53-The Awful Truth - Director: Leo McCarey. Cast: Cary Grant,Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy.


"Our director, Leo McCarey, would arrive each morning with notes written on some kind of brown wrapping paper. That was our script. He'd instruct, 'Okay, Ralph you come over here, and I'll run the dog through here,' and so on. I tried like hell to get out of it the first day.Cary even offered to do another picture for no pay if Harry would let him out of it. Irene Dunne cried, begged and pleaded to get out of it. We almost shot the whole picture that way. We learned our lines day by day, and shot the picture in just six weeks."
-Ralph Bellamy-(who in the end got an Oscar nomination for his performance-Leo McCarey won best director 1937)


"if one is not willing to yield to Irine Dunne's temperament,her talents,her reactions,following their detail almost to the loss of one's own identity,one will not know,and will not care,what the film is about."
-Stanley Cavell-

"She always knew how to put man in her place,but at the same time leave him room to maneuver out of it"
-Richard Schickel-


"...in two very different movies with Cary Grant--The Awful Truth and Penny Serenade--she seems smarter or more knowing than Grant,yet graceful enough to watch him catch up,without letting him feel it.And Grant was testing company(he,too,revered her timing)."
-David Thomson-


Actress - Sigourney Weaver - Top 5 favorite female performances:
Irene Dunne in “My Favorite Wife” (1940)
Ingrid Bergman in “Notorious” (1946)
Margaret Rutherford in “Murder At The Gallop” (1963)
Diane Keaton in “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” (1977)
Greta Garbo in “Ninotchka” (1939)


"...he was the best and most important actor in the history of the Cinema."
-David Thomson-(about Cary Grant)