Lynn Fontanne & Alfred Lunt
When cast as the juvenile leads in a regional production of Richard Washburn Child's melodrama, Made of Money, in 1919.
Married 1922. Inseperable for over 55 years—until Lunt's death in 1977. Fontanne, who passed away in 1983, never remarried.
To this day, the Lunts—as they were referred to in their heyday—are still fabled as America's greatest husband and wife acting team. It's a legacy they cultivated carefully, and one that comes from Broadway exclusively. Beginning with 1925's The Guardsman, the Lunts starred in a record 25 productions on the Great White Way. Their regional and touring credits puts the number of plays they performed in together into the hundreds. And while modern biographers speculate that both were actually homosexual with the closest they ever came to publicly acknowledging their lavender truths being the naughty love triangle they depicted in close friend Noel Coward's Design for Living in 1933, the Lunts have survived as models of a more elegant era in Broadway lore. Probably just the way they'd have wanted it. Whether gay or not, the child-less relationship obviously worked for them, while leaving behind some significantly successful branding of their personas. I mean, check out 205 West 46 Street! The Globe Theatre was re-named the Lunt-Fontanne in 1958, when the couple made their final Broadway appearance there in The Visit. Their legacy garnered a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, while gracing the cover of Time magazine as well as a 1999 US postage stamp. If you want to see how they spent their golden years, check out www.tenchimneys.org—the Lunts' former home in rural Wisconsin is now a totally cool museum and arts center!
