Dunne, Irene (1898–1990)

US actor. From 1930 to 1952, she appeared in a wide variety of films, including musicals and comedies, but was most closely associated with the genre of romantic melodrama, for example Back Street (1932).

Dunne was signed to a film contract after starring in the road-show production of Show Boat. She made her name in musical comedy in the 1920s, but the 1930s was the decade of her greatest success, when she brought a poised vitality and an instinctive sense of timing to screwball comedies like The Awful Truth (1937) and to such musicals as Roberta (1935). Complementing these qualities was a sense of gravity, which came to the fore when she played the self-sacrificing heroines of such films as Magnificent Obsession (1935).