James Dunn

Biography

James Howard Dunn was a versatile actor and vaudeville performer born on November 2, 1901, in New York City. He began his career as an extra in short films and later performed with stock theater companies, eventually landing a Broadway musical role that caught the attention of film studio executives. Dunn's breakthrough came in 1931 with Fox Film, where he starred alongside Shirley Temple in three early features and went on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945).