INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

Irene Dunne debuted as a leading lady in her very first film, Leathernecking in 1930-- and was still a leading lady in her last, It Grows on Trees, in 1952, after twenty-two years of stardom.

It is to Irene Dunne's credit that she alone could be called a "lady" behind the scenes in Hollywood without it being an insult. "Lady" was the insider's code word for "bitch" or "boring" or "takes herself too seriously." When Hollywood applied it to Irene Dunne, the word meant what it was supposed to mean: She was a lady. It was her triumph over a system that she bent to her own standards of behavior.

Director Gregory La Cava said, "If Irene Dunne isn't the First Lady of Hollywood, then she's the last one."

Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer would become one of Hollywood's most popular teams, making three lovely films together: Love Affair and When Tomorrow Comes in 1939, and Together Again in 1944.

Dunne narrowed her many leading men down to two favorites, Cary Grant and Charles Boyer, calling them very different types. In their personal lives, Boyer and Dunne, both devout Catholics, became lifelong friends.

Scott O'Brien, author of Kay Francis's biography I Can't Wait to be Forgotten had the chance to meet Irene in 1969. San Francisco’s Palace of Legion of Honor paid a tribute to her career and showed a copy of Showboat. There was a champagne reception afterwards. He went up to her while she was signing autographs. He told her, "Miss Dunne, there is such an amazing cross-section of Americans here this evening paying tribute to your career-- it shows how many hearts you have touched."  She turned and smiled at him, agreeing, "Yes. I am very grateful for so many people turning out for this event. Thank you for being here."  She was about 70 years old-- looked very elegant in a floor-length black velvet dress (very low-cut back). Her skin was lovely.  She had a very gracious presence.

On one of Jimmy Stewart's visits to the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson asked Mr. Stewart, "Who do you wish you could have acted with?", and without a beat Jimmy said, "Garbo and Irene Dunne!"

Ms. Dunne was a great force during WWII doing many bond drives for the war effort!

She was a die-hard Republican, and campaigned for the ultra conservative Barry Goldwater in the 1960’s.

Once she took the bus tour of the Hollywood homes, wearing a cotton dress, an old sweater, a mousy hat, and dark glasses, and accompanied by her African-American houseman, Melvyn. Not a soul recognized her.

Ms. Dunne was the Grand Marshall on the opening day of Disneyland and she looked stylish and lovely with a strapless full skirted dress and a short hairstyle.

Irene disliked the printed word fearing that someone might misquote or misunderstand something she said or was supposed to have said.

In spite of their chemistry on the screen, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant never socialized.

When Irene and her husband, Dr. Francis Griffin, adopted four-year-old Anna Mary Bush (called "Missy") from the New York Foundling Hospital, they decided to have the final papers processed in New York, in an effort to avoid the Los Angeles publicity. Despite their ploy, reporters and cameramen besieged their Manhattan hotel, with Miss Dunne denying the rumors that Missy was a foundling, stating that she had met the child's grandparents, "who are delightful and charming old people."

She was legally assured that after completion of each of her films, she could return to her husband in New York, and that she be given ten days' notice before the start of her next assignment.

In Life with Father, Irene Dunne and William Powell were to have equal billing. But there was still the puzzle of how to avoid placing one name before the other, and an ingenious solution was reached. While the credits rolled on screen, flashing lights alternated the two names in the top spot. In magazine and newspaper ads, Dunne's name would appear first one day, Powell's the next.

Irene Dunne owned half a block of real estate in Beverly Hills' most exclusive business section, an interest in the Beverly Hills Hotel, and a sizable chunk of the Ojai Valley Inn. She also made investments in oil and, with her husband, Dr. Francis Griffin, helped finance a Las Vegas theater and housing project.

Her father was a Mississipi riverboat operator and government ship inspector.

In Love Affair Charles Boyer ordered pink champagne for Irene Dunne, and restaurants were suddenly bombarded with requests.

Loretta Young, another devout Catholic, was one of Irene's closest friends. Back in the day, Loretta had a girls club for her friends, they met once a week and some of the members were Anita Louise, Irene Dunne and Loretta's two sisters as well.

Years after filming The White Cliffs of Dover together, Irene still remembered one very bizarre aspect of Elizabeth Taylor, the child. "She seemed to look straight through you. She was one of those mysterious children who could make any adult feel very insecure and ill at ease."

She was a perfume connoisseur. Just a whiff and a sniff and she could tell you everything about the rarest of fragrances-- their histories and processes of manufacture.

Irene started a new fad in Hollywood. She wore a hat ornament to match the color of whatever dress enveloped her: a green trinket for a green constume, a blue doodad for a blue garnment, and so on ad infinitum.

Her ability to imitate the voice of an aged woman in competition with fifty others won her an important screen role and her entrance to pictures.

She would always remember the production of A Guy Named Joe as the most difficult picture of her life. From the start, Irene was greeted with incessant, nonstop sexual overtures from her co-star Spencer Tracy who wouldn't stop goosing, touching, and rubbing Dunne. When she had to sing I'll Get By to him, Tracy leaned over and whispered dirty words into her ear.

Dunne is the only comic actress working under the strictures of the Production Code who actually ends two of her comedies (The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife) under the covers, enticing her chosen mate (Cary Grant) into her bed under the guise of keeping him at bay."

Her favorite among her films was Love Affair. And shortly before he died Charles Boyer told a reporter that it was his favorite too. The last time Irene saw Love Affair, she said to him, "You know, Charles, you really were good." "Ah," he said, "so you finally looked at me."

The only actor she had ever really had a crush on was Richard Burton.

Film critics generally consider the black-and-white version of Love Affair with Dunne and Charles Boyer superior to the color remake with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.

She was nominated for the best-actress Oscar five times: Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948). She never won. It's one of the Academy's biggest oversights.  She lost to, respectively, Marie Dressler for Min and Bill, Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld, Luise Rainer for The Good Earth, Vivien Leigfh for Gone with the Wind, and Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda.

Her nickname was Dunnie. Her adopted daughter Mary Frances was nicknamed Murph.

Irene was very close with a dollar.

Age was always a problem for her career. She was older than all her famous peers by 5 to 10 years. She admitted to 1904 in studio bios and most reference books listed 1901. In fact, she was born December 20, 1898.

Miss Dunne's last official public appearance was in December 1985 for the Kennedy Center honors in Washington. She collapsed at the Saturday night reception after the group photograph of the honorees and was unable to attend the gala the next night, becoming the first star recipient absent from the big event and telecast.

She was an excellent golf player.

In June 1942, Irene Dunne christened the liberty ship Carole Lombard, which served in the Pacific during World War II.

Except for six early years as a contractee at RKO, she was never tied to a single studio.

When Roddy McDowall first met a person, and the conversation would get around to movies, he'd always ask, “Do you like Irene Dunne?” If the answer was “no”, he knew then and there that he and that person could never be friends.

Now, Voyager, Gaslight and Mr. Skeffington were just a few of the many great roles first offered to Dunne but which, for various reasons, she declined.

Irene wore the same red chiffon dress every Valentine's Day for 13 years.

She spent her honeymoon in England, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Holland.

The home that Irene and her husband built in Holmby Hills, an exclusive section of Beverly Hills, was sold for a reported $6.9 million a few years after she died. It was later demolished to make way for a more contemporary Hollywood-style mansion.

Her two favorite causes were St. John's hospital and the Motion Picture Home.

Cary Grant said of her, "Dunne was a brilliant actress and her comedy timing was impeccable. She played it straight, instead of playing it for laughs as some comediennes do."