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62
SCREENLAND
The beautiful lady at the right really likes to clown a bit, and is not a little baffled at the conception many have of her as so staid and ultra-conventional. Below, as Magnolia in "Show Boat," and lower right, with M vyn Douglas in "Theodora Goes Wild," hei first all-comedy role
Pioneering
Again!
Irene Dunne, who's supposed to be so conservative, is off on another adventure
By
Tom Kennedy
THERE'S a lovely legend about a very lovely lady of the cinema. And maybe we'd do better to let it stand. After all, you've been moved by it, and so have I. Writers have tinseled its illusion with the gilt and embroidery of well chosen words that have added up to many a column of type. Even Hollywood seems at times to cherish it and point with pride to its inspiring incandescence.
But— and may you forgive us for throwing a brick at an image that has known much adoration — the legend that Irene Dunne is so thoroughly conventional, so constitutionally, even sanctimoniously conservative that she's one apart from every other in her profession, and NEWS on that account alone, stands up better in print than it does when you meet her and take a second look.
From where I sat, listened, and looked, (you should have been there, the looking was fine), at Irene Dunne in the living room of her hotel apartment in New York, I couldn't see the illusion of legend for the reality of a
very animated, warmly responsive, and gaily adventurous person who seemed to get a lot of amusement out of a gamble she is making with the greatest stakes an actress can "put on the line," as the boys at the club say.
This certainly did not conform to the billing, and the idea would not down that perhaps there's been some over-emphasis on the fact that Irene Dunne has consistently refused to become involved in those flamboyant and obvious didoes that make headlines about divorce, contract walk-outs, temperamental outbursts, or brawls with newsmen and public.
Maybe we've been guessing wrong about our Irene. Perhaps she's too different to be conventionally unconventional. And were it not that she is herself so baffled at the popular conception that she is a conventional sober-sides, one might even get the sneaky suspicion that, just for the fun of it, Irene Dunne has been spoofing others into inventing and circulating that legend of the very dignified, conventional, and colossally conservative movie star.
The best excuse this so-called conservative could offer for putting herself in a spot that would scare the wits out of all the hey-nonny-nonny boys and girls of Hollywood, is that she just wants to try it, and besides, "working in the same studio, doing the same kind of parts all the time gets to be serious after a time, and I don't think anybody likes to have serious people around all the time, do you?''
We couldn't be sure under the circumstances. After all we were talking to a star who is supposed to be very serious. So we decided to be a (Continued on page 88)