Irene Dunne

I enjoyed her performance in The Awful Truth, and I think she was also a fine singer.

I always think of George Stevens as directing big pictures like Giant but he did Penny Serenade with Dunne Grant, and I Remember Mama, which were smaller, more intimate ensemble pics. She gave such totally different characterizations for those parts. She was a classy dame from Old Hollywood.

For her type, I am more of a Jean Arthur stan.

Love her. She was great in LOVE AFFAIR, too.

Everybody loved Irene...

So five nominations and no wins. Damn. So that's what Cary Grant meant. They were great together.

She could be effortlessly delightful...

I cried laughing the first time I saw her in The Awful Truth.

She was born in 1898 and worked until 1987 when she was 89. That's an amazing career and a long life. She died at 91. She was married to the same man from 1927 until he died in 1965. I liked everything I saw her in. She was delightful.

Love that R7!!!

She was no Bette Davis

Loretta Young's daughter Judy Lewis said Dunne was a cold and serious person without much warmth or maternal instincts. She said Dunne was in real life nothing like you'd guess from her film persona.

I loved anything Irene Dunne was in... she was extremely talented at both comedy and drama.

I loved her as Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies. I think I’ll go take sone of my “elixir” now.

Are you just trying to be cute, r14? Irene RYAN played Granny, not Irene Dunne. Irene Dunne wouldn’t have done a role like Granny, especially not when was was in her early 60s.

I once read an interview with her that made me a little sad--it was in a book on screwball comedy films (maybe "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood" by James Harvey). In it, the interviewer gives her a ton of appreciation for being one of the very best performers in screwball comedy,a nd though she's grateful for and gracious about the praise, she says what she really wanted most was to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress rather than as a comedy actress or as a musical actress, and she rarely got the chance. She states she wanted to have had the same kind of career as Katharine Hepburn, but didn't get it.

It does make me sad, because I do think Dunne is quite good in her dramatic role in "Penny Serenade." And she repeatedly got to show her comic chops were better than or as good as any other woman's in Hollywood. She's hilarious in "Theodora Goes Wild" and "The Awful Truth" and "My Favorite Husband."