Biography
From Wikipedia
Alfred Lunt (August 12, 1892 – August 3, 1977) was an
American stage director and actor, often identified for a long-time
professional partnership with his wife, actress Lynn Fontanne. Broadway's
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was named for them.
Along with his wife Lynn Fontanne, whom he married on May
26, 1922, in New York City, he was half of the pre-eminent Broadway acting
couple of American history, having the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway named
in their honour. Secure in their public image as a happily married couple, they
could play adulterers, as in Robert Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna, or as part of
a ménage a trois in Noël Coward's Design for Living. (In fact, Design for
Living, written for the Lunts, was so risqué, with its theme of bisexuality and
a ménage à trois, that Coward premiered it in New York, knowing that it would
not survive the censor in London.) The Lunts appeared together in more than
twenty plays. They also appeared posthumously on an American postage stamp. The
couple 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.
In 1964, Lunt and Fontanne were presented with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson.
Like Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt is a member of the American
Theatre Hall of Fame.
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. Alfred Lunt died August 3, 1977, nine days before his 85th
birthday, in Chicago from cancer. He is buried next to his wife at the Forest
Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.
Birthday: 1892-08-12