Alfred Lunt

At 84 years old, Alfred Lunt has this physical status:

Alfred Davis Lunt Jr. (August 12, 1892 – August 3, 1977) was an American stage director and actor who enjoyed a long-term professional relationship with his wife, actress Lynn Fontanne.

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in Broadway was named for them.

Lunt was one of the leading male performers of the twentieth century in Broadway.

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Life and career

Alfred David Lunt, Jr., was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 12, 1892, the son of Alfred David Lunt and his wife Harriet Washburn née Briggs. Alfred senior was a wealthy lumberman and land agent. He died in 1894 and left more than $500,000 to his family. His widow, an eccentric and willful lady, gradually lost all the money, and the family and friends moved to Waukesha, where they ran a boarding house. Lunt had a fascination with theatre from a young age. He began acting in high school and at Carroll College in Waukesha. In 1912, he began thinking about a career as an architect. Lunt "rarely attended classes, having found a job as a minor actor and assistant stage manager with Boston's Castle Square Theatre." He made his first professional appearance on stage in 1912 as the Sheriff of The Aviator, and remained a member of the stock corporation for two years.

Lunt appeared in Green Stockings, As You Like It, Iphigenia, Tauris and Medea in 1914 and Margaret Anglin in Beverley's Balance, remained with her company for eighteen months. Lillie Langtry, Laura Hope Crews, and Anglin followed him on tour, with Lillie Langtry, Laura Hope Crews, and Anglin. He made his Broadway debut with Crews' company in 1917, portraying Claude Estabrook in Romance and Arabella. He then appeared in a summer stock show in Washington, D.C., where he encountered Lynn Fontanne, a rising young English actress. They fell in love, but Lunt's wooing was more hesitant than Fontanne would have liked.

Lunt was in 1919-1919, his first notable leading role. He appeared in Booth Tarkington's comedy Clarence (1919), which appeared on Broadway for 300 performances. He married Fontanne in May 1922 and made their first appearance together in a Broadway performance, a revival of Paul Kester's 1900 costume drama Sweet Nell of Old Drury.

The Lunts joined the Theatre Guild in 1924, which, as Brown puts it, "staged plays on Broadway but defied Broadway conventions by presenting serious and innovative performances that were routinely rejected by corporate executives." Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman, which was the first performance in which the couple appeared on the Guild, was their first performance in which they gained a reputation for playing light comedy. In three Shaw plays Arms and the Man (as Bluntschli and Raina, 1925), Pygmalion (as Higgins and Eliza, 1927), and The Doctor's Dilemma (as the Dubedats, 1927). Lunt's other appearances in his early years with the Guild included Dmitri Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov, Marco Polo in Marco Millions and Mosca.

Lunt and Fontanne introduced a naturalistic new mode of communication, focusing on a technique that Fontanne had tried earlier in her career when working with Laurette Taylor. It was unheard of for an actor to speak when another was still speaking, but, in Brown's words: "In Brown's words: it was unhearduous."

The Lunts' scenes together may be "more realistic and more real than those of other actors," Brown said.

Lunt and Fontanne co-starred in Caprice, an untypically frothy comedy. Margot Peters' biographer says the performance was a turning point in their careers: it was the first performance in which they, rather than the audience, were the main draw, and it marked the beginning of their inseparable theatrical collaboration: from there, they continued to perform together. Caprice was transported from London in 1930, Lunt's first appearance there, and they earned the respect of audiences, commentators, and writers, including Shaw and J. B. Priestley. Lunt and Fontanne appeared in Robert Sherwood's romantic comedy Reunion in Vienna, which opened in November 1931 and lasted throughout the season before going on tour around the country. The two were ardent supporters of touring, taking many of their Broadway hits to remote locations as well as larger American cities. They felt they had a double obligation to do so: to ensure that playwrights had their performances seen to as many people as possible, and to encourage people outside New York to see Broadway productions.

Nol Coward, one of Lunt and Fontanne's closest friends, was one of his friends. In 1921, the three actors first met in New York, when Coward was still struggling young playwright and actor. They had agreed that when they were famous, Coward would write a play for all three of them to appear in. The Lunts' marriage was the subject of a lot of speculation in theatre circles: although they were clearly committed to each other, there were unsubstantiated but persistent rumors that Lunt was bisexual and had gay liaisons; there was also rumors that Fontanne had extramarital desires. In which Fontanne's character shifts back and forth between the two guys, who then pair up as she abandons them both before the three men end up together. "Alfred had suggested a few stage directions that might have landed all three of us in gaol," Coward said while refining his original scripts for the play. According to reports, the risqué subject and the celebrity of the three actors caused box-office records to be broken, and the three actors' salaries, which reportedly earned the three actors the highest salaries on Broadway to date.

Coward wrote another play for his friends after the success of Design for Living, but Point Valaine, in which Lunt and Fontanne appeared in 1934, was a failure. The play was an uncharacteristically serious drama for Coward, and the grim plot and empathetic characters did not appeal to audiences used to seeing the Lunts in glamorous and romantic roles; Fontanne's prediction that the play would last for a few weeks was accurate. It was the only outright failure of the Lunts' joint career.

The Times commented:

Lunt directed the London production despite being starring in the film. He continued to direct throughout his career, not only of the Lunts' productions but also those of other companies.

The Lunts appeared in Guild productions in New York and on tour for the remainder of the 1930s. They appeared in The Taming of the Shrew in 1935, Petruchio and Katherina; in 1936 they appeared in Idiot's Delight, a new Sherwood play, and in 1938 they appeared in The Seagull's revival of Jean Giradoux's comedy Amphitryon 38; in 1938 they appeared in S. N. Behrman's adaptation of Jean Giradoux's comedy Amphitryon 38; and in 1938 they appeared in Delight and in 1935 they appeared in 1935 they appeared in 1935 they performed in 1936 they performed in -in the Demon'squ's in S.

In Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, the Lunts owned ten Chimneys, which was in charge of their country estate. It was close to where Lunt had grown up, and he had acquired the site with his inheritance when he came of age in 1913. It was their summer home, where they entertained a great many theatrical friends and colleagues over the decades. "Genesee Depot is to performers what the Vatican is to Catholics," Carol Channing later said. Ten Chimneys has been a National Historic Landmark since 2003. During the latter half of the Second World War, the Lunts gave up their usual summer break because of Fontanne's behest, the couple moved to England. She felt she should share the struggles of her family and friends there, and the Lunts performed in the West End and in military theatres, including a tour of army camps in France and Germany in 1945.

Lunt and Fontanne returned to the United States and reformed their relationship with the Theatre Guild following the war. They appeared in 1946–47 in Terence Rattigan's comedy Love In Idleness (shown on Broadway under the name O Mistress Mine), and in 1949–50 in Berhman's adaptation of Auprès de ma blonde by Marcel Achard, respectively; both performances lasted for 482 and 247 performances respectively. The Lunts toured the former around the United States.

Lunt's job was to direct. Cos fan Tutte, who sung in English at the Metropolitan Opera in December 1951, was one of his performances, with many of his programs critically lauded and much revived later. Lunt made a rare stage appearance without Fontanne in the silent role of a footman, opening the opera by lighting candles and exiting before the performance began.

In 1952, Lunt and Fontanne returned to England for their third and final Coward premiere, Quadrille, a romantic comedy set in the 1870s. They took the play to Broadway in 1954, where Lunt directed as well as starring in a West End run of 329 performances. The piece was scheduled for 159 performances; it may have lasted for longer if profitably, but the Lunts decided to suspend in March 1955. In 1956, the Great Sebastians appeared in Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's "melodramatic comedy" The Great Sebastians. After a six-month absence in New York, they toured the show around the United States. In 1957, The Visit, Maurice Valence's interpretation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der alten Dame, in which a wealthy old woman seeks a terrible revenge on the man who betrayed her fifty years ago. They toured the play in Britain from 1957 to 1958, first under the name Time and Again in a production directed by Peter Brook. They opened the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York in May 1958 with the same script (which was later renamed The Visit) and toured it in the United States. In June 1960, Brook's production opened the new Royalty Theatre in London, which will run until October 19th. The Lunts' last stage appearance at the Golders Green Hippodrome in November was their last week performing the part.

Lunt moved to direct after retiring from acting. He directed Samuel A. Taylor's First Love in 1961 and then directed La Traviata in 1966, starring Anna Moffo as Violetta, with Cecil Beaton's designs.

Lunt died of cancer in a Chicago hospital on August 3, 1977, at the age of 84. Every Broadway theatre dimmed its lights for one minute at 7.59 p.m. on the day after the news was announced, except for the Lunt-Fontanne, which was brilliantly lit. Fontanne lived at Ten Chimneys in 1983, outlived Lunt by six years. Both are buried together in Milwaukee's Forest Home Cemetery.

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