The late Roddy McDowall, a nice fellow who had a multitude of pals and took his friendships very seriously, once told me that when he first met a person, whenever the conversation would get around to movies, he'd always ask, "Do you like Irene Dunne?" If the answer was "no", said Roddy, he knew then and there that he and that person – female or male, old or young, celebrity or mailman – could never be friends. He was kidding, but not entirely. He said quite earnestly,, "If a someone doesn't like Irene Dunne, what's wrong with them?" Fair question.

Today, the only thing wrong with such a query is that too many people don't know the work of this amazingly versatile lady, something we're hopefully going to help change this month with a 28-film smorgasbord of Irene Dunne films, which range from sophisticated comedies to screwball farces, from romantic dramas to melodic musicals, from a western epic to a melodramatic tale in which Myrna Loy (!) tries to kill off Irene and a group of her sorority sisters. (Check out Irene being good and Myrna being bad in Thirteen Women on Dec. 6.)

Throughout this month on TCM, you can also get a look at all five of the Irene Dunne performances which brought her Academy Award® nominations: Cimarron, Theodora Goes Wild, The Awful Truth, Love Affair and I Remember Mama. Well deserved they were, too; the only stunner is that she never went on to win an Oscar®, not even an honorary A.A. for her extraordinary body of work. During Hollywood's golden age, the delightful Dunne was as big a star as any in the film business. She was also one of the few in that fabled era of iron-clad studio contracts who had the courage and confidence to spend most of her career as a freelance actress. Except for six early years as a contractee at RKO, she was never tied to a single studio. That was considered equal to career suicide in the mid-1930s and 1940s when the major film companies always saved their best scripts for their own "family" members; outsiders didn't have much of a chance. Because of her talent and popularity, however, Irene still managed to get the pick of the litter.

20th Century-Fox stars Gene Tierney and Maureen O'Hara both campaigned vigorously to win the lead in Fox's 1946 biggie Anna and the King of Siam but it was given instead to the free-wheeling Ms. Dunne. Bette Davis, during the era she reigned supreme at Warner Bros., desperately wanted to play "Mama" in Warners movie version of the famous Broadway success Life with Father and even did a screen test for it (and, for the record, so did Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, even Mary Pickford who came out of a 14-year retirement to test) but it was Irene who nabbed the role. It would require several books to even list the great roles first offered to Dunne but which, for various reasons, she declined, among them Now, Voyager, Gaslight, Mr. Skeffington, all the way to The Lady in Ermine.

Something which amazes me about this lady: she made such an indelible presence it films, it's difficult to fathom she made movies for only 22 years (1930-52), by contrast, today's Robert DeNiro and Harrison Ford, for two examples, have each been making films for over 40 years,with no signs whatsoever of slowing down. Think of the great work we missed because Ms. Dunne decided to exit when she did. But, as her fan Mr. McDowall often expressed it, we're extremely grateful there was an Irene Dunne. Don't be surprised if her presence on TCM this month turns out to be the Christmas present you enjoy most.

by Robert Osborne