Monday, December 21, 2009

Happy Birthday Irene Dunne!

Yesterday would have been Irene Dunne's 111th birthday. Let's celebrate by watching some great clips. It was hard to narrow them down, there are so many!
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a wonderful Jerome Kern standard, and Miss Irene premiered it.

I was always amazed at how young she looked. As a latecomer to movies (32 in her first film), she still played young women despite being in her forties during most of her best roles

Irene's voices were fantastic!!!

It was hard to pick a scene from my favorite movie "The Awful Truth:. You should probably just watch the entire movie.

More great Irene films to watch to celebrate: My Favorite Wife, I Remember Mama, Theadora Goes Wild, Joy of Living

4 comments:

  1. ...Nice post, Maggie!
    Irene Dunne was cool, quite pretty, and somewhat underrated as an actress, it appears...and a nice 'operatic' type singer as well...
    I really want to see 'The Awful Truth'...just on my list of 'to do's, movie-wise...

    Hope you have a great Christmas / holiday season, Maggie!!!

    VKMfan

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  2. ah yes, she was classically trained in opera (just like me!). She intended to sing at the Met but Broadway beckoned instead.

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  3. Wow - opera is quite impressive! Are you planning to do anything in that field? (along with your movie preservation work, of course!)

    It seems like opera is a somewhat 'lost art', but hopefully I am wrong...I actually know little about it, but do know that it is imperative that it is maintained for future generations.

    I have a cousin who has an 'operatic range', has a degree in music, but doesn't do much opera... she DID sing at my wedding, tho, quite well!

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  4. I have been writing about film scores lately, and my classical training allows me to analyze the scores more closely than others who don't know music. Other than that, I don't plan on being a professional performer. My stint as a music major grew out of a high school desire to be on broadway. Unfortunately, being around music 24/7 made me appreciate it much less.

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