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The Lunts also had the back of a cast iron stove painted on the kitchen wall in the main house because it didn't have a real back They used wooden dowels with burned nails in the cottage's chandelier instead of real candles )
He chose the estate's location because his family had picnics there when he was a child
A team of volunteers and professional conservators has spent five years restoring the murals, furniture, decorative items and roofs He had the green-trimmed, white three-story main house built in 1915 with inheritance money "
The foundation will offer classes and workshops in gardening, cooking, painting, sewing, decorative arts and theater
Rooms are named after frequent visitors: the (David) Belasco Room, Helen Hayes Bedroom, Laurence Olivier Bedroom and Noel Coward Bedroom It lists Hayes' phone number after the hardware store and Channing's after C & B Plumbing The birch trees were a gift from theater critic Alexander Woollcott
The buildings are filled with mementos the Lunts picked up during trips or received from friends, including Delft china, rare original prints, converted pre-Civil War oil lamps, French bottles and Spanish statues
And when they retreated there in the summer, they had friends and theater greats like Helen Hayes, Laurence Olivier, Katharine Hepburn, Carol Channing and Noel Coward frequently visit to rehearse scenes, write plays, talk art and relax with one another
It was a grand country estate, with a creamery, a greenhouse, an 18th-century Swedish log cabin, barns, stables, a pool, an eight-room cottage and a three-story, 18-room house â€â€? and 10 chimneys throughout
They took their plays on the road and insisted on taking summers off to spend at Ten Chimneys, located at the former railroad stop and milking center of Genesee Depot, a small town about 30 miles west of Milwaukee, where Lunt was born In the cottage, for example, Lunt painted the entry hall to resemble wallpaper and then left the pencil-marked outlines on wall designs to make it look like a set After all, theater audiences can't see scenery outlines from more than 5 feet away They also replaced plaster, installed a humidity and temperature control system and tinted the windows
"It was a room between all the other rooms where two people could escape to have a private tete a tete," Malone said
Next to it is a dresser with two Staffordshire statues of a man and a woman labeled "Departure" and "Return
The copper mermaid on top of the pool house was designed and given to them by fashion photographer Cecil Beaton
The stagelike atmosphere is apparent in many parts of the estate Ten Chimneys also will have a residency program for teaching artists and offer internships to students of theater, education, arts administration, decorative arts and museum studies, among others (Fontanne was born in London "
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On the Net:
Ten Chimneys: http://www They made only one movie together, "The Guardsman," in 1931 A group of civic leaders later created the Ten Chimneys Foundation, which purchased the estate in 1998
Lunt died in a Chicago hospital in 1977 at age 84, and Fontanne died in her bed at the estate in 1983 at 96
Restorers wanted to make the estate look genuine, even leaving the Lunts' personal phone book sitting on the kitchen counter
Lunt also painted some of the canvasses in the cottage to match the traditional Scandinavian folk art they already owned
A restaurateur and theater historian bought the estate for about $1 million in 1996 to prevent developers from turning it into a subdivision
Coward used to swim nude in the pool, Fontanne colored Hayes' hair in the garden room and firefighters rushed to the estate late one night after Channing set off the smoke alarm while making a midnight snack
The estate was then passed to a relative who maintained it until he died, and another relative later put it on the market
Down the walls of a sitting room named the Flirtation Room in the main house are strips of cutout, ornate wallpaper, parts painted orange to match nearby curtains Fontanne had sewn tenchimneys
Actor Hal Holbrook, 78, who is on the foundation's board, said the Lunts inspired him an a young actor and he loves the estate And the estate will offer tours, ranging in price from $23 to $35, for small groups from April through October "
Theater was so much a part of who they were that the couple designed rooms in the 60-acre estate they called Ten Chimneys to evoke special feelings or a special atmosphere, like a stage Estate of Stage Stars to Open to Public
May 7, 4:02 PM EST
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GENESEE DEPOT, Wis He added to it several times and added two other main buildings and six outbuildings over the years
"The whole thing was to bring the estate back to when Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were lavishing it with TLC," said Sean Malone, acting president of the Ten Chimneys Foundation, the estate's owner
Now, after a five-year remodeling and refurbishing, the public will be able to view the whimsical estate in Southern Wisconsin for the first time May 26, on what would have been Lunt and Fontanne's 81st wedding anniversary
They took up full time residence there when they retired in 1960
Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was named after them in 1958
Walls and ceilings are covered with murals â€â€? biblical scenes, pastoral scenes in upstairs hall â€â€? painted by Broadway scenic and costume designer Claggett Wilson, who stayed on the estate from 1938-40
Lunt and Fontanne were one of the most popular stage couples ever, co-starring is such plays as "Pygmalion," "Design for Living," "There Shall Be No Night" and their last production, "The Visit," which ran from 1957 to 1960
Behind the iron Swedish stove, in the center of the room, the wall is painted to resemble marble
Six doors lead in and out of the small room to the arrival hall downstairs, the bedrooms upstairs, the dining room, the drawing room, the Belasco room and a door to a balcony "You don't have to go to New York or wherever to create a terrific environment for yourself if you use your imagination " There's a sofa, hand-stitched chairs and a hand-painted grandfather clock
"We want people to really feel as if they were one of the Lunts' guests (AP) â€â€? Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt lived for the stage They co-starred in more than 40 plays in five decades and even turned down a million dollar, two-movie deal, with Fontanne reportedly telling the studio head, "My dear sir, we can be bought, but we cannot be bored org
"You just feel like, 'I'm going to go out and pay a little more attention to who I am,'" Holbrook said |