Husband Alfred Lunt

Queer Places:
130 W 70th St, New York, NY 10023, Stati Uniti
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036, Stati Uniti
Ten Chimneys, S43 W31575 Depot Rd, Waukesha, WI 53189, Stati Uniti
Forest Home Cemetery, 2405 W Forest Home Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53215, Stati Uniti

Lynn Fontanne (6 December 1887 – 30 July 1983) was a British-born American-based actress for over 40 years. She teamed with her husband, Alfred Lunt. Many of their closest friends were prominent members of New York's elite gay circles, particularly Noël Coward, Carl Van Vechten, and Alexander Woollcott. They had no children of their own, but served as parental figures for several young actors, most notably the closeted Montgomery Clift.

Lunt and Fontanne were given special Tony Awards in 1970. They both won Emmy Awards in 1965, and Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was named for them. Fontanne is regarded as one of the American theater's great leading ladies of the 20th century.[2]

Born Lillie Louise Fontanne in Woodford, London, of French and Irish descent, her parents were Jules Fontanne and Frances Ellen Thornley. She had two sisters, one of whom later lived in England; the other lived in New Zealand.[3]

Fontanne move to the United States in 1916 as a member of the company run by Laurette Taylor and Hartley Manners. It has been suggested that Fontanne was intimate with Taylor.

Fontanne married Alfred Lunt in 1922. The union was childless.[16] The couple lived for many years at "Ten Chimneys" in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin. They were married for 55 years and were inseparable both on and off the stage.


by Carl Van Vechten


Alfred Lunt; Lynn Fontanne; Cecil Beaton; Noël Coward by Paul Tanqueray vintage bromide print, 1952 8 in. x 9 7/8 in. (204 mm x 252 mm) Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and allocated to the Gallery, 1991 Photographs Collection NPG x40493

Museum of the City of New York - [Noel Coward, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne .]
Noel Coward, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Design for Living

Noel Coward "DESIGN FOR LIVING" Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne 1933 Playbill at Amazon's Entertainment Collectibles Store


Lady (Gladys Mary) Juliet Duff (née Lowther); Lynn Fontanne; Alfred Lunt; Simon Fleet; Chips Channon by Cecil Beaton bromide print, 1948 5 3/8 in. x 5 3/8 in. (138 mm x 138 mm) Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and allocated to the Gallery, 1991 Photographs Collection NPG x40084


Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036

In 1932 Vogue published a two-page glam shot and exposé, "Glamour and the Lunts", in which Lynn Fontanne was pictured "dazzling" in a Lavin rose-and-blue crepe tea gown, while her husband Alfred Lunt lay elegantly on a velvet settee, cigarette poised at the ready near his lips. Fontanne and Lunt were Noël Coward's closest and best friends in the United States, with whom he first charted out their collective rise to fame, stardom and celebrity. It had been suggested that the threesome relationship in Design for Living, which Coward wrote and then played with Fontanne and Lunt was a semi-autobiographical account of their own relationship.

Fontanne went to great lengths to avoid divulging her true age. Her husband reportedly died believing she was five years younger than he (as she had told him).[17] She was, in fact, five years older, but continued to deny, long after Lunt's death, that she was born in 1887.[17]

Lynn Fontanne died in 1983, aged 95, from pneumonia, at "Ten Chimneys" in Genesee Depot and was interred next to her husband at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[7]

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