Lunt, Alfred

(1892-1977)

   Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Alfred David Lunt attended Carroll College to study architecture, but instead he became an actor. He appeared in stock with Boston's Castle Square Theatre and toured with Lillie Langtry and Margaret Anglin. He had his first Broadway part in a failure, Romance and Arabella (1917), but won acclaim in the title role of Booth Tarkington's Clarence (1919). When he married actress Lynn Fontanne in 1922, they began working together almost exclusively, first in a revival of Sweet Nell of Old Drury (1923) and the next year in their first dual triumph in Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman (1924), appearing in a 1931 motion picture version, their only significant screen appearance. In a few rare solo roles, Lunt was well-received as Mr. Prior in Sutton Vane's Outward Bound (1924), as bootlegger Babe Callahan in Sidney Howard's Ned McCobb's Daughter (1926), and as Marco Polo in Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions (1928), among others.

   In the 1920s, Lunt and Fontanne began a long string of critical and commercial successes establishing them as the greatest acting couple in the history of the American theatre, admired for their individual gifts and the skill with which they worked together. Their major joint appearances include a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man (1925), C. K. Munro's At Mrs. Beam's (1926), Jacques Copeau and Jean Croue's adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov (1927), S. N. Behrman's The Second Man (1927), Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma (1927), Sil-Vara's Caprice (1928), and Behrman's Meteor (1929). From 1930 to the late 1950s, their careers continued unabated from Elizabeth the Queen* (1930) to Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit (1958). Lunt also directed many of their vehicles, as well as Candle in the Wind* (1941), Ondine* (1954), and First Love* (1961). Lunt and Fontanne were respected for their exacting professionalism and for the exhausting tours they did, bringing the finest plays and acting of the period to all corners of the United States.