Though Dunne was nominated five times for an Academy Award (for Cimarron (1931), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair, Theodora Goes Wild (1936) and I Remember Mama (1948)), she never received even an honorary award. She is still not widely known, though she was one of the most versatile and talented performers of classic Hollywood. Only when her films began to show up in programs at museums and film organizations in the 1970's was there sufficient audience interest aroused to have her best titles cleared for television and thus made available to a wider audience. When the Kennedy Center finally recognized her in 1985, she was too ill to attend the ceremony. Still, there may yet be a stronger revival of interest in Dunne's varied career as the first full biography of her life, Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood, by Wes D. Gehrig, has been published in 2003.
Dunne was born December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of a boat manufacturer and a concert pianist. She had an early interest in singing and won a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College. Though she had hoped to pursue a career as an opera singer, she changed her plans when her audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company was unsuccessful. She turned to musical theater, making her Broadway debut in 1922 with The Clinging Vine. After a successful stage career, she was discovered singing with the Chicago company of Show Boat in 1929. She signed a contract with RKO and appeared in her first movie, Leathernecking (1930), an early Hollywood musical.
