Alfred Lunt
Alfred Davis Lunt, Jr.
Birthday	Friday, August 12, 1892
Birthplace	Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
Died	Wednesday, August 03, 1977
Occupation	Actor/Director

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Lunt, Alfred

Born Aug. 19, 1893, in Milwaukee. American actor.

Lunt made his stage debut in 1913 in Boston. His first success was the title role in Tarkington’s Clarence. The most fruitful period in Lunt’s career was his association with the Theater Guild (1924–29), where he created his best roles: Higgins (Shaw’s Pygmalion), Dmitrii Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov after Dostoevsky), Petruchio (Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew), and Trigorin (Chekhov’s The Seagull). In the 1930’s, Lunt and his wife, Lynn Fontanne, were major stars of the Broadway theater, appearing primarily in the drawing-room comedies of S. N. Behrman and N. Coward. Lung gave his last performance in 1961 in Dü rrenmatt’s The Visit. The Globe Theater in New York was renamed the Lunt-Fontanne in 1958.

REFERENCE

Freedley, G. The Lunts. London [1957].

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Des Plaines, IL u Big Noise Theatre is back at it again, kicking off their 2018-2019 season with one of Broadway's most beloved musicals, 'Kiss Me, Kate.' The show was rumored to have been inspired by a backstage fight between married actors Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne during their 1935 production of 'The Taming of the Shrew,' overheard by their stage manager Arnold Saint Subber.

Big Noise Theatre's 'Kiss Me, Kate': Reimagining The Rules

GENESEE DEPOT, WISC.: Theatre folk of a certain generation cherish their memories of visiting Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne at their country estate not far from Milwaukee called Ten Chimneys.

Estate of grace

Woodthorpe toured Britain with Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt in Friedrich Durrenmatt's "The Visit" and repeated his role in Peter Brook's 1958 Broadway production, which opened the Lunt-Fontanne Theater.

Peter Woodthorpe

Her Broadway appearances included Jean Giraudoux's Ondine, directed by Alfred Lunt, in 1954, Eva Le Gallienne's staging of The Seagull, in 1964, and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in 1968.

Tennessee Williams plays

The following year, she made her Broadway debut playing Nina in "The Seagull," which starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

Tony winner Hagen was grande dame of stage

Design for Living Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne By Margot Peters $30 400 pages Knopf

No one ever questioned their lifelong devotion, though insiders assumed that the offstage union of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne was a "white marriage" between a gay man and a bisexual woman.

Witty legit duo made stage shine

Tandy and Cronyn were often compared to America's other great acting couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

Jessica Tandy: 1909-1994

Max Gordon presentation starring Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne and Noel Coward.

DESIGN FOR LIVING

They met in 1954, when the director was working on the celebrated English-language premiere of "Waiting for Godot." Seawell was an attorney for theatrical greats including Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and co-produced such shows as "A Thurber Carnival" and Noel Coward's "Sail Away."

RSC finds Rocky Mountain high

As the legit fates would have it, the creators of 1948's "Kiss Me, Kate" based their dueling pair on one of the great theatrical teams of the day, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who just happened to star in Molnar's "The Guardsman" for the Theater Guild, playing 248 performances in the 1924-25 season.

ENTER THE GUARDSMAN

Helen Hayes, Alfred Lunt and Sarah Bernhardt were among the illustrious.

Vaudeville