The Irene Dunne Site
Irene Dunne: She'll Always Be Hollywood's Perfect Lady
By Jane Ardmore
Today's Irene Dunne (shown here in the library of her lovely Holmby Hills home) says that she retired from films because "I was never movie struck to begin with ... I knew that my home was reality and that my acting was a shadow projected on the screen ... I has such a full life at home - and have had ever since."
Serenity takes over as you round the curve of the drive-way, scenting the roses that line the way, and walk through the door of her beautiful house. It is the house her husband, Dr. Francis Griffin, built for her in 1936, after she'd come out to make one picture ("Cimarron") and Hollywood just wouldn't let her go. It is the house where they lived happily until his death in '65 ... the house where they raised their daughter, where her grandchildren love to visit, and it reflects Irene Dunne exactly. She is a person of taste who has lived and still does, wearing success easily, enjoying a multitude of interests, a delicious sense of humor - not nearly as much a lady as you been led to expect, and when you say so, she laughs, delighted.
"My friends say, 'It's a good thing you did "Theodora Goes Wild," Irene, that's the one picture that really was you!'"
Behind her, on the wall of the den, hangs a portrait of herself, not at all Theodora, but the beautiful star (hair up-swept, black velvet gown) at the very height of her stardom - unique in film history. She was as successful in screwball comedies like "Theodora," as in heavy drama ("Backstreet," [sic] "The White Cliffs Of Dover"), as in musicals, ("Show Boat," "Anna And The King Of Siam"), and as in her forte, the comedy-dramas such as "Love Affair" with Charles Boyer and "Penny Arcade" [sic!] with Cary Grant -- smash hits of the '40s so equally impressive today that you wonder why she retired early.
"Probably because I was never movie struck to begin with," she says. "It was never one of those burning, burning things. It was something that happened very naturally. My mother played the piano beautifully and I used to stand in the bend of the instrument and sing when we had guests; so that I was on stage really, from the time I was six. It started naturally and ended naturally -- I had such a full life at home and have had ever since."
You have the feeling that she was never confused, never fell into the treacherous, trap between acting and reality. "No," she muses. "I knew that my home was reality and that other was a shadow projected on the screen. I used to drive my famiy crazy, because -- like Beverly Sills, the only other person I've heard refer to herself in a role in the third person -- I always referred to the character I was playing as 'she.' I'd come home and tell that what 'she' did. I was that detached.
"Which certainly doesn't mean I wasn't immersed in a character. I absolutely had a one-track mind when I was in a part, I hardly did anything else. I didn't tear around to dinner parties. In those days we worked every including Saturday. Recently, someone asked me about Method and I had to admit I never used it. But actors such as Spencer Tracy wouldn't know what you were talking about when you mentioned Method Acting, and wasn't he great?
"I guess we had to become the person. 'She' fell in love, you had to fall in love, you acted by reacting, and you certainly hoped that the other person would fall in love with whoever this was, yes. But when the day's work was over, I left 'her' and 'him' and went home to my own very wonderful life. That takes a little discipline, of course; but either you are going to let yourself in for every leading man that comes along or you are going to know the difference. One way is emotional suicide. Ridiculous. Childish. Your co-star is usually married, you are married, so are you going to make a mess of everything? Each picture? I guess I'm a realist. We had a lot of fun anyhow. Charles Boyer, Cary Grant ... it is wonderful to work with someone who really shares the burden, is responsible, considerate and fun. You are very grateful for that. But you have to use common horse sense. It's a very good thing to have, horse sense."
And not exactly a concomitant of the business; but then, Irene Dunn (she added the e later) started out realistically enough to be a teacher. The family had moved from Louisville, Kentucky, to Madison, Indiana, when Irene's father died, and when she finished high school it was with a teacher's license. Her first assignment: To supervise Music and Art at school in East Chicago, Indiana.
"We had relatives in Chicago," she remembers, "and I stopped to visit on them way. I landed at the LaSalle Street Station and was to stay over the weekend. On Sunday I noticed in the paper a great ad -- they were giving scholarships at the Chicago Musical College, founded by Florence Ziegfeld's father -- one in singing, one in piano, one in art. Well, I'd been the leading lady in the high school play, I'd sung at ladies' clubs all my life, now I thought: Everybody at home thinks I'm so hot, let's just see what it all amounts to."
She went down to the college, sang, got the scholarship, and that was the end of school teaching. "A blessing for the kids!" She spent three wonderful years in Chicago, then headed for New York. With her mother's blessing. "My mother was one of six girls and they were all very independent girls. That's how they were brought up in this part of the country. My mother had graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, a fine school, and way way down deep in her heart, I think she would have loved to have been an actress herself."
In New York, her first job was in a show called "Clinging Vine" with Peggy Wood. It suited Irene to a T. She was in the prologue, the curtain went up at 8:30 -- at 8:45, she was finished and free to go home. It enabled her to continue her studying and not have to stay out too late at night. "When I think of how, as a young girl, I dipped down into those subways! Fearless Fagan. And today I wouldn't dare the subway even with two or three escorts."
She was in a play called "Lollipops." That might have been the audition that took her to the roof of the building where Flo Ziegfeld had his office. "Mr. Ziegfeld and I rode up together in the elevator and he was shocked because I didn't get off at his floor. Every young girl in town besieged his office. So he sent his secretary up to look for the girl in the light blue straw hat. How I do love hats!"
Mr. Ziegfeld offered her a part in the "Follies." My heavens, I told him, I didn't have that in mind at all, and this and that, so he kept me in the back of his mind, and when the lead left 'Show Boat' and they needed someone immediately, they were closing on Broadway and going on the road. Mr. Ziegfeld sent for me. By telegramm. He did all his communicating by telegram. They felt it was such a foolproof play and dummy, I guess, could play it, so there I was, Magnolia, in that wonderful original company with Paul Robeson singing 'Old Man River,' Helen Morgan as Julie, Charles Winninger playing Cap' n Andy, and a chorus of 100 Blacks. We went to Chicago and played six or eight months, I remember my husband coming out to Chicago ... " For she had been married to New York dentist Francis Griffin, and far from discouraging her career, "he was always an inspiration, always in the midst of decisions and scripts."
It was when "Showboat" got to Baltimore that a talent scout from RKO saw Irene and offered her a test for "Cimarron," from the book written, as "Showboat" had been, by Edna Ferber. "They tested me, I think one of the first. Then they tested everyone else and tested me again. I made a test as the young girl and then as the Congresswoman who gave the address. And thanks to some friends on the set who worked awfully hard to see I looked right ... "
It was her speech as Congresswoman that led Will Rogers to utter his much qouted: "If we had more women like Irene Dunne in Congress, it would be a better nation."
After seeing "Cimarron" at a Retrospectice last year at the Art Museum, Irene thinks it is the one picture of 16 shown that doesn't hold up. But it won an Academy Award and after that she had offers to do so many more things.
"Which is how this house came about. I was busy doing a film and my husband was out here from New York - he used to fly back and forth, 13 hours it took at that time, it was a rough trip and he arrived exhausted. It was much more fun when we could go together, back and forth on the SuperChief. That was the elegant way, the train would pick up mountain trout at Denver.
"So one time my husband was out here, driving around with a real-estate man and he saw this section out in Holmby Hills. He said 'Of course, we don't want to settle. We are from the East. My wife has just made a couple of films and that is that. We belong to the East. But if I ever did consider, this is a section I would like because it is so high and you can see all over the city.' 'Why not make an offer?' the real-estate man said. So Frank did make a ridiculously low offer and I remember we were in Hot Springs, Virginia, one night, having dinner when the phone rang. 'Your offer has been accepted.' I was signed to one of those long-term contracts at RKO, so then we started building this house. We moved here in 1936; and finally my husband gave up his busy practice, which was a great sacrifice in a way, and yet, our marriage meant much more than that. We had such a happy marriage. And he gave precedence to my career. He was way ahead of his time in his thinking, on everything. He became interested himself in real estate, opened offices in Beverly Hills and later in Century City. We were the first to have an office in Century City and he predicted all that was going to happen to that development. I gave up the offices after he died and I have my own little office here in the house."
Because Irene became president of these corporations, which handle real estate in Beverly Hills and a shopping center in Nevada. "The bank thought, of course, that I would just get on the first cruise and go around the world and they'd never see me or have any trouble with me; but I didn't do that. I stayed here and kept my eye on things, which has been very good for me because I never was a business woman but I have had to learn a lot from experience, where my husband was so expert. Luckily, my brother gave up his position after Frank died and he is my mainstay. But I must sign checks and all that kind of thing."
It's a whole new world. "When Frank was living, the script conferences would be held right in the den where we are seated. I had a marvelous agent, Charlie Feldman, he would come over and he and Frank and I would throw the scripts back and forth and decide. We also traveled a great deal. I worked very hard - one year I made four pictures. I had, bless their hearts, the best directors in town, but also the slowest. I remember one director waiting hours for a certain cloud formation to come into camera view. [Rouben Mamoulian, the director of "High, Wide And Handsome"(1937), your webmistress] Can you imagine with today's overhead things happening like that? Pictures could go on then for months and months. I used to fuss and fume. I always had a running tirade with the assistant director because of the endless time -- the parts I played were demanding and whether I was in a scene or not I had to be on the set, just in case. That was probably another reason I retired, so that my husband and I could have more time, could travel more."
Being a star never interfered with being Mrs. Griffin. And her daughter, Mary Frances, who had exceptional talent as a pianist, was never pushed. Her teacher didn't want her to play tennis or ride horseback or anything that would endanger her precious wrists. But Irene felt: If she is a genius, fine, it will work out. Meantime, let her be a normal human being. Which she has been, mother of Mark and Ann Marie -- pictures of all of them are in the den, where so many wonderful things have happened.
"I was sitting right where you are when the phone rang and it was the White House, that was when Eisenhower was President, and they said, 'Would you be a delegate to the United Nations?' I said I would have to think it over and again it was my husband who said, 'By all means, you should do this.' So I did. I was the first one from the movies to be involved -- that in itself was exciting. It was exciting, too, because Henry Cabot Lodge, the ambassador, stood about 6'4'' and delegates from other countries were a little timid about approaching him but they weren't apprehensive of me. My counterpart from the USSR came to me one day explaining that Mr. So-and-So wished to go to night school and could I get him in one of our universities? I took it up with my delegation and urged that we do so. It gave me a rough idea of how much the Russians thought of our schools and how eager they were to take advantage of our educational opportunities. My first assignment was to work with delegates from South Africa, tall black men, most of them educated at Oxford. They spoke beautifully. Then, when they would get out in the halls, they would speak their tribal lingo. The two things they wanted to see in California were the Golden Gate Bridge and Disneyland. They wanted to have a Disneyland of their own in their country. I told that to Walt Disney before he died."
Later she served for three years on the California Arts commission to brign culture to the small communities of the state. During her time of service, they sponsored a wonderful show of sculpture for the blind. And for many years now, she has served on the St. John's Hospital fund-raising committee, with which she helped achieve the film "How The West Was Won." Star after star, Irene was the one who talked them into doing the picture because their children had been born at St. John's. "They did it for St. John's and we got ten percent of the gross which multiplied into millions for the hospital."
A strong lady, Irene Dunne, a capable one. And she love a challenge. You chat with her and wonder what the next one will be. For her, there will always be a next one!
(Photoplay, December 1975)