Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne
from the film Love Affair (1939)
Born	Irene Marie Dunn (1898-12-20)December 20, 1898 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	September 4, 1990(1990-09-04) (aged 91) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1922–1962
Spouse(s)	Francis Dennis Griffin (m. 1927; d. 1965)
Children	Mary Frances (b.1936) adopted

Irene Dunne (born Irene Marie Dunn, December 20, 1898 – September 4, 1990) was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948). In 1985, Dunne was given Kennedy Center Honors for her services to the arts.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Joseph John Dunn, a steamboat inspector for the United States government, and Adelaide Henry, a concert pianist/music teacher from Newport, Kentucky. Irene Dunne would later write, "No triumph of either my stage or screen career has ever rivalled the excitement of trips down the Mississippi on the river boats with my father." She was fourteen when her father died on April 6, 1913. She saved all of his letters and often remembered and lived by what he told her the night before he died: "Happiness is never an accident. It is the prize we get when we choose wisely from life's great stores."

Following her father's death, Irene, her mother, and her younger brother Charles moved to her mother's hometown of Madison, Indiana. Dunne's mother taught her to play the piano as a very small girl. According to Dunne, "Music was as natural as breathing in our house." Dunne was raised as a devout Roman Catholic. Nicknamed "Dunnie," she took piano and voice lessons, sang in local churches and high school plays before her graduation in 1916.

Dunne earned a diploma to teach art, but took a chance on a contest and won a prestigious scholarship to the Chicago Musical College, where she graduated in 1926. With a soprano voice, she had hopes of becoming an opera singer, but did not pass the audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company.