AMANDA Duff Dunne, a former actress and widow of filmmaker Philip Dunne whose Malibu house was a social and political gathering spot for the Hollywood elite for many years, has died. She was 92.
As Amanda Duff, she appeared in half-a-dozen films from 1938 until 1941, including Just Around the Corner with Shirley Temple, Mr Moto in Danger Island with Peter Lorre and The Devil Commands with Boris Karloff.
While working on the Fox studio lot, she met Philip Dunne, a successful screenwriter and director whose credits include How Green Was My Valley, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Pinky and The Robe.
They married in 1939 and she retired from acting in the early 1940s.
After the Second World War, they built a bluff-top house in Malibu. Around the same time, Philip Dunne cofounded the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the House Un-American Activities Committee's probe of alleged communist activities in Hollywood.
Amanda Duff Dunne was active in local Democratic politics, the League of Women Voters and the Audubon Society.
"Their house was kind of an ad hoc centre for liberal Hollywood, " recalled screenwriter and novelist David Freeman, a longtime friend.
"Political meetings were held there for both local issues and big national issues - the war in Vietnam, for instance. It's a way of Hollywood life that we just don't have now, and I don't think it will come again."
Philip Dunne died in 1992.
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