The Irene Dunne Site
Irene Dunne Leads Two Lives
BY DOROTHY CALHOUN
"Just imagine how baffling it is to be two women!" says Irene
I WENT to interview Irene Dunne and found Mrs. Francis Griffin (Irene's married name) waiting for me. From the black glitter of her piquant sailor hat to the black gleam of her patent leather shoes, she was a New Yorky as the traffic at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue or the Ritz bar at cocktail time. In contrast to the slacks and sportswear of Hollywood Boulevard, she had a streamline sleekness. A trick dotted veil, lingerie touches on a severe tailleur, a smooth coiffure (Hollywood goes in for curls) - but no inventory of mere externals can explain the transformation!
"If you think it's disconcerting to see, just imagine how baffling it is to be two women!" she laughed. "I arrived only the other night, and so I'm still in my New York phase - still effervescing. Give me another week and I'll be the Irene Dunne Hollywood knows - I can feel it coming on. You know what interviewers always say about me - "a nice, sensible woman but such bad copy." She twinkled naughtily behind the veil, "No one knows better than I that I have two entirely unlike personalities. In New York I think different thoughts, I feel differently, I even behave differently! In one place, I'm an actress with a single interest - my pictures. In the other, I'm the wife of a very remarkable and important man. I have a dozen interests. I shop. I golf. I see plays. I'm on the go all day and half the nights.
"It Isn't the fault of Hollywood that I'm happier in New York. This is one of the gayest, friendliest, most sociable places on earth, and if I live a rather lonely, old-maidish sort of existence here, I do it deliberately, by my own choice. It's the only way I can protect something awfully worth while - I mean my marriage. At first, when I thought my picture work would be just a temporary activity, it wasn't especially hard to sacrifice parties and dancing. In knew, myself, that it didn't mean anything. If I stepped out then, I knew, that my husband wouldn't be worried by reading romance rumors about me in the newspapers, but it just seemed poor sportmanship to make him look silly. Movie people are naturally in the spotlight and everything they do is news. I thought, 'Oh, well, it's only for a little while. I'll just stay at home and fool'em." Irene smiled.
"But now that I seem to be in picture indefinitely, I live like a recluse for another reason. It is the only way I can keep from becoming discontented. After all, I'm not exactly elderly and I love good times and excitement and pretty clothes. If I once started living in Hollywood, as well as working here, I would soon resent the unnaturalness of my life, my marriage. It isn't worth risking it! Only single men and women really belong in the whirl of Hollywood. But if I regard this merely as a place for business, and save my social and personal life for New York, I can just manage to make it work out. Even then, it's a rather breathless bit of juggling to keep a career, a marriage, two Irene Dunnes and two addresses all going at the same time!"
The night spots of Hollywood do not know Irene Dunne. Whenever she goes out to a concert or movie function, it is as third some with some married couple, or else in the compancy of non-professional friends. In the midst of a town famous for its unending activity and feverish hospitality, this lovely and lively young woman lives the colorless existence of a cloistered nun.
"Fortunately," she says smiling, "I work very hard and manage to become tired enough not to miss going out often."
A FAINT air of wistfulness and reserve - almost of primness characterizes the Irene Dunne whom Hollywood knows. She often has that eager, slightly breathless look of the smart young society woman who has just hurried home from a perfectly delightful luncheon and is about to be whirled away to a bridge or a cocktail party.
And, while Irene Dunne of the movies is rather quiet, Mrs. Griffin of Fifth Avenue talks of country houses, golf clubs, private art showings and the latest, gayest revues.
"By some miracle I have managed to keep up my old contacts and can pick up my life in New York even after my long absences," she say. "My friends in New York are always rushing off to Europe or Florida or somewhere else. And they see me as often, perhaps, as they would if I lived just around the corner. They say absently, 'my dear, where have you been?' and then withoug waiting for an answer, they invite me to a lunch or dinner or weekend. For some reason, I happen to know mostly nontheatrical people. many of them being my husband's friends. And they have only the vaguest idea of the movies. So, when I'm with them, I even talk a different language.
For years Dr. Griffin kept their honeymoon apartment closed until a day or two before her arrivals in New York. Then it would be opened, filled with flowers, strewn with magazines to give it a casual, 'lived-in' look so as to pretend there had been no break in their lives. Recently, however, he gave it up. It had become to reminiscent of partings.
"I WAS amazed to see how formal people are becoming in New York," Irene. "It's becoming quite Continental. When there are six people to dinner the men wear white ties and tails. And the drawing rooms are so elegant and eleborate, too. After Hollywood's chintzes and playrooms they looked to me like the stage setting for a Noel Coward play - heavy damask drapes, deep carpets, and French and Italian furniture. Very beautiful - but they do take up a lot of living up to. With my New York manners and my New York clothes, I hardly recognize my Hollywood self.
"But the strangest difference of al is this: a movie star isn't a celebrity until she leaves Hollywood. Out here, we are just people who work in the movies. Back there, we're curiosities. I used my married name all the time, but everyone seemed to know that it was Irene Dunne that wanted the manicure appointment or the dress fitting. It wasn't so much me, that they were interested in but - everywhere I went - people wanted to ask me about other Hollywood stars! Now and then, that rather got in the way of perfect naturalness. Certain old friends would say 'Now Irene, do come out to Great Neck for some golf Saturday and afterward we four will have supper together just like old times.' And then when I went there would be sixty people! Of course it was sweet of them to want to meet me, and I appreciated it, but it did interfere with being Mrs. Griffin at times. My husband is a conservative man and doesn't care to be followed along the street as though he were a parade.
"When we went East through the Canal, we had it planned as a second honeymoon trip. Instead, it was one long reception with bouquets and speeches and reception committees, and with people on the balconies cheering. American movies are apparently very popular in Central America, especially the musicals. Everybody was wonderful to us and we had a glorious trip but it wasn't exactly the quite little vacation we had planned."
"ABOUT your new house in Holmby Hills," I began. "Are you really - " Irene looke badgered. Beautiful, but destinctly badgered.
"You too?" she murmured reproachfully. "Everybody persists in seeing something significant in the fact that I am going to build a house out here. Such a simple little house, too, but's enough to start all the divorce rumors again. After this recent trip East, the reporters were waiting in Chicago to ask me whether it was really true that I was on my way to Reno! Still, I don't let them worry me now. I realize that there is nothing my husband and I can do to make people believe we are happy - when they prefer to think that we aren't. Why last year - when my husband was suddenly taken to a hospital for a serious emergency operation and I flew East without even telling the studio I was in such a hurry to be with him - the first thing I saw when I landed was an afternoon paper with my picture on the front page and a story that I was on a secret trip to arrange for a divorce!
"The house that I'm building on my hilltop lot doesn't mean I'm going social ro settling down, or even that I'm asking Dr. Griffin to give up his practice and move out here. But my temporary arrangement here seems to have become more or less permament. And, I might as well have a house of my own where I can stay comfortably.
"My husband has arranged his work so that he can come out here at least twice a year while I'm working and all my Eastern friends are beginning to talk about 'running out to Palm Springs.' They spent most of their time planning to get away from New York heat of snow or fog or wind or - just New York weather! When my picture career is over here - and I live in New York, too - I shall need some place to stay whenever I visit. I've become spoiled for a settles life after all this cross-country commuting. I can't imagine any pleasanter place to visit than a hilltop in Holmby Hills, with a glass-roofed patio to remedy the one drawback of California climate, chilly summer evenings. It's my own invention.
"I used to be sorry for myself for the strange life I led, but now I'm not sure that I haven't happened [to stumble] on the secret of happiness. As it is, I am always looking forward to something, and I have always something to miss and someone to want. When I tire or being Irene Dunne of Hollywood, I can become a totally different person with different ideas, behavior, occupations, and even appearance. It isn't everybody who can take a vacation from herself!" Irene concluded.
(Motion Picture, September 1935)