MovieChat Forums > The Awful Truth (1937) Discussion > What couldn't Irene Dunne do?

What couldn't Irene Dunne do?

posted 17 years ago by titus25
2 replies | jump to latest

Towards the end of the movie, when she shows up as Cary Grant's lush sister at his finacee's house, she puts on a little number for the family, and at one point tries to do some dance move but fails, sheepishly says, "I never could do that" and goes on singing. I read in an interview with Irene Dunne that it was something she herself couldn't do, so she ad-libbed the line, but I never have figured out what it was that she was supposed to do there. Does anyone know what she was referring to?

[–] dcross-6 17 years ago

A move called the "bump" where you push your hips out--very prevalent in dancing today!

[–] rivkahchaya-455-928681 12 years ago

It's sort of ironic today-- the reason she couldn't do it was because she was very slender, and had a sort of boyish figure by the standards of the time. Almost no hips. Women who could do the bump very well were women like Mae West, with hourglass figures. Suggestive dancing that didn't quite cross the line-- wasn't stripping, that is, was called "bump and grind," and sometimes got past the censors in 1930s cinema. Anyway, her figure is what made Dunne believable to 1930s audiences as someone who had been on a desert island for five years in My Favorite Wife, and the reason she could shave several years off her age and get away with it-- she was 13 years older than her co-star Robert Young in Magnificent Obsession.

Now that a half-starved look has been in vogue for a long time, and an entire generation doesn't remember when it was OK for actresses to be healthy, Dunne doesn't "register" as slender with people so much.