Roberta (this is the entire 1 hr 46 min film), with 37-year old Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, is one of my very favorite films. Roberta, with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics and book by Otto Harbach, and based on the novel, Gowns by Roberta, published by Alice Duer Miller, opened on Broadway in 1933 with Bob Hope, George Murphy, Fred MacMurray and Sydney Greenstreet.
The 1935 movie had Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Randolph Scott. The songs were memorable, with Yesterdays, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, I'll Be Hard to Handle, I Won't Dance and Lovely to Look At, the latter two becoming #1 hits in that year.
One of the most memorable moments on screen is her singing of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. You probably thought the original version was with the Platters. Dunne's first recording of this song was in 1930.
Whoever runs the gown shop Roberta, becomes Madame Roberta, which at the end is Irene Dunne. Lucille Ball (left) makes her first appearance on screen as a walk-on.
Of all the things, Dunne's father was a steamboat inspector, preparing her for the 1936 Showboat, where she played Magnolia Hawks, with Alan Jones, Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan. I thought this was superior to the colorful 1951 Showboat.
Nominated for five Best Actress Oscars, she is described as the best actress never to have won an Academy Award. She had that operatic voice, but did not pass the Metropolitan Opera Company audition. But, she said, drifting in and out of entertainment:
Acting is not everything. Living is.
She was Roman Catholic, a Republican and got involved in international affairs, being appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower as an alternate U.S. delegate to the United Nations. She married a dentist in 1927, and they lived together until his death in 1965. She passed away in 1991 at the age of 91. Apparently, that's her image on the 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula.
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Tropical Cyclone Cilida is just about to become a Category 5, but should slip by sufficiently east of Mauritius:
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