Alfred lunt lynn fontanne biography of donald

English actress (–)

Lynn Fontanne (;^[1] 6 December – 30 July )^{[n 1]} was an English actress. After early success in supporting roles in the West End, she met the American actor Alfred Lunt, whom she married in and with whom she co-starred in Broadway and West End productions over the next four decades.

They became known as "The Lunts", and were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Fontanne was born in what is now the London suburb of Woodford, and received her first training as an actress from Ellen Terry.

Star in the summer triangle: Archived from the original on 1 October The Lunts …. Lunt died on 3 August Download as PDF Printable version.

After building up an acting career in Britain she worked extensively in the US, first appearing in New York in Although she appeared in classics including The Taming of the Shrew and The Seagull, experimental drama by Eugene O'Neill, and dark comedy by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fontanne and her husband were best known for their stylish performances in light comedies by Noël Coward, S.

N. Behrman, Terence Rattigan and others, and romantic plays by writers such as Robert E. Sherwood.

The Lunts retired from the stage in , and lived at their home in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, where, after outliving her husband by six years, Fontanne died at the age of

Life and career

Early years

Fontanne was born Lillie Louise Fontanne in Woodford, Essex (now London), on 6 December ^{[n 1]} She was the youngest of the three daughters of Jules Pierre Antoine Fontanne (–) and his wife Frances Ellen, née Thornley (–).

She was educated in London, after which a family friend introduced her to the leading actress Ellen Terry, who sometimes gave lessons to promising young players.^[5] Partly as a result of Terry’s training and influence, Fontanne was given roles in plays in London and on tour throughout England from to She made her first appearance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, at Christmas , in the chorus of the pantomime, Cinderella, and subsequently "walked on" (i.e.

was a non-speaking extra) in productions in London starring Lewis Waller, Sir Herbert Tree, Lena Ashwell and others.^[3]

During , she toured as Rose in Lady Frederick with Mabel Love. At the Garrick Theatre, London, in December she appeared in Where Children Rule, and in Billy's Bargain at the same theatre in June she played Lady Mulberry.

She then made her first visit to America, making her début in New York at Nazimova's 39th Street Theatre in November as Harriet Budgeon in Mr Preedy and the Countess with Weedon Grossmith.^[3]

After returning to London in she played at the Criterion Theatre in The Young Lady of Seventeen and at the Vaudeville in A Storm in a Tea Shop.

She then toured in the provinces in –13 as Gertrude Rhead in Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblock's Milestones, before playing the part in London.^[3] In that role she had to play the same character in youth, middle age and old age. The American star Laurette Taylor saw her in the role and was impressed.^[6] At the Royalty Theatre in April Fontanne scored a success as Liza and Mrs Collison in Knoblock's My Lady's Dress.

She played in four other London productions in –15, including the premiere of The Starlight Express. She became engaged to marry a young lawyer, Teddy Byrne, but he was killed in action in during the First World War.^[6]

Broadway

Shortly before Byrne's death, Fontanne accepted an offer to join Laurette Taylor's company in New York.

Taylor and her husband, Hartley Manners, fostered the young Fontanne's career. Taylor later said, "While acting with her I forgot we were actresses".^[7] After five plays with them, Fontanne graduated to leading roles for other managements. Between and , she succeeded Laura Hope Crews as Mrs Rockingham in "A Pair of Petticoats" in New York, and was the female lead in new plays on Broadway and in Chicago and Philadelphia.^[3] During this time, playing in summer stock in Washington DC, she met the actor Alfred Lunt.

They fell in love, although at first Lunt's wooing was more hesitant than Fontanne would have wished.^[8]

In mid Fontanne appeared once again in the West End, appearing with Taylor in a play by Manners, One Night in Rome. She had little chance to shine in what The Stage called "a one-part play" written as a vehicle for Taylor.^[9] Wanting to be reunited with Lunt, Fontanne quickly returned to the US, where in she had her first big success, in the lead role of George S.

Kaufman and Marc Connelly's comedy Dulcy.^{[10][n 2]} She did not return to the West End for nine years.^[3]

In May Fontanne married Lunt, and in they made their first appearance together in a Broadway production, a revival of Paul Kester's costume drama Sweet Nell of Old Drury.

Although Taylor was the female lead, it was Fontanne who impressed the critics. In The New York Herald, Alexander Woolcott dismissed the play as "gaudy rubbish", but added:

one performance stood out last evening as something of fine mettle, something true and shining. That was the performance of Lynn Fontanne as the frustrated and embittered Lady Castlemaine.

It might be noted in passing that she is growing beautiful.^[12]

Theatre Guild

In , the Lunts joined the company of the Theatre Guild, which, in the words of Fontanne's biographer Jared Brown, "staged plays on Broadway but defied Broadway conventions by offering serious and innovative plays that were regularly rejected by commercial managements".^[5] The first play in which the couple appeared for the Guild was Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman, in which they established a reputation for playing light comedy.^[5] They acted together in three plays by Bernard Shaw: Arms and the Man (as Raina and Bluntschli, ), Pygmalion (as Eliza and Higgins, ) and The Doctor's Dilemma (as the Dubedats, ).^[3][13] Fontanne had the chance to demonstrate her versatility by switching from comedy to demanding experimental drama in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude (), described by Woolcott as "the Abie's Irish Rose of the pseudo-intelligentsia".^[14]

Fontanne and Lunt introduced a naturalistic new way of delivering dialogue, building on a technique Fontanne had begun to explore in her performances with Laurette Taylor.

It was unheard of for an actor to speak while another was still speaking, but, in Brown's words:

The Lunts …. perfected the use of overlapping dialogue … although both actors were speaking at the same time, the audience would not miss a word spoken by either. Great skill was required in order to bring off this effect successfully.

Lunt spoke in a slightly different rhythm and at a slightly different pitch than Fontanne; each modulated his or her volume level to accommodate the other; and, perhaps most difficult of all, they made the effect sound perfectly natural.^[5]

As a consequence, according to Brown, the Lunts' scenes together could be "more vivid, more real than those of other actors".^{[5][n 3]}

In , Fontanne and Lunt co-starred in what for the Guild was an untypically frothy comedy, Caprice.

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The biographer Margot Peters calls the production a milestone in their careers for two reasons: it was the first production in which they, rather than the play, were the main draw, and it marked the start of their inseparable theatrical partnership: from then on they always appeared together. They took Caprice to London in – Lunt's first appearance there – and won the admiration of audiences, critics, and writers including Shaw and J.

B. Priestley.^[16] For the Guild in New York, Fontanne and Lunt starred in Robert Sherwood's romantic comedy Reunion in Vienna which opened in November and ran throughout the season, before a nationwide tour.^[3] The two were strong believers in touring, taking many of their Broadway hits to remote locations as well as the larger American cities.

They felt a double responsibility to do so: to ensure that playwrights had their works presented to as many people as possible, and to allow people outside New York to see Broadway productions.^[5]

Design for Living

Fontanne and Lunt had been close friends of the English actor and playwright Noël Coward since they met in New York in , before any of them had achieved success in the theatre.

They had resolved then that when they were famous, Coward would write a play for all three of them to star in.^[17] The Lunts' marriage was the subject of much conjecture in theatrical circles: although they were clearly devoted to each other, there were unsubstantiated but persistent rumours that Lunt was bisexual and had gay liaisons; there was also speculation that Fontanne had extramarital interests.^[18] Against this background, Coward wrote a comedy for the three of them, Design for Living (), in which Fontanne's character switches back and forth between the two men, who then pair up when she deserts them both, before all three end up together.^{[n 4]} The combination of the risqué subject and the popularity of the three stars caused box-office records to be broken, and reportedly earned Fontanne and her co-stars the highest salaries paid on Broadway to that time.^[20]

The immense success of Design for Living led Coward to write another play for his friends, but his Point Valaine, in which Fontanne and Lunt starred in , was a failure.

Coward set out to write an uncharacteristically serious drama, but the grim plot and unsympathetic characters did not appeal to audiences used to seeing the Lunts in glamorous and romantic roles; Fontanne's prediction that the play would only run for a matter of weeks proved correct. It was the only outright failure of the Lunts' joint career.^[21]

to

Between the two Coward plays in New York, Fontanne and Lunt played in London, in Reunion in Vienna, repeating their American success with the piece.

The Times commented:

The suspense and rhythm of the playing, the variety of the emphasis, preserve a tension very rare in an entertainment as light and, at root, as frivolous as this. Miss Fontanne is all a-glitter; Mr Lunt faultless in direction and speed.^[22]

For the rest of the s Fontanne and her husband appeared in Guild productions.

In they played Katherina and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew; in they starred in a new Sherwood play, Idiot's Delight; in they took the leading roles in S. N. Behrman's adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's comedy Amphitryon 38; and in they played Arkadina and Trigorin in The Seagull on Broadway and took the production of Amphitryon 38 to London, before touring it extensively in the US in repertory with Idiot's Delight and The Seagull.^[3]

The Lunts had a country estate in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, close to where Lunt had grown up.

It was their summer home, where they entertained a great many theatrical friends and colleagues over the decades. Carol Channing later said "Genesee Depot is to performers what the Vatican is to Catholics".^[23] They gave up their usual summer break there during the latter part of the Second World War, because at Fontanne's behest the couple moved to England.

She felt she should share the hardships of her family and friends there, and from to the Lunts appeared in the West End, and in performances for the troops, including a tour of army camps in France and Germany in ^[5][24]

Later years and death

After the war Fontanne and Lunt returned to the US and resumed their association with the Theatre Guild.

They appeared in –47 in Terence Rattigan's comedy Love In Idleness (given on Broadway under the title O Mistress Mine), and in –50 in I Know My Love, Berhman's adaptation of Auprès de ma blonde by Marcel Achard; these productions ran for and performances respectively.^[25] The Lunts toured the latter throughout the US.

They returned to England in for their third and final Coward premiere, Quadrille, a romantic comedy set in the s. After a West End run of performances they took the play to Broadway in , where it ran for performances; it could have profitably run for longer, but the Lunts chose to close in March ^[26]

Fontanne and Lunt's last Broadway premiere was in Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's "melodramatic comedy" The Great Sebastians in After a six-month run in New York they toured the piece throughout the US.

Their final production was in The Visit, Maurice Valency's adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der alten Dame, in which a rich old woman exacts a terrible revenge on the man who betrayed her fifty years earlier. They toured the play in Britain in –58, initially under the title Time and Again, in a production directed by Peter Brook.

In May they opened the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York with the same play (by then renamed The Visit) and toured it in the US.^[3] In June , in Brook's production, they opened the new Royalty Theatre, London in June , running until 19 October.^[27] After a final week playing the piece at the Golders Green Hippodrome in November^[28] they retired from the stage.^[5]

Lunt died on 3 August Fontanne died at Genesee Depot on 30 July , aged 95, from pneumonia, and was interred next to her husband at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.^[29]

Cinema and broadcasting

Fontanne, like her husband, disliked acting for the camera and she made only four films.^[30] She appeared in the silent filmsSecond Youth () and The Man Who Found Himself ().

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Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne : a Biography

Alfred Lunt biography. American dramatic actor, director

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For The Guardsman () she and Lunt were both nominated for Academy Awards.^[31] She and Lunt were in Stage Door Canteen () in which they had cameos as themselves. The two starred in four television productions in the s and s with both Lunt and Fontanne winning Emmy Awards in for The Magnificent Yankee.^[29] She narrated a television production of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin and received a second Emmy nomination for playing Grand Duchess Marie in the Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast of Anastasia in , two of the few productions in which she appeared without her husband.

The Lunts also starred in several radio dramas in the s, notably on the Theatre Guild programme. Many of these broadcasts still survive.^[32]

Honours

In September Lunt and Fontanne were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson at a White House ceremony.^{[n 5]} Like Lunt, Fontanne was a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.^[34] She received a Kennedy Center Honor for the Performing Arts in ^{[n 6]} She received no official British honour, which was a matter of mild regret as she would have liked to be Dame Lynn Fontanne: "They thought I was American.

But I was always British. I would have cherished the award".^[36] When she was 90 she received a standing ovation when she attended a performance of Hello, Dolly! at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.^[37]

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

Sources

• Burns, Morris U. (). The Dramatic Criticism of Alexander Woollcott. Metuchen: Scarecrow. OCLC&#;
• Coward, Noël (). Plays: Three. London: Methuen.
  Alfred lunt lynn fontanne biography of donald His widow, an eccentric and willful woman, gradually lost all the money, and the family moved to Waukesha , where they ran a boarding house. Lynn Fontanne. In August , Seawell turned She was traveling with her mother and a physician, Dr.

  ISBN&#;.

• Day, Barry, ed. (). The Letters of Noël Coward. London: Methuen. ISBN&#;.
• Herbert, Ian, ed. (). Who's Who in the Theatre (sixteenth&#;ed.). London and Detroit: Pitman Publishing and Gale Research. ISBN&#;.
• Hoare, Philip (). Noël Coward, A Biography.

  Lonson: Sinclair-Stevenson. ISBN&#;.

• Lahr, John (). Coward the Playwright. London: Methuen. ISBN&#;.
• Marshall, Arthur (). Life's Rich Pageant. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN&#;.
• Parker, John, ed. (). Who's Who in the Theatre (fifth&#;ed.).

  London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC&#;

• Peters, Margot (). Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne – A Biography. New York: Knopf. ISBN&#;.
• Silverstein, Stuart (). Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. New York: Scribner. ISBN&#;.
• Ware, Susan; Stacy Lorraine Braukman ().

  Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass and London: Belknap. ISBN&#;.

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