Lynn Fontanne
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| Lynn Fontanne | |||||||
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 Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1932 |
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| Born | Lillie Louise Fontanne December 6, 1887 Woodford, United Kingdom |
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| Died | July 30, 1983 (aged 95) Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, USA |
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Lynn Fontanne (December 6, 1887 – July 30, 1983) was a British-born actress who was a major stage star in the United States for over 40 years, and who with her husband Alfred Lunt was part of the most acclaimed acting team in the history of the American theater.
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[edit] Biography
She never relinquished her British citizenship, despite living in the U.S. for over 60 years. She and her husband shared a special Tony Award in 1970. She also won an Emmy award in 1965, and was a Kennedy Center honoree very late in life.
[edit] Career
Born Lillie Louise Fontanne in Woodford, United Kingdom, Fontanne first became popular in the title role of George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly's farce, Dulcy, in 1920. She soon became celebrated for her skill as an actress in high comedy, excelling in witty roles written for her by Noel Coward, S. N. Behrman and Robert Sherwood. By contrast, she enjoyed one of the greatest critical successes of her career as Nina Leeds, the desperate heroine of Eugene O'Neill's nine-act drama, Strange Interlude.
From the late 1920s on, Fontanne acted exclusively in vehicles also starring her husband. Among their greatest theater triumphs were Design for Living (1933), The Taming of the Shrew (1935-1936), Idiot's Delight (1936), and There Shall Be No Night (1940). The Lunts remained highly active on the stage until retiring in 1960. Fontanne was nominated for a Best Actress Tony for one of her last stage roles, in The Visit (1959).
Fontanne only made three movies, but nevertheless, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931 for The Guardsman, losing to the much younger Helen Hayes. She also appeared in the silent movies Second Youth (1924) and The Man Who Found Himself (1925).
The Lunts starred in four television productions in the 1950s and 1960s with both Lunt and Fontanne winning an Emmy award in 1965 for The Magnificent Yankee, becoming the first married couple to win the award for playing a married couple. She also narrated the classic 1960 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 1967, both rare performances that she did without her husband.
The Lunts also starred in several radio dramas in the 1940s, notably on the Theatre Guild program. Many of these broadcasts still survive.
[edit] Personal life
Fontanne's romance with Lunt began in 1920 while he was starring in the play Clarence with Helen Hayes, who had discreetly fallen in love with him. The Lunts were married in 1922. Hayes' remained a lifelong friend of the pair, although many believe she never quite forgave Fontanne for "stealing" Lunt from her, Hayes' 1988 autobiography, published after the Lunts' deaths contains several barbs directed at Fontanne, who supposedly was her friend for decades.
The Lunts lived for many years at Ten Chimneys, in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, but never had children. By all accounts, Lynn Fontanne was among the most duplicitous of actresses regarding her true age. Her husband died believing she was five years younger than him (as she had told him), and refused to believe anything to the contrary, although several magazine profiles on the stars reported her true age. She was, in fact, 5 years older, but continued to deny long after Lunt's death that she was born in 1887 (the year now attributed to her birth); she even misreported her year of birth accordingly to the U.S. Social Security Administration.
Asked how to say her name, she told The Literary Digest she preferred the French way, but "If the French is too difficult for American consumption, both syllables should be equally accented, and the a should be more or less broad": fon-tahn. (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)
Lynn Lunt, as she is known in the Social Security Death Index ([1]) is interred next to her equally famous husband, Alfred Lunt, at the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
[edit] External links
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