If the movies of Hollywood's Golden Age had a Great American Lady, Irene Dunne was surely it. Whether suffering through melodramatic "women's pictures" or rollicking through screwball comedy, Dunne always maintained her dignity. And she never seemed to strain for her effects, whether jerking tears or inciting laughter. "Dunne was a brilliant actress and her comedy timing was impeccable," said no less an authority than Cary Grant. "She played it straight, instead of playing it for laughs as some comediennes do."

Dunne (1898-1990) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of a Federal steamship inspector. After graduating from the Chicago Musical College and failing an audition at New York's Metropolitan Opera, she turned to musical comedy and had her first starring role, appropriately enough, in a touring production of Irene. She made her Broadway debut in 1922 and reached the high point of her stage career playing Magnolia in a 1929 production of Show Boat -- a role she would repeat with great success in the 1936 film version. Her appearance in the stage version led to a film contract with RKO.

Dunne made her film debut in a forgotten army musical called Leathernecking (1930), starring Eddie Foy, Jr. Her breakthrough into major stardom came with her second film, Cimarron (1931), an Oscar®-winning adaptation of the Edna Ferber novel about frontier life in Oklahoma. Richard Dix, the male lead, had seen Dunne onstage and recommended her for the role of stalwart wife Sabra Cravat. The role brought Dunne the first of five Oscar® nominations as Best Actress.

Dunne's follow-up at RKO was Bachelor Apartment (1931), a comedy starring Lowell Sherman as a busy Romeo. Then the studio lent her to MGM for The Great Lover (1931), a backstage drama with a romantic triangle also involving Adolphe Menjou and Neil Hamilton. Dunne was the heroine of Thirteen Women (1932), which costarred Myrna Loy as a half-Javanese, half-Hindu villain intent on killing every other woman in the cast. The film was delayed to capitalize on Back Street (1932), a quintessential "weeper" that RKO correctly guessed would be a huge hit for Dunne.

After forming one-half of a battling couple with Charles Bickford in No Other Woman (1933), Dunne appeared in a film version of the Edith Wharton novel The Age of Innocence (1934) and the lightweight romance This Man Is Mine (1934), costarring Ralph Bellamy. She turned musical again for Roberta (1935), costarring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

When her RKO contract expired, Dunne signed short-term agreements with Universal and Columbia. Her stock soared with another hugely successful soap opera, Magnificent Obsession (1935), and Show Boat (1936). She won a second Oscar® nod, in the comedy Theodora Goes Wild (1936), in which she gives a delicious performance as a small-town schoolteacher who writes a "hot" novel. An elegant team was formed by Dunne and Cary Grant in the comedies The Awful Truth (1937, Best Actress Oscar® nomination) and My Favorite Wife (1940), and the tragic melodrama Penny Serenade (1941).

In the original version of the much-filmed Love Affair (1939, Best Actress Oscar® nomination), Dunne and Charles Boyer share exquisite chemistry as the couple who fall in love during an Atlantic crossing. Dunne wrung tears from World War II audiences with A Guy Named Joe (1943), a wartime romance with supernatural overtones and Spencer Tracy as Dunne's deceased pilot lover; and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), in which she is an American woman who endures two world wars after being transplanted to England.

The now-matronly Dunne closed out the 1940s with three impressive roles, playing Anna in Anna and the King of Siam (1946), the forerunner to The King and I; and the much-loved matriarchs of Life with Father (1947) and I Remember Mama (1948). Less successful were The Mudlark (1950), in which she impersonates Queen Victoria; and the two minor comedies with which she closed out her film career, Never a Dull Moment (1950) and It Grows on Trees (1952).

A staunch Republican, Dunne was appointed by President Eisenhower to serve as an alternate delegate to the United Nations. She was also active in Catholic charities and, in the 1960s, was elected to board of directors of Technicolor.

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in bold type will air on TCM