Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne (b. Louisville, Kentucky, December 20, 1898 – d. Los Angeles, September 4, 1990) – Actress and singer. At age eleven, Irene Dunn moved from Kentucky to Madison, Indiana, and got her start with stage acting there and studied voice and piano. (Her mother, Adelaide Henry, was a concert pianist and music teacher.) After graduating from Madison High School in 1916, she received her teaching certificate and planned to teach art in Gary, Indiana. While visiting relatives in Chicago before she was supposed to start teaching, she entered a voice contest and won a scholarship to attend Chicago Musical College, which granted her a diploma in 1919. Her next stop was New York, where she failed an audition with Metropolitan Opera but ultimately made it into Broadway in the 1920s. She then became a star on film and earned five Grammy nominations for best actress between 1931 and 1948. Following her retirement from motion pictures in 1952, she made some television appearances, although she dedicated her last several decades to politics and philanthropy. In fact, President Eisenhower made Dunne an alternative U.S. delegate to the United Nations in 1957.