifle nearer to my heart's desire, of working in details that are now lacking.

 For my design of living is not yet completed. Perhaps it never will be. One keeps adding to an original design, hoping for perfection. Part of it lies, vaguely sketched, in the future. Part of the present design is compulsory - with lines drawn in by craftsmen other than myself. That is true of all of us on the screen, I think. Other hands draw some of the lines and we are forced to abide by them.

                                   Leads Two Seperate Lives

I DIDN'T start out to have any conscious design for living. There was nothing planned about any of it. For example: I am not happy unless I am working. I could never be happy as just a housewife and mother. And at first my husband, Dr. Francis Griffin, who is a New York dentist, couldn't bear theatrical people. He was interested in my career - proud of it, proud of me - but he wasn't happy with the people of the stage. He has his own work, his own friends, his own roots in New York. In the beginning, it simply seemed the expedient thing for me to work here and for him to work there and for us to be married people between jobs. But I feel now, that it is a design and if I do say so, I am rather proud of the way it has worked out.

 You see, I believe that no woman can have two major interests under one roof - two interests, that is, at which she must work. She can have them, but is she successful at both of them? I think the answer is pointedly "No." The reason why my design is successful is that when I am working here in Hollywood, I am working. All of my time, thought, attention, heart, mind and soul are given to that work. When I am not working, I am in New York  - a married woman - giving all of my time and thought and attention to my marriage. If there must be a division of interests - and some designs, undoubtedly, do work out that way - then it is better to have the divisions clean-cut and seperate, not all tangled together and blurry.

 I simply means that neither of the major interests of my life ever gets a half-portion of me. Because they do not. One at a time I give my energies wholly to each one of them. I don't say that this is the perfect design or even the one I have in mind to perfect. But I do say that if we happen to be born the kind of person who must have two lives, then the thing to do is to have two lives and not try to snarl them.

                                     Her Great Determination

A GREAT part of my fundamental design for living is my determination not to be bored. I am bored only when I am tired. If I tried to be a housekeeping wife and a screen player at one and the same time, I would certainly be tired and I would as certainly be bored - and boring. I would be giving nothing of any value to anything or to anyone. The instant a thing or an individual ceases to interest me, I am through. And when the day comes - and it will - when I can say "I am tired of pictures," I shall be finished. I shall then go back to New York and make my home there, with my husband and - my music.  

 I study music all of the time. I practise daily. I know that there is the one interest I shall never lose, never weary of, never cease to find new stimulus and pleasure in. I could live without a good many things that other women find necessary, but never, never without my music.

 Home is only incidentally a part of my design. I am a restless person, though I may not look restless. I have been told many times that I should never admit to this because the self-characterization doesn't fit me. I'm told that I am not the "gypsy type" either in appearance of in personality. Nevertheless, and at risk of censure, I have a gypsy heart. It beats tumultuously and erratically. It will not let me be. It will not let me take root in one place.

 I want to keep moving, to keep going on, to keep traveling. I want to be up adn off, by 'plane, by ship, by train, by car, by any and every means of locomotion. I can never hear friends say, "We're going to Biarritz this Summer," without feeling an aching longing to go, too. I am the type of person who can toss a toothbrush and an extra sweater into a knapsack and be off. I would prefer taking several steamer trunks, but rather than not go at all, I would fly.

                                     A Home For Her Mother

WHAT I should really like to include in my design for living - and doubtless shall - is the buying or building of a home for my mother. Which draws in the fourth vital line of my design - my mother. She is with me here. She is necessary to me. If she had her own home, then I'd know that if I wanted to go to Nome, to Rome, to Constantinople, I could go, with none of the homesteader's responsibilities to keep me back. For responsibility is not an integral part of my design for living. I don't want it. I wouldn't want to know what to do with it if I had it. But I should like my mother to have a home so that if I would ever have the flu or want to go into retreat, I'd know that I would have a save refuge - a place that would be a home, not just a house. And she would like nothing better.

 Golf is a very vital part of my design for living - golf as exercise. Because, without exercise, I am only half a person. I need its stimulus. If it were not for golf, I believe that there would be no design. Exercise does something to my brain, to my emotion, to my very abilities. 

 Clothes are, of course, a part of my design. They have to be. But I would not like to be known as "The Best-Dressed Woman in Hollywood" or the Best-Dressed Woman anywhere. There, again, would be a heavy responsibility. I would never dare to appear in public unless I were ultra-modish from tip to toe.

 Finances are a part of my design - a part that has been forced on me. When I was last in New York, I spent far more time thatn I wanted to in talking to bankers and brokers and studying trust funds and stocks and bonds and investments of all kinds. My husband insisted that I ought to know what I am doing. He takes care of the great bulk of my business and financial affairs for me, but he wants me to know and to understand what is being done, and why.

                                 Not Keeping Up with Joneses

MONEY, as money, is not a part of my design for living. I am not extravagant. Mostly, I suppose, because I do not care for things. I believe that we can sleep only in one bed at a time, weart one gown, eat one dinner, live in one house; and if the bed, the gown, the dinner and the house are adequate - that's enough for me. 

 On the other hand, I do like the feeling that I am doing something that will matter to others; that I am creating something substantial for the eventual benefit of others. And I think that to work as hard as we in pictures have to work and then have nothing to show for it is worse than absurd. And so, I do a good deal of my own banking, checking, income tax details and that sort of thing.

 Fame is part of my design for living, in so far as I believe I owe something to those who have helped me to "fame," if that is the name you choose to apply to it. Ma fan letters are decidedly a part of my design for living. They matter enormously to me. I get the most amazing and, above all, the most amazingly sincere and worth-while letters imaginable. They are my friends, these many people who write to me. We do owe our friends a part of ourselves, certainly. Most certainly, they are part of our design for living, if living is to be good.

 When I was in San Francisco recently on a personal appearance trip, I was preparing to leave the theatre when a kindly and solicitous publicity man warned me that there were several hundred people milling about in front of the theatre and suggested that I escape by a back door. I couldn't do that; I wouldn't do that. I felt that those people out there had made me, were directly responsible for my being there, in that theatre, with my name in electric lights over the marquee. Their hands had lighted those lights. And their hands wanted to shake mine; that was why they were out there. They had bought their share in me, first with their interest and then with their money. I owed myself to them. I went out the front door.  

                                    What Religion Means to Her

RELIGION is an integral part of my design for living. I am not given to fligths of fantasy or to introspection. But I do know that if I did not feel that there is something beyond - above - inside of all of this, I would not have the stimulus to go on. There would be no reason for going on. I go to church regularly. I should say that this is strong and binding thread is what holds my design for living together. 

 Fear has no part in my design for living, because faith is the reverse side of fear - and I have faith. I have no fear or age, no fear of death. I think a woman fears age only when she is married to a man who might cease to be kind to her when age begins to mark her. I am not married to such a man. I think we fear death only when our faith is insufficient. I cannot extol my own faith - for all of us are weak - but it is profound enough to rule out fear. It is a constant support in my daily life. 

 Books are a part of my design for living. They take me into other lives. They are mental travel. I have just finished reading "Anthony Adverse." I read every night; I read when I am on the set and not working, at every free and available moment - when I am not near a piano. 

 Bridge is not a part of my design for living. I can't play. I don't want to play. I am too restless to play well. Parties are not a part of my design, either. I like to have a few friends in for dinner and for the evening - people I know well, can talk freely with, am interested in. Social contacts for the sake of being social bore me.

 I like actors, my own kind. My husband has learned to like them, too. Now, whenever he is in Hollywood and is playing golf and meets some of the men of the stage or screen, he comes home simply alive with enthusiasm over this "splendid chap" or the other. He is always suggesting that I have this one or that in my next picture. He is tremendously interested in my work.

                                     Her Plans for the Future

THE design I hope to work out, to perfect, and am working on now is one in which, first of all, I shall do fewer pictures. I have been making to many. I should like to make my home in New York, to do only two or three pictures a year and to come to Hollywood only when I am in production. For New York, as I said before, is very much a part of my design for living. The essential background of my design is the skyline of New York. We love Hollywood, both my husband and I, but our home is, always has been and always will be in New York.

 Nor is the stage a part of my design - not the Broadway stage, at any rate. I have a theory that for an actor of actress in pictures to go the stage is bad, whether the venture is a success of a failure. If a screen player does a New York play and it flops - well, that speaks for itself. It is definitely and deplorably bad. If, on the other hand, the play and the player are successful, it means a long New York run, it should mean staying with the play while it is on tour, and the result is some two years away from pictures and - forgotten star! It means practically a new start all over again in pictures, for they change so rapidly. 

 I do believe in getting away from the screen, brushing up, getting a new perspective. But I should like to do so by getting into some good stock company, never reaching New York, or Broadway, at all. This, too, is part of my design.

 I want a child of my own - when and if I work out my design as I hope to do. I would not, I think, adopt a child, much as I admire those who do. A child of one's own is a biological and natural heritage belonging to every woman. It is an experience and an inspiration that every woman should have, especially an actress who must run the gamut of every emotion. To adopt a child is to reach our for responsibility, to ask for it.

 The pattern shifts from day to day, of course. Time makes changes in the threads we want to use. But the outline of mine today is as I've told you: my husband, my mother, my work, my music - golf and travel and friends and books and the people who have helped me to such success as I have had - clothes and finance and a home where my mother lives to make it home - and faith in that something we cannot see with our eyes or touch with our hands.

(Motion Picture, September 1934)

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