Philip Dunne

Trivia

• He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in front of 6725 Hollywood Blvd., just west of Las Palmas Ave.
• In 1962, he directed Lisa, based on the novel The Inspector by Jan de Hartog featuring Stephen Boyd and Delores Hart, which was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama.
• In 1961, he directed Wild in the Country starring Elvis Presley, from a screenplay by Clifford Odets.
• He also received a Golden Globe nomination for his screen adaptation of Irving Stone's novel The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), as well as several peer awards from the Writers Guild of America (WGA).
• Dunne received two Academy Award nominations for screenwriting: How Green Was My Valley (1941) and David and Bathsheba (1951).
• In 1980, he published his memoirs, Take Two: A Life in Movies and Politics.
• In 1947, he co-founded the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the House Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) investigation of Communist influence in Hollywood. He appeared before HUAC with other Hollywood figures in a well publicized meeting in October 1947.
• From 1942 to 1945, Dunne was the Chief of Production for the Motion Picture Bureau, U.S. Office of War Information, Overseas Branch. Notably, he produced the non-fiction short The Town (1944), directed by Josef von Sternberg, which has received some critical acclaim.
• Before World War II, he was a member of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, a group founded in May 1940 that advocated military materiel aid to Britain as the best way to keep the United States out of the war.
• He later served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) from 1946 to 1948.

Quotes

• "Had I known it was the Golden Age of Hollywood, I would have enjoyed it more."
• "All over town the industrious communist tail wagged the lazy liberal dog."
• "Never in all my years in this chancy and unstable profession did I ever realize that I was sleepwalking along a precipice. I ignored the fact that the rate of professional mortality among screen writers is extremely high...It wasn't courage or arrogance or insensitivity; I suspect it was the irascible Horatio Alger in my blood. If I had it to do all over again I would perish of sheer fright."