From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred Lunt (August 12, 1892 – August 3, 1977) was a Tony Award-winning American actor.

Contents 1 Lunt the actor 2 "The Lunts" 3 Ten Chimneys 4 References 5 External links

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he received two Tony Awards, an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for 1931's The Guardsman and an Emmy Award for the Hallmark Hall of Fame's production of The Magnificent Yankee. He became a star in 1919 as the buffooonish lead in Booth Tarkington's Clarence, but soon distinguished himself in a variety of roles. The roles ranged from the Earl of Essex in Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen, to a song-and-dance man touring the Balkans in Robert Sherwood's Idiot's Delight, a megalomaniacal tycoon in S. N. Behrman's Meteor and Jupiter himself in Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38. His appearances in classical drama were infrequent, but he scored successes in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and Chekhov's The Seagull. He was described by director and critic Harold Clurman as "universally acclaimed the finest American actor in the generation which followed John Barrymore. ^[1]

Along with his wife Lynn Fontanne, whom he married on May 26, 1922, in New York City, was half of the pre-eminent Broadway acting couple in American history, and have a Broadway theater named after them (The Lunt-Fontanne). Celebrated for their sophisticated comic skills, they were known for their ability to swiftly overlap dialogue with such adroitness that every word was understood. Secure in their public image as a happily married couple, they sometimes titillated audiences by playing adulterers, as in Robert Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna, or as part of a menage a trois in Noel Coward's Design for Living. They appeared together in over 24 plays - and most recently on an American postage stamp. The couple also made one film together (The Guardsman 1931), starred in several radio dramas for the Theatre Guild in the 1940s and starred in a few television productions in the 1950s and 1960s. They retired in 1966.

Ten Chimneys, Alfred and Lynn's estate in Genesee Depot, located in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, is now a house museum and resource center for theater (see [1] for more photos and information).

Alfred Lunt is buried next to his wife at the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. They had no children.

1. ^ Harold Clurman. The Collected Works. Ed. Marjory Loggia and Glenn Young. (New York: Applause Books, 1994): 890.

• Alfred Lunt at the Internet Movie Database