Oscar Profile #2: Irene Dunne

Of all the great stars of the studio era, Irene Dunne is probably the least known to modern audiences. That’s largely because so many of her films were remade and the originals suppressed and, although somewhat available now, are still largely unseen by the majority of the public.

Born in 1898, the operatically trained singer scored such a sensation starring in the original touring version of Show Boat that she was given a contract by RKO who saw her as a threat to their reigning star, Ann Harding. Given that Harding was three years younger than Dunne, studio publicity gave her date of birth as 1904, making her appear to be three years younger than Harding. The six year discrepancy did not surface publicly until Dunne’s career was long behind her.

Among Dunne’s many hits that provided potent opportunities for other actresses in newer versions were Cimarron (Maria Schell); Back Street (Margaret Sullavan, Susan Hayward); The Age of Innocence (Michelle Pfeiffer); Magnificent Obsession and The Awful Truth (Jane Wyman), Roberta and Show Boat (Kathryn Grayson); Love Affair (Deborah Kerr, Annette Bening); My Favorite Wife (Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day); A Guy Named Joe (Holly Hunter); Anna and the King of Siam (Deborah Kerr, Jodie Foster); Life With Father (Lurene Tuttle on TV); I Remember Mama (Peggy Wood on TV); and even The Mudlark (with Judi Dench as Queen Victoria in a similar story).

Her ability to cry on cue like the great stage actresses caused Dunne to be cast in many melodramas from 1931-1935, but her comedic turn in 1936’s smash hit Theodora Goes Wild was so unexpectedly brilliant that she was able to alternate comedic and dramatic roles in top flight entertainments for the remainder of her career. Indeed, two of her five Oscar nominations were for drama, two for comedy and one for a potent mixture of both.

She retired from the screen in 1952 to devote her time to the charitable causes that had always been a large part of her life. President Eisenhower appointed her as an alternate delegate to the U.N. in 1953, such was her continuing popularity. A Kennedy Center honoree in 1985, she died in 1990 at 91.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THEODORA GOES WILD (1936), directed by Richard Boleslawski

The same year in which she got to repeat her stage triumph in Show Boat, Dunne was given the chance to kick up her heels and display her perfect sense of comic timing as the small town girl who writes a sexy novel under an assumed name, which scandalizes her prudish family and neighbors. The film, which co-starred Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell and Spring Byington, was such a huge hit that for several years the screen’s great tragedienne would only be offered comedic roles. Dunne’s return home holding a baby, wrongfully assumed to be hers, sets up one of the greatest endings in movie comedy history.

THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937), directed by Leo McCarey

This is the film that made Cary Grant a superstar. He is absolutely perfect imitating director McCarey’s nervous tics throughout, but so is Dunne whose comic timing Grant considered the best of his many female co-stars. It was the first of three films they made together. Ironically he failed to receive an Oscar nod for this, though she did, and she failed to receive one for 1941’s Penny Serenade for which he was finally recognized by the Academy.

Based on a famous play, it had been filmed previously as a silent in 1925 with Agnes Ayres and Warner Baxter and as an early talkie in 1929 with Ina Claire and Henry Daniell. It would be made again in 1953 as Let’s Do It Again with Jane Wyman and Ray Milland, but none of these versions can hold a candle to the McCarey version which also features stellar performances by Ralph Bellamy, Alexander D’Arcy, Cecil Cunningham, Joyce Compton and Molly Lamont.

The film’s great set pieces include Grant, the dog (The Thin Man’s Asta) and the hat; the nightclub scene; and Dunne’s fake drunk scene in which she imitates the nightclub singer whose skirt keeps rising.

LOVE AFFAIR (1939), directed by Leo McCarey

This was Dunne’s favorite film, and although the Deborah Kerr-Cary Grant remake, also directed by McCarey, is better known and perhaps even slightly better, the original version is quite wonderful in its own right.

Dunne is the nightclub singer who has a shipboard romance with suave Charles Boyer, finding his soft spot when they visit his grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya). Their planned reunion six months later atop the Empire State building is thwarted by circumstance leading to a bittersweet ending you know is coming even if you haven’t seen the remake. If you haven’t seen it you should, although you should probably see the original first to put both films in their proper perspective. Avoid at all costs the tepid 1994 remake with Annette Bening, Warren Beatty and Katharine Hepburn who played Beatty’s aunt because even at 86 she refused to play someone’s grandmother!

THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER (1944), directed by Clarence Brown

This is my favorite Irene Dunne movie. It was the film I discovered her in. Because it was not remade it was not suppressed and was one of the first of the major studio films released to television in the late 1950s-early 1960s.

Dunne is magnificent as an American woman living in England who loses her husband to World War I and her son to World War II. Often sad, but never maudlin, the film’s director, Clarence Brown, was Greta Garbo’s favorite. He was the only director at MGM to have his name over the title. A Clarence Brown production meant a prestige film and Dunne was surrounded by the best that money could buy. The art direction, costumes, cinematography and music score are all first rate and Dunne’s supporting cast is almost as memorable as she is. It includes Alan Marshall as her husband, a sublime Gladys Cooper as her mother-in-law, Roddy McDowell (later Peter Lawford) as her son, Elizabeth Taylor (later June Lockhart) as his childhood sweetheart, Frank Morgan as Dunne’s father, C. Aubrey Smith as Morgan’s British friend, Dame May Whitty as Cooper’s servant and McDowall’s nanny, and Van Johnson as Dunne’s cast off American beau.

The scenes between Dunne and Cooper as her at-first stand-offish mother-in-law and her scenes with both McDowall and Lawford are extremely moving. Cooper’s off-screen death scene is almost as heartbreaking as Lawford’s.

I REMEMBER MAMA (1948), directed by George Stevens

A nostalgic look back a by-gone era, Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes set in 1910 San Francisco had been a best-seller and the Broadway play by John Van Druten had been equally successful. The film version is meticulously crafted by George Stevens, making his first post-war film. Filmed partially on location in San Francisco, the film’s basic theme is that “money isn’t everything,” a point driven home by Mama’s many bromides.

The aw-shucks scenes that thrilled audiences of the day – Mama scrubbing the floors of the hospital ward in order to get to see her daughter – Mama chloroforming the cat but miraculously not killing it – seem a bit quaint by today’s standards but the film’s simple truths still ring true.

Mama ripping up absconding boarder Cedric Hardwicke’s about-to-bounce check with the comment “he gave us more than money” still brings a tear to the eye, as does the shaming of Mama’s selfish sisters when the reason their uncle didn’t leave them any money is revealed.

Three of the film’s Oscar nominated performances, those of the sweet storyteller/daughter played by Barbara Bel Geddes, the gruff uncle played by Oscar Homolka, and Mama’s spinster sister played by Ellen Corby, sadly no longer seem so special. But then there’s Mama, and she’s played by Irene Dunne at her warmest.

The film’s success led to one of TV’s first major hits, re-titled simply Mama and starring Peggy Wood, it would last from 1949-1957.