Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama . In 1985, Dunne was given Kennedy Center Honors for her services to the arts.

Dunnes role as Magnolia Hawks in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein IIs Show Boat was the result of a chance meeting with showman Florenz Ziegfeld in an elevator the day she returned from her honeymoon. She was discovered by Hollywood while starring with the road company of Show Boat in 1929. She signed a contract with RKO and appeared in her first movie in 1930, Leathernecking, a film version of the musical Present Arms. Already in her thirties when she made her first film, she would be in competition with younger actresses for roles, and found it advantageous to evade questions that would reveal her age. Her publicists encouraged the belief that she was born in 1901 or 1904, and the former is the date engraved on her tombstone.

Source: Wikipedia