Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne

Broadway couple who reigned for 55 years

by David Johnson

Called the greatest husband and wife team in theater history, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne appeared in their first play together, A Young Man's Fancy, in 1919. They were married in 1922. Rarely has a theatrical love affair been so enduring, or such a creative triumph.

For the next 55 years, the Lunts were virtually inseparable. They dazzled Broadway with their roles in sophisticated comedies by George Bernard Shaw, Terrence Rattigan, and Noel Coward, whose 1933 masterpiece, Design for Living, was written for the Lunts.

When they left the stage in 1958, New York's venerable Globe Theater was renamed the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. They retired to their Wisconsin farmhouse.

In 1965 the Lunts won Emmy Awards for appearing in Magnificent Yankees on TV. A few years later, Fontanne appeared in another television movie, Anastasia, the first time she had acted without her husband since 1928.