Annette Dionne obit

Annette Dionne, Last of the Celebrated Quintuplets, Dies at 91

 

She was not on the list.

Annette Dionne, who shared in her siblings’ fame as one of the first quintuplets known to survive infancy but who distinguished herself as the sturdiest, the most musical and generally the first in line when the girls, captured in Depression-era newsreels, were paraded here and there in identical bonnets and dresses, died Wednesday in Beloeil, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal. She was 91 and the last surviving sister.

Carlo Tarini, a family spokesperson, announced the death, in a hospital, on Friday, saying the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Annette Dionne, the last surviving Dionne quintuplet and a champion of children's rights, has died.

The Dionne Quints Home Museum in North Bay, Ontario, said in a social media post Friday that Annette died on Christmas Eve but did not provide further details.

She was 91.

"She believed it was important to maintain the Dionne Quints Museum and the history it provides for the future of all children," the museum said in the post.

"Annette was the only surviving Quints and was the last surviving sibling amongst the 14 children of the Dionne family ... Rest in Peace, Annette."

The Dionnes — Annette, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile and Marie — became a global sensation after their birth on May 28, 1934, as they were the first quintuplets known to survive past infancy.

But the attention came at a personal cost.

When the quintuplets were just months old during the Depression era, the Ontario government took them away from their parents, who already had five children, and placed them under the control of a board of guardians.

More importantly, the government put them in a nursery-style exhibition that millions of tourists lined up to observe through one-way glass.

The exhibition, called Quintland, was Canada's biggest tourist attraction at the time.

They brought in about $500 million for the province.

Hollywood made movies about the girls, and companies such as Kellogg's and Palmolive came knocking at their doors to make them their ambassadors.

Five identical ships were also named after the sisters during the Second World War.

Over the first nine years of their lives, a period when they remained on display, their dad, Oliva Dionne, tried to regain custody from the government but was unsuccessful.

When the quintuplets were 18, they decided to move to Montreal and out of the public eye.

Emilie died in August 1954, followed by Marie, in 1970.

Decades later, Cecile, who died earlier this year, came forward asking for compensation from the Ontario government.

In 1998, the Ontario government apologized to the sisters and issued a $4-million settlement for the years they spent on display.

Three years later, Yvonne died of cancer.

Dionne told The Canadian Press in a 2019 interview that parents should view childhood as a precious time which shouldn't be exploited for profit.

The Dionne Quints Home Museum is the Dionne quintuplets' original family home and was moved from its original site to North Bay, where the family legacy lives on.

The Dionne girls starred in three Hollywood feature films, which were essentially fictionalized versions of their story. They played the "Wyatt quintuplets" in all three films:

The Country Doctor (1936) – directed by Henry King and starring Jean Hersholt as "Dr. John Luke"

Reunion (1936) – directed by Norman Taurog and starring Hersholt

Five of a Kind (1938) – directed by Herbert Leeds and starring Hersholt, as well as Claire Trevor and Cesar Romero as competitive radio journalists

In the first two films, the Dionne quintuplets didn't so much act as simply appear. Their scenes were filmed at Quintland in Callander and largely consisted of them playing and interacting with each other, as one would expect of normal 2- and 4-year-old children. Both films concentrated more on telling the (fictionalized) story of the heroic doctor who delivered the Wyatts and took care of them, than it did on the Wyatt quintuplets themselves.

The Dionne quintuplets also appeared in numerous newsreels and a short documentary film called Five Times Five in 1939. This film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Two-reel) in 1940. In 1942, they appeared in one of James A. Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks Land of the Quintuplets shortly before they were returned to their parents. In 1998, the three surviving sisters, Cécile, Annette and Yvonne, participated in an hour-long documentary, "Full Circle: The Untold Story of the Dionne Quintuplets", written and directed by Maya Gallus, and broadcast on the CBC documentary series Life & Times.