LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Alfred Lunt: Lynn Fontanne
built 230 days ago
Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt were not, by birth, the real thing. Both came from unstable, even squalid backgrounds; yet they fashioned an image of themselves as the “aristocrats of the American stage.” The recipe for their success was an unflagging devotion to their craft, and a magically seamless partnership that is impossible to fully explain--which may account for the shortcomings of Margot Peters's new biography.
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Ten Chimneys, the fabled Wisconsin retreat of acting legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, is to be featured on CBS Sunday Morning, scheduled for September 25. Bolz Center alumnus and Ten Chimneys President Sean Malone suggests its a profile worth watching:
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The Ten Chimneys story began in 1914 when Alfred Lunt received an inheritance from his father, a lumber baron from Milwaukee. He purchased land in Genesee Depot where his family had often picnicked and personally designed the first portion of the main house as a home for his mother and half-sisters. After the Lunts were married in 1922, the house was extensively remodeled and the chicken coop was converted into a cottage for Lynn and Alfred to live in when they weren’t performing.
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The legendary theatrical team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne made their only starring screen appearance in this 1931 adaptation of Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman. The Lunts are appropriately cast as a famous husband-and-wife acting duo, the husband of which suspects the wife of infidelity. To find out for certain, he disguises himself as an amorous Russian guardsman, complete with handlebar mustache. After an evening of paradise, Lunt confesses his subterfuge to Fontanne. She says she knew all the time, but that gleam in her eye opens up quite a few doubts which are never truly resolved. The fabled "naturalism" of the Lunts appears slightly strained under the probing eye of the camera lens, but their seemingly ad-libbed repartee sequences are a joy to behold.
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In Vienna an actor (Alfred Lunt) and actress (Lynn Fontanne) have been married for six months and quarrel competitively. Having been only one of her seven lovers before she married, the actor is afraid she will find an eighth lover. She has been getting roses and refuses to show him the card. He is very jealous and tells his critic friend (Roland Young) that he has been sending them himself. She tosses a note to a guardsman in the street, and the critic follows him to discover it is the jealous actor playing a role to test her. The note says she has no objections to meeting him; he sends her a note asking her to signal him at five, and he will be there at 5:30.
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Ten Chimneys, the historic Wisconsin home of renowned Broadway stage actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, was rescued from commercial redevelopment in 1996. For decades, Ten Chimneys was a fertile creative retreat for such guests as Helen Hayes, Nöel Coward, Laurence Olivier, Alexander Woollcott, Katharine Hepburn, Carol Channing and many more. As Channing once said, "Ten Chimneys is to performers what the Vatican is to Catholics."
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Lynn Fontanne