Emma Dunn

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Emma Dunn 26 February 1875 14 December 1966 was an English character actress on the stage and in motion pictures Emma Dunn appeared onstage in her early teens graduating to the London stage for several years and later became a noted Broadway actress She appeared in the first American production of Ibsens Peer Gynt 1906 with Richard Mansfield as Peer She played Peers mother Ase even though she was in real life 20 years younger than Mansfield She appeared in three productions for theatre impresario David Belasco The Warrens of Virginia 1907 The Easiest Way 1909 and The Governors Lady 1912 In The Easiest Way Dunn portrayed Annie who was black in blackface In 1913 Dunn appeared in vaudeville Dunn made her first film in 1914 a silent film of her 1910 stage success Mother directed by Maurice Tourneur This was Tourneurs first American film Dunns second film was 1920s Old Lady 31 reprising the role she played in the 1916 Broadway play of the same name One more silent film followed in 1924 Pied Piper Malone before she made her talkie debut in Side Street costarring the Moore brothers Matt Owen and Tom as her sons Dunn wrote two books on elocution and speech Thought Quality in the Voice 1933 and You Can Do It 1947 Emma Dunn was born 26 February 1875 in Birkenhead England although she sometimes gave her year of birth as 1883 Dunn married Harry Beresford an actor who was then known professionally as Harry J Morgan in Chicago on 4 October 1897 They divorced on 10 February 1909 in New York City She was awarded sole custody of their young daughter Dorothy On 19 May 1909 Dunn married John W Stokes John W S Sullivan an actor playwright and theatrical manager They subsequently adopted a second daughter Helen The couple divorced sometime between 1923 and Stokes death in 1931 After suffering a heart attack some months before Dunn died 14 December 1966 in Los Angeles California aged 91