Alfred Lunt on AllMovie

One of America's foremost stage actors, Alfred Lunt made his debut with a Boston stock company in 1912. He first set foot on a Broadway stage in 1917, and two years later scored his first significant success as the title character in Clarence. In 1922, he married British actress Lynn Fontanne, and for the next 35 years the team of Lunt and Fontanne reigned supreme along the Great White Way. Their string of stage successes included Amphytrion 38, Idiots' Delight, and The Visit, not to mention their sublime collaborations with actor/playwright Noel Coward (Private Lives, Design for Living). By nature and inclination a stage actor, Lunt made only a handful of film appearances, most of them during the silent era; one of his least characteristic film roles was in D.W. Griffith's Sally of the Sawdust, in which he played third fiddle to Carol Dempster and W.C. Fields. Outside of a guest appearance in 1943's Stage Door Canteen, Lunt and Fontanne appeared together onscreen only once, in a 1931 adaptation of their stage success The Guardsman, for which they both received Academy Award nominations. After his retirement, Alfred Lunt lived the life of a gentleman farmer in Genessee Depot, WI, occasionally phoning a Milwaukee radio talk show to offer gratis gardening tips to other listeners.