Alfred David Lunt Jr., was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 19, 1892, the son of Alfred Lunt Sr., and Harriet (Hattie) Washburn Briggs Lunt. The senior Lunt, a native of Orono, Maine, arrived in northern Wisconsin in 1850 to make his fortune in the lumber business. His wife, born in Hortonville, Wisconsin, was a graduate of Lawrence College. At the time of their marriage in 1882, the groom was 60 years old; the bride was 28. Their first child, Inez, died in 1888. Two years after the birth of Alfred Junior, the senior Lunt died of a stroke. After Lunt's death, his widow and son continued to reside in the family's palatial stone mansion at 1701 Grand Avenue, Milwaukee.
Mrs. Lunt loved the theater and took Alfred to see whatever show came to town. By age six he was keeping a scrapbook of his favorite actors and actresses, including Ellen Terry (who eventually became Lynn Fontanne's mentor). In 1901, the “Lunt Stock Company” produced Alfred's version of Rip Van Winkle, with Alfred as scenic designer, director, general manager, and star. When he was seven, Alfred's mother married Carl Sederholm, a cultured physician who spoke Finnish, Swedish, and German.
It was he who instilled in Alfred a lifelong love for the opera. Dr. Sederholm, however, engaged in stock speculation, and in a short time, all of the money left by the senior Lunt had been lost. The mansion was sold and Sederholm became ill; in 1905, he took Alfred on an extended trip to Scandinavia. Four years later, Dr. Sederholm died unexpectedly in Helsinki, with Alfred at his side.
In 1911 Mrs. Sederholm, then a poor widow with three small children, insisted that Alfred attend Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. She rented a large home three blocks away and ran a boarding house, although Alfred did most of the cooking. At Carroll College, Alfred came under the influence of drama professor May Rankin, who starred him in each of her six annual productions. By his second year at college, Alfred had worked up a comedy routine and was performing throughout Wisconsin. He even went on a three-week tour of towns along the route of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad.
In his third year of college, Alfred transferred to Boston's Emerson College of Oratory (May Rankin's alma mater). He attended classes for only two days and then went to see George Henry Trader, a director at the Castle Square theaters in Boston. He was hired immediately, and made his debut on October 7, 1912, in the part of Sheriff Joe Hurley in The Aviator. On the program, his name was misspelled as “Mr. Alfred Hunt.”
In 1914, Alfred came into a sizeable inheritance from his father, and with a portion of it, bought some property in the hamlet of Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, six miles from Waukesha. On the three acres of timbered land and rolling hills he built a four-bedroom house in the style of a Scandinavian country home. The family settled there in February 1915.
From 1915 to 1917, Alfred toured with several famous actresses of the day, including Margaret Anglin, Lillie Langtry, and Laura Hope Crewe, and appeared in Beverly's Balance (1915), Iphigenia in Aulis (1915), The Pirate (1916), and Green Stockings (1917). On October 17, 1917, Alfred made his Broadway debut as Claude Estabrook in Romance and Arabella. A year later, Alfred toured as George Tewkesbury Reynolds III in Booth Tarkington's The Country Cousin. Tarkington was so impressed by Alfred's performance that he decided to write a play specifically for him, and when Clarence opened on September 20, 1919, to the best reviews in a decade, Alfred Lunt became an overnight sensation.
The two certain facts about Lynn Fontanne's birth are that she was born at Station Terrace, Snakes Lane, Woodford, in Essex (about ten miles northeast of London) and that the day was the sixth of December. The year of her birth, however, has been the subject of much speculation. The New Yorker once collated a dozen references to Lynn's birthday, no two of which concurred.
Her father was Jules Pierre Antoine Fontanne, a French designer of printing type who owned a typefounding business. Her mother, Ellen Thornley, was Irish. It is unclear whether four or five daughters were born to the Fontannes, but records indicate the births of Mai (1882), Antoinette (1883), Frances (1886), and Lillie (1887). When it was suggested to Lynn that she and Lillie were actually the same person, Lynn often replied that she was a fifth daughter, born in an unspecified year. After she married Alfred, Lynn used the year of his birth (1892) as her own when applying for passports and the like. At the time of her death, it was generally assumed that Lynn was born in 1887, although her own memorial book listed 1888 as the year of her birth.
Mr. Fontanne proved to be a failure as a businessman, declaring bankruptcy in 1895; as a result, the family was forced to live in a poor neighborhood in London. When Lynn was five, she got lost at the beach at Brighton and was found hours later at the police station entertaining an audience of policemen with a poem she had composed herself. She also liked to memorize Shakespearean monologues. In 1905, through a friend, an appointment was arranged between Lynn and the preeminent actress of the day, Ellen Terry. Upon hearing Lynn recite, Miss Terry agreed to give her lessons free of charge. On December 26, 1905, Lynn Fontanne made her debut as a chorus girl in the Christmas pantomime, Cinderella, at the Drury Lane Theatre.
After years of playing small roles, Lynn met the popular American actress Laurette Taylor in 1914 and became her protégée. By early 1916, Lynn was en route to the United States to act with Miss Taylor in The Wooing of Eve. More minor roles followed, and in 1918 Lynn received excellent reviews for her role as Mrs. Glendenning in Someone in the House, written by three playwrights including a young George S. Kaufman. Three years later, with Marc Connelly, he was to write Dulcy--the play which launched Lynn Fontanne's career.
In May 1919, Lynn went to a New York theater where members of the George C. Tyler Stock Company were reading. While standing in the wings, she heard a beautiful voice coming from the stage; it was Alfred, reading a scene from Clarence. She was immediately smitten.
In the summer of 1919, Alfred and Lynn appeared together on stage for the first time, in Richard Washburn Child's Made of Money; later that summer, they acted together in A Young Man's Fancy. For the next five years, however, they were to follow separate career paths: Alfred in the hit Clarence (1919), Intimate Strangers (1922), Banco (1922), Robert E. Lee (1923), and Outward Bound (1923), and Lynn in One Night in Rome (1920), the successful Dulcy (1921), In Love With Love (1923), and Sweet Nell of Old Drury (1923). Somehow during this time they found a free day to get married--a spur of the moment decision on May 26, 1922.
In 1924, Alfred and Lynn signed with the fledgling Theatre Guild to star in Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman. Instead of the Guild's usual two or three week run, The Guardsman played for 40 weeks, establishing the production company as a major force in the theater. The Lunts became the Guild's major drawing card, appearing both together and separately in numerous productions during the next five years: Arms and the Man (1925), The Goat Song (1926), At Mrs. Beam's (1926), Juarez and Maximilian (1926), Ned McCobb's Daughter (1927), The Brothers Karamazov (1927), Pygmalion (1927), The Second Man (1928), The Doctor's Dilemma (1928), Marco Millions (1928), Volpone (1928), and Strange Interlude (1928).
When their contracts with the Theatre Guild expired in 1929, the Lunts refused to re-sign unless promised they would never again act in separate productions. The Guild complied, beginning with Caprice in 1929 and followed by Meteor (1929), Elizabeth the Queen (1930), and Reunion in Vienna (1931). Also, in 1931, the Lunts went to Hollywood to make The Guardsman for MGM. It was to be their only film together (Alfred had made four silent films in 1922-1923: The Ragged Edge, Backbone, Second Youth, and Sally of the Sawdust).
After 1932, the Lunts acted together in numerous independent productions: Design for Living (1933), Point Valaine (1935), The Taming of the Shrew (1935), Idiot's Delight (1936), Amphitryon '38 (1937), The Seagull (1938), There Shall Be No Night (1940), The Pirate (1942), Love in Idleness (England, 1945--known in the United States a year later as 0 Mistress Mine), I Know My Love (1949), Quadrille (1952), The Great Sebastians (1956), and The Visit (1958). During the summers, the Lunts retreated to their farm in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, where they entertained many prominent figures in the theater and entertainment world.
Although the Lunts retired from the stage in 1960 (after The Visit), they starred in several television productions during the 1950s and 1960s: The Great Sebastians (1957), The Old Lady Shows Her Medals (1963), The Magnificent Yankee (1965), and Anastasia (1967). With Noel Coward, they appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970. Alfred also directed the play Ondine in 1954, as well as several productions of the Metropolitan Opera: Cosi Fan Tutte (1951), First Love (1961), and La Traviata (1966).
The Lunts were the recipients of numerous awards and honors, among them honorary degrees from Aquinas College, the Art Institute of Chicago, Beloit College, Carroll College, Dartmouth College, Emerson College, Marquette University, New York University, Russell Sage College, Temple University, the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University. Other awards included the Mary MacArthur Memorial Fund Award (1958), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), Brandeis University's Medal of Achievement (1972), U.C.L.A.'s Chancellor's Award (1972), and Emmy Award nominations for The Magnificent Yankee and Anastasia.
In late July 1977, Alfred underwent surgery for cancer, from which he never recovered. He died on August 3, 1977, at a Chicago hospital, and was buried in the family plot at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After his death, Lynn severely curtailed her public appearances. She was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in 1980 and appeared in two television productions: The Lunts: A Life in the Theatre (1980), and The Bunny Raasch Special (1981). Lynn died in her sleep on July 30, 1983, and was buried next to her husband.
For more information, see the Lunts' biography by Maurice Zolotow, entitled Stagestruck: The Romance of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, published by Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964.
