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Irene Dunne was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1898. She wanted to be an actress and singer from a young age, but she was sensible enough to study to become a music teacher, in case her career never took off, and she graduated from the Chicago Music College and married a dentist, and we might never have heard of her! But she started working in plays, and she had success, most notably in Show Boat in 1929, a role she would re-create in the 1936 movie version. Her very first movie role was in the forgotten Leathernecking, but the following year she starred in Cimarron, the western that won the Best Picture Oscar, and Dunne was nominated for Best Actress, and she was a star, after just two pictures. In the next five years she appeared in around 20 mostly romantic melodramas, including the very successful tearjerker, Magnificent Obsession, in 1935, opposite dashing young Robert Taylor. But the following year she appeared in a new kind of movie for her, a romantic comedy, Theodora Goes Wild (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and the public loved this new Irene Dunne. She appeared in several more memorable romantic comedies, including The Awful Truth (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and My Favorite Wife (both opposite Cary Grant), and she also made several more memorable romantic melodramas, including Penny Serenade (again opposite Cary Grant) and Love Affair (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film; the first version of An Affair to Remember, opposite Charles Boyer). In the late 1940s Dunne took several of the best roles of her career, including Anna and the King of Siam (the original version of The King and I), Life with Father, and the role she is likely best remembered for today, the lead in I Remember Mama (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film). In the early 1950s Dunne basically retired from acting, making mostly some cameo appearances on TV. Dunne was nominated for five Academy Awards as Best Actress, but never won, and certainly there were many movies for which she could have won, but it is especially surprising she did not win for I Remember Mama, and it is also sad that she was not given an honorary Oscar. She worked with many of the very best directors and the top male stars of her era, and appeared in some of the best-loved movies of the 1930s and 1940s. She passed away in 1990 at the age of 91.

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION photo has been personally autographed (signed) by Irene Dunne!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In many of our past all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many more signed items!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this item (and the vast majority of the other photos and other items we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.
     As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a ""lifetime guarantee"" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775