FONTANNE, LYNN

(1887-1983)

Born in England, Lillie Louise Fontanne debuted at the age of 17 inCinderella(1905) after studying acting with the great Victorian star Ellen Terry. Fontanne's American debut came five years later in the innocuousMr. Preedy and the Countess(1910), after which she returned to England. In 1916, she returned to the United States to appear with her future husband, Alfred Lunt, inA Young Man's Fancy(1916). Shortly before their marriage in 1922, Fontanne scored a personal success as the meddling title character of George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly's comedyDulcy(1921), and she remained a major stage star for the next four decades in an impressive succession of varied plays, including Theatre Guild stagings of George Bernard Shaw'sArms and the Man(1925) andPygmalion(1926), as well asThe Goat Song(1926) andThe Brothers Karamazov(1927).She appeared with Lunt in Ferenc Molnar'sThe Guardsman(1924), a triumph for the couple as a team, although again on her own Fontanne had a notable success as Nina Leeds in Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer PRizE-winning dramaStrange Interlude(1928).

During the 1920s, the Lunts won acclaim in S. N. Behrman'sThe Second Man(1927) andMeteor(1929), a revival of Shaw'sThe Doctor's Dilemma(1927), Sil-Vara'sCaprice(1928), and Maxwell Anderson's historical verse drama,Elizabeth the Queen* (1930). The Lunts achieved an impressive ability to work as a complementary unit, with Fontanne's beauty, poise, and subtlety balanced by Lunt's suave, impassioned acting. They were particularly applauded for their well-honed effect of seeming to interrupt each other's lines which, to critics of the time, created a higher level of realism than had previously been seen. The Lunts toured the United States intrepidly in most of their vehicles, considering it a duty to bring first-rate theatre to the provinces. The Lunts reached the peak of their joint achievement in the decade prior to World War II in a series of notable plays, including Robert E. Sherwood'sReunion in Vienna* (1931),Idiot's Delight* (1936), andThere Shall Be No Night* (1940), Behrman'sAmphitryon 38* (1937) andThe Pirate* (1942), and Noël Coward'sDesign for Living(1933), in which the British playwright joined the Lunts onstage in a memorable threesome. Subsequent vehicles during the 1940s and 1950s proved less worthy of their unique talents, although their final appearance in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's dramaThe Visit(1958) once again provided an appropriate challenge met by the greatest acting couple in Broadway history.