Fontanne, Lynn

Fontanne, Lynn [née Lillie Louise Fontanne] (1887–1983), actress. One of the great ladies of the American stage, the willowy, dark‐haired, sharp‐eyed actress with the throaty contralto voice and regal bearing was born in England, where she studied with Ellen Terry before making her debut in 1905 in Cinderella. She came to America in 1910, appearing in Mr. Preedy and the Countess but shortly returned home and did not settle here permanently until 1916. Thereupon she appeared in a rapid succession of plays, including A Young Man's Fancy (1916), in which she met her future husband, Alfred Lunt. Fontanne enjoyed an early major hit as the pushy, cliché‐ridden wife in Dulcy (1921). Her first important joint appearance with her husband was as the Actress in The Guardsman (1924), after which she appeared, often with him, in such Theatre Guild productions as Arms and the Man (1925), The Goat Song (1926), Pygmalion (1926), and The Brothers Karamazov (1927). Two outstanding productions with Lunt in 1927 were The Second Man and The Doctor's Dilemma. After creating the role of Nina Leeds in Strange Interlude (1928), the couple permanently reunited and gave many superior performances, including Caprice (1928), Meteor (1929), Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Reunion in Vienna (1931), Design for Living (1933), The Taming of the Shrew (1936), Idiot's Delight (1936), Amphitryon 38 (1937), There Shall Be No Night (1940), and The Pirate (1942). By the 1940s there was an obvious decline in the quality of the pieces the couple had to work with, so it was largely their acting that kept their plays running: O Mistress Mine (1946), I Know My Love (1949), Quadrille (1954), and The Great Sebastians (1956). The Lunts found a powerful vehicle for their farewell performances, The Visit (1958), with Fontanne playing the millionairess Claire Zachanassian and Lunt as her faithless lover. The play was mounted at the old Globe Theatre, renamed in their honor the Lunt‐Fontanne. Always the more restrained, controlled performer of the team, Fontanne was early on characterized by Brooks Atkinson as an actress with “glamour, poise and subtlety.” Theresa Helburn, who worked with her for years, called her “a brilliant and beautiful tiger” and suggested that both she and Lunt always retained something of the characters they first made famous. In her case that meant she ever afterwards displayed a touch of Dulcy's inherent cruelty in all her roles. Biography: The Fabulous Lunts, Jared Brown, 1986.