Elaine Dundy - Early Life

Early Life

Born Elaine Rita Brimberg in New York City, of Latvian maternal descent, her Polish father, Samuel Brimberg (see The Daily Telegraph, obit, 6 May 2008), was an office furniture manufacturer and a violent bully. Her mother was the daughter of a multimillionaire Jewish manufacturer and inventor. Dundy grew up in a Park Avenue home where she was educated by a governess, though she eventually attended high school, where her boyfriend Terry was the son of playwright Maxwell Anderson. Later, they met again and almost married. A habituée of New York nightclubs from the age of 15, she met the exiled Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who wished to be taught how to jitterbug. Dundy also rode in taxis at dawn about this time, apparently topless, with her head through the roof. An honors graduate from Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia, she studied acting at the Jarvis Theatre School in Washington with future star actors Rod Steiger, Tony Curtis and others, and in a drama workshop was taught by Erwin Piscator.

Dundy's controlling father insisted she live at home while in New York, but she calculated that her monthly allowance would allow her to live in Paris for a short time. At the end of World War II, she traveled to Europe, first to live in Paris, France, dubbing French films, before settling in London, England, where she performed in a BBC radio play. In 1950, she met the theater critic Kenneth Tynan, and two weeks later, they began living together. They married on 25 January 1951, had a daughter Tracy (born 12 May 1952, Westminster, London), and became part of the theatrical and film elite of London and Hollywood, traveling about as friends of Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Laurence Olivier and other prominent figures.

Dundy's sister, Shirley Clarke, was a leading independent filmmaker and a professor of film at UCLA.