The Irene Dunne Site
"Ol' Mississipp," the darkies call it - and its haunting romance has influenced the life and career of Irene Dunne
BY WILLIAM F. FRENCH
THE LITTLE GIRL had a disastrous habit of standing on tip-toe to look down on the snow-white prow cutting through the dull green water - and of jumping up and down at the
sight or long-legged water fowl scampering along wing dam and sand bar, or at a glimpse of a lazy catfish in the shallows, or at the sight of imagined wild things in the woods along the shore.
And her slippers suffered from contact with the coils of tarred rope which cluttered the deck of the river steamer. But little Irene - "Missy Dunne"- the crew called her - didn't
care.
It was when the boat tied in at the long, rickety river piers that her little slippers suffered most. Then they must find toe hold so their owner could hang over the rail and look down into the funny, patched, flat-bottomed boats of the colored river folk, who rowed, sculled and poled from the shore, bayou and creek to moor against the big boat, rub their black hands over its smooth paint, and lazily reckon where it had come from and how fast it could go. They had fish to sell - though no passenger ever bought any - and quaint river songs to sing for a sliver piece.
The little girl loved those songs; they haunted her. She often stood on the aft deck, looking down at the squat stern of the boat, where the colored crew gathered to shoot dice and relate wildly impossible river yarns. And the men learned to keep a weather eye aloft for the little white lass who threw pennies down to them, and who always was asking old Moe, and that no-count Glimp from up the dirty waters of the Red, to sing the strange river songs of which they knew only snatches. And then, at night, they would find her in some far corner of he big boat singing the songs over and over again; trying to put them together, and adding words to make them rhyme.
They would grin, and nod knowingly, as they always did when Negro music found a white soul to haunt - and "Ol'man River"began to flow in white veins.
The endless, silent, mysterious roll of water; the hushed music that seemed to hang always over the bosom of the great ripples; the soft, bright moonlight, setting silver fire to a million ripples; the black, eerie shore shadows and the mist-covered pungent scent of wild blossoms - and centuries old legends - these were the spell that held the darkies in its grasp. This was the "Ol' Mississipp" to them - this, and a disturbing memory of the great piles of steamship fire-wood to be passed and the bales of cotton to be stared aboard.
All this, and more, passed through nine-year-old Irene Dunne's mind as she lay in her little cabin at night, counting the throbs of the big engines below, and listening to the lash of the great paddle wheel behind. River legends and darky songs, mingled with charts and models and figures, and uniforms. Gay scenes in cabins of river boats, brightly lighted; brilliantly painted showboats with their music and jokes and stages, and strict naval discipline and polished brass - all this was Old Mississippi to her.
When she was not on one of her many trips on the boats between St. Louis and New Orleans, she was at home in Kentucky - where pictures of races between river boats, photographs of partly built ships and etchings of old vessels decorated the walls, and where boat models and boat talk was as common as cornbread.
Her grandfather was a famous designer and builder of river steamships, and her father was soon to become supervising general of river steamboats for the United States Government.
So Irene carried the more than a handful of colored folk legends and a heartful of dark music through school and to the Bush Conservatory of Music in Chicago with her. She carried the romance of "Ol' Man River" in her veins. And she has always never got it out - not to this day. Even now she subconsciously picks out on the piano old river melodies and darky songs that she learned in those early girlhood days.
Little wonder then, that the first time she saw and heard the stage play, Showboat, her heart missed a beat, a lump rose in her throat and a haunting persistent desire got into her blood. She wanted to play in Showboat. She knew just how "Magnolia" felt when she stood by the old rail, looking over the water and up at the moon. She knew "Julie" and the plaintiff half-wild streak in her. She knew "Cap'n Andy" and she knew the darkies who sang out their hearts to the river.
It was her show! It belonged to the river, and she belonged to Old Mississippi, too. She knew "Ravenal," the polite genteel river gambler, with the heart of a poet and the mind of a child.
"There are some things you just don't talk about," explains Irene now, "and my longing to play that part was one of them. I let it be know where the knowing was important that I would like to take over 'Nolie's' part it the occasion ever arose. But, knowing the part and the tremendous success of the show, I had little hopes of ever being called upon.
"WHEN I finally did receive word to come for an audition for the part, my surprise and joy were about equal. Because now I had another reason for wanting to play it on top
of all the others, and also another reason for feeling I would never get the chance.
"When I was first in New York trying to find a singing engagement, I was given an audition by Oscar Hammerstein, Jr., the man who wrote the play Showboat.
"I went to his office with high hopes. But he said I wouldn't do, and I was so dissapointed I broke down and cried and cried and cried and cried.
"This time, however, Oscar wanted me to have the part, and was glad that Ziegfeld decided to give me the opportunity to take it over. I experienced one of the greatest thrills I have ever known when I opened in Showboat.
"I know Ziegfeld was worried about me, and in spite of the tremendous confidence I had,way down inside me - for I felt I knew 'Nolie,' Captain Hawks daughter, and 'Julie' and the spirit of the story as well as the 'feel' of the music than anyone else could - I was frightened.
"One of the girls came up to me, just before the curtain was raised, and said: "Ziggy's in the second row. Go out and show him a real 'Nolie' from down the old river.
"It was the habit of producers to notify a player regarding his or her performance at the end of the show. But Ziegfeld didn't wait for that. At the end of the first act a note was brought to me. Mr. Ziegfeld had written: "My worries are over. You're swell!" After receiving that, I just sailed through the rest of the show.
"Sometimes I think I owe any succes I've had to Showboat. For, without the inspiration of that play and the driving desire to play 'Nolie,' I might have lacked the determination to succeed.
"Of course I loved every performance I ever played in that show. To me it is the greatest show ever written. Every time I sang one of my songs it wasn't a task, it was a joy. And little 'Nolie' never wanted more to sing 'Julie's' songs than I wanted to sing Helen Morgan's, who played 'Julie,' you remember. I can't tell you just why, but Bill has always been my favorite song. Of course I Can't Help Loving That Man and Old Man River will always haunt me, because they breathe the spell of the river."
Later, after seeing the show three times, Edna Ferber, who wrote the story from which the play was taken, said that Irene Dunne was the perfect 'Nolie' - the one 'natural' for the part.
But in spite of her success in the stage play, Irene Dunne was never entirely satisfied. Her greatest ambition was not fulfilled. She wanted to play the part on the screen. She wanted to bring the spell of the river to the movies. She wanted to interpret the spirit of the Old Mississippi to the millions of movie fans throughout the world. She wanted to make them feel the romance it had made her feel.
Most of all she wanted to tell the story of people who spent their lives on the old river she loved so well, and to re-live through 'Nolie' some of her own girlhood's dreams.
Three years ago we sat in Irene Dunne's Beverly Hills home. She was talking quietly, half dreamily, with a far-off look in her eyes.
"It's so seldom one's deepest desire is realized," she mused, "that I imagine I'm courting dissapointment by letting myself day-dream of the time when my wish might come true. Instead, I suppose I should be thankful for what has already been granted, and forget the rest.
"Yet, I can't get it out of my mind. It's almost as persistent as the spell of the old river itself.
"The thing I want more than anything else to do is to make the picture Showboat. To be 'Nolie' on the screen it the height of ambition. But there doesn't seem to be much chance of my doing it, does there?"
But dreams do come true, and yesterday I was in Irene Dunne's dressing room over at Universal - and on the set with 'Nolie.' For in the familiar scenes of the old river show-boat Irene is 'Nolie.' She isn't playing that part, she is living it.
No motion picture director ever before experienced such rehearsals as the company of Showboat gave from the very first "shooting." Many of them had been in the original stage play, and had played hundreds of performances with Irene. They knew their parts backwards, and loved them.
IN her own worke Irene was helped not only by the spell of the river and her love for the story the picture tells, but also by the close friends who faced the camera with her. For many of those players have become an inseperable part of the play to her.
When she learned that the producers were planning to cast the picture without Charles Winninger as the old Captain, she went to them with tears in her eyes.
"But Charlie is 'Captain Andy'," she explained. "Why, there couldn't be any other 'Captain Andy.' It would be a dead thing in any other player's hands. I couldn't do it with anybody else."
And Irene admits she didn't only mean she couldn't; she also meant she wouldn't - in spite of the fact that she wanted to play that picture more than she wanted anything else in the world.
How does all this influence Irene Dunne's work in Showboat? Will she do as those in the show with her claim; turn in a dramatic performance superior to anything she has ever done; sing as no movie fan has ever heard her sing, and put in her work even more than that subtle charm and sweetness of hers than we have ever before seen? In other words, will Irene live up to the expectations of the other members of the Showboat family, and surpass her best in each and every one her past performances?
We who have seen her working on Showboat set and stage - if you can call re-living her childhood romancing as 'Nolie' and singing the songs that haunt her, "work" - are probably prejudiced by the spell of the river that has, in some way, seemed to invade Hollywood's cold concret stages. But right now we are inclined to agree with Charles Winninger, and Director Whale, and Jerome Kern, who wrote the music for the show, and Oscar Hammerstein, who wrote the play (and who, with Kern haunts the set almost daily) and those rare critics the grips and cameramen, and predict a great triumph for Irene - and for "Old Man River."
(Movie Classic, May 1936)