Irene Is Tired Of Trifles

When I walked on to the garden terrace of the Royal Palace of Siam, I met a lady in a russet-gold crinoline dress. Her stately manner would have commanded my attention even if I hadn´t noticed that everybody else was looking at her.

A moment later she stood right before me, and, with a faint smile, said:"I´ve just got to do one scene but will you wait a few minutes, I want to talk to you about something very important?"

My mind flashed thousand of miles from Siam. In fact it started to whirl around the Hollywood scene. What did Irene Dunne want to say to me that was so important?

I watched her as she went back to the terrace. The set was one of the most beautiful I had seen even in a Hollywoode studio.

Irene Dunne sat down on a rough stool well out of the camera range and Gale Sondergaard took her stand directly in front of the lens.

It was only than that I realized that this was not to be Irene Dunne´s scene at all and that she was merely posed there to help Gale Sondergaard give the best possible reactions.

As one of the natives wives of the King of Siam, Gale was to explain to Anna (Irene Dunne) how much greater was her power over the King as European woman than that which any of the Siamese women could exercise:

I saw that Irene Dunne could very easily have let herself completely out of that scene. A stooge could sit there and read her one line of dialogue, offstage, as Gale Sondergaard went through her long spiel.

Not with Irene Dunne starring, however. She knows the value of real trouping and she was not going to let Gale Sondergaard down. As a matter of fact, about ten minutes later when they wanted to start the same scene all over again, I was with Irene Dunne on an adjoining set were cameras had been placed for still photographs.

We were having taken a picture together and the cameraman was trying to arrange us the way he wanted us when a cry came over from the film set for "Miss Dunne".

Without a moment´s hesitation she left my side, whispering as she went:"Must go quickly because that´s Miss Sondergaard´s most difficult scene and if she´s kept waiting she may get nervous."

Later our photograph was reposed and if you could study the results you´d detect a half quizzical expression on my face. I kept on wondering what on earth Irene Dunne was going to say to me that was so important.

Eventually we got around to a quiet chat in her portable dressing- room far enough from the noise and bustle to hear each other speak. By that time I was certain in my mind that she was going to "dress me down" for referring to her performance in "Over Twenty-one" as unduly coy.

Fankly I had not enjoyed it and said so. I thought there must be any member of Hollywood actresses who, better than Irene Dunne, could cut comic capers in that auto court where she was supposed to have gone just to be near her soldier husband, now in training.

I even said I thought Irene Dunne ought to cut out all these light, frothy comedies and get down to some real, dramatic acting.

Comedy characters of the feminine gender, as written by the average Hollywood screen writer, are skittish or coy, and stars like Irene Dunne and Claudette Colbert always seem to me to be too mature, both as individuals and as actresses, for the "hop, skip land jump" roles they get in typical Hollywood comedies.

Not for one moment did I expect Irene Dunne to agree with me.

Well, she did!

"I read what you had to say about Over Twenty-one ", she began, "and I want you to know that I thoroughly agree with you.

"I don´t want to keep on playing these comedy trifles either, but what am I going to do if no one comes along with anything better? I am under contract to Columbia and I like to be as co-operative as I can.

"I had some success in comedy in the days of The Awful Truth, and every now and then the studio people feel that the public is in the mood for the same kind of story so they ask me to do one. I wish someone would find me a really strong dramatic subject."

Irene Dunne went on to say that she believed Anna And The King Of Siam would prove a very welcome change because it does not develop emphasis on the usual romantic relationship between the main characters.

I happened to know that Irene had been considered by Leo McCarey when he was about to prepare The Bells Of St.Mary´s.

She would have enjoyed that, as the story was orginally written, because in it she would have played the Sister Superior in a girls´school of music and dramatics.

It would have been possible for her to sing and at the same time she would have played the kind of character to which she always has had a leaning.

Miss Dunne happens to be a devout Catholic; she has had a great deal to do with nuns in that she was educated by them as girl and has often helped communities of Sisters in their work since she became a Hollywood star.

It would have been a part after her own heart, but first McCarey failed to strike a date when Columbia could make Irene free and if he had changed it then he would have found that Paramount could not spare Bing Crosby.

So the story was changed completely to suit Ingrid Bergman and Irene Dunne, although not given to envy, nevertheless was keenly dissapointed.

We were not, however, to talk mainly about The Bells Of St.Mary´s .

Irene, remembering my criticsm of her repeated apperance in comedy. wanted me to give her some frank opinions.

"I have been offered the lead in Warner´s comedy Life With Father ", she explained, "and by this weekend I must give them my decision. Will you tell me honestly whether you think I ought to play it or not?"

Well, that was really putting the critic on the spot by asking to judge now instead of afterwards.

It always is easier to pick holes in a film someone else has made than to weave an idea so tightly that no holes will develop in it.

A critic can tell anyone how bad a film is. Can he tell anyone how to make a good one?

Irene was a bit troubled not alone because Life With Father happened to be again uproarious comedy, but because much of the fun is created around the idea of baptism.

The family is a Protestant one, and there again she wished to be doubly cautious. for she would not offend people who hold views differing from her own.Would anyone think she was helping poke fun at a serious subject?

The family was trying to get father to be baptized. He, on the other hand, insisted that that wouldn´t make him any better a man and that he´d be hanged first! Would Irene as the wife and mother, seem to trespass good taste?

I said I wouldn´t think so, and later to make quite sure I saw the stage play in New York.

I sat next to an U.S. chaplain. I didn´t know him but in the interval I asked him whether he thought father was kicking around the baptismal idea a bit too roughly and he said:" Oh, no, he´s in character and everybody knows he´ll have to get baptized before the curtain falls because his wife says so, and wives always win."

"If", I said, "you may consider yourself an authority on wives, I think I may safely regard myself as capable as giving advice to a film star."

So I wrote to Irene Dunne telling her that she at least had the full support of one member of the clergy, and even though I wished she could do a big dramatic role instead, she had my goodwill also.

Now it seems she may still get the opportunity to portrait a nun on the screen.

The story of Mother Cabrini, an Italian-born nun who came to the United States, settled down in Los Angeles and founded an order of Sisters devoted to work among poor, to orphaned children, the age and the sick, is to be made into a million dollar film by the new Eagle-Lion company under the reins of Bryan Foy.

J. Arthur Rank is interested in this concern, which recently took over an independent company called P.R.C.

It was this small company which first began to plan a film about Mother Cabrini, who was canonized in Rome recently.

At the time. however, they could not get a suitable, bid name actress to play the role. No major studio had enough confidence in so small a company to loan a first rate star for the part.

No big star was sufficiently interested as to a free-lance to take a chance on it, so the film was postponed.

Now with the new Rank-inspired enterprise swinging into action and the subject of Mother Cabrini made highly topical by events affecting her sainthood, the story comes out of one of the big-money projects to be tackled this year. And Irene Dunne has been offered the role.

In truth she is nothing like Mother Cabrini, who was short, thick-set and dark, but the story might make an excellent one for a dramatic actress of Irene Dunne´s calibre, even though there would be no opportunity for any singing or anything but quiet, determined work in the slums. That was Mother Cabrini´s life.

Then again, the habit she wore and which is still worn by her Order, is not what one might regard as picturesque in the theatrical sense.

The habit is black, practically unrelieved, and the head-dress is a tightly-draped veil of lacy black material, which does nothing to set off the face.

Olivia de Havilland looks more like Mother Cabrini than does Irene Dunne. Still I shall be surprised if Irene does not accept the offer, provided Columbia can arrange it and her husband´s health does not take her out of films for the rest of the year.

Dr. Griffin has suffered recently a serious illness affecting his heart, and after LIfe With Father , Irene Dunne planned to go with him for a long trip, probably to South America to ensure his complete convalescence.

At the moment her plans are not very firmly set. She puts home and husband first in any case.

Next to that she will put her own feelings as to what will be best for her to play, and she certainly will have had enough of screen comedies for a while once she is through with Life With Father. William Powell, of course, plays "father".

Irene Dunne is aware that many people have demanded films in which other than Catholic characterizations appear. Several are in production right now.

Other will be made later, but she realizes that with Going My Way and The Bells Of St.Mary´s still fresh in the public mind, she may face criticsm indirectly, if she goes into Mother Cabrini.

So, too, may Mr. Rank, as an ardent Methodist, since it is his company, indirectly, that is to film the Cabrini story.

Anyway, Irene Dunne, like J.Arthur Rank, will go ahead and let  conscience be her guide.

In any case she certainly will resist from now on, any more of those film comedies she so aptly describes as "trifles".

And I for one, will be cheering her from the side-lines. How about you?

(Picturegoer, August 3. 1946)