Kay Francis' Life and Career: About this site...

Above:
Kay Francis in real color, circa 1936. Click image for larger view.

My own admiration of Kay Francis inspired this massive website---I believe the largest complied, on Kay Francis, that is---for one of the biggest film stars of the 1930s. I don’t even think I had heard her name mentioned until January 2006, when Turner Classic Movies did a promotional broadcast for a few of Kay’s films when Scott O’Brien’s Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten was first being published. Strangely enough, I didn’t even to get to watch any complete movie of hers that night; all I had the opportunity to see was the final scene in Confession (1937), with the ghost image of Kay embracing Jane Bryan, then turning her back and walking down the corridor with that wonderful soundtrack creating an unforgettable screen exit.

That was enough to spark my interest.

When I was still working on the idea of a massive website for Norma Shearer, my personal favorite movie star, I decided to throw on a few of my other favorites as well. Even though I hadn’t even seen one of her films, that finale to Confession was enough for me to throw Kay’s name up there as well.

It wasn’t until I was posting some messages in a Joan Crawford message board when I threw Kay’s name out in one of my posts. I got an email from Carolyn, a Kay Francis nut who was willing to send me some of Kay’s movies for free: Girls About Town (1931), Secrets of an Actress (1938), My Bill (1938), Allotment Wives (1946), A Notorious Affair (1930), and, of course, Confession (1937). She has subsequently sent me many of Kay’s best movies, I am grateful for her loyalty not only to myself, but to Kay’s legacy as well.

When I got an extra copy of Lynn Kear’s and John Rossman’s Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career, I knew I had to send it to her.

Unfortunately, I decided to withdraw my online project for Norma Shearer [I would like to save all of my writings for Norma, and publish them in a book, instead], but keep my small site for Kay Francis up, and when I got bored with the size of it, I decided to revamp the whole project and really make it special. The books by Lynn Kear, John Rossman, and Scott O’Brien are the core for the information on this website. I am grateful for their dedication with their own projects, which are the core existence of mine.

Other authors, such as Roger Bryant, Jeanne Basinger, Mick LaSalle, and Mark A. Vieira, also provided me with excellent sources of information. [See the bibliography below for more information on this website’s sources.]

Also, I wanted to throw a shout out to Turner Classic Movies, whose hyping of Kay as their “Star of the Month” for September, 2008, really made me get my ass in gear. Now I had no excuse to not make this website what it is, I had the movies, I had the books, I had the laptop, it was time to stop bullshitting around and get going on making a place for Kay Francis fans to gather online.

Below is a bibliography of the sources used to pull this website together. All of the material on this site, unless otherwise noted, has been written by me, using the following publications:

Basinger, Jeanne. A Woman’s View. Wesleyan University Press, 1993.
Bryant, Roger. William Powell: The Life and Films. McFarland, 2006.
LaSalle, Mick. Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood. St. Martin’s, 2000.
Kear, Lynn & John Rossman. Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career. McFarland, 2005.
---. The Complete Kay Francis Career Record. McFarland, 2008.
O’Brien, Scott. Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten. BearManor Media, 2005.
Vieira, Mark A. Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood. Harry N. Abrams, 1997.

Note: The individual film pages are the films of Kay Francis which I have had the opportunity to view. Other titles, Illusion (1929), for instance, are not represented on this site because I have had not seen the specific title at hand. For more information regarding the movies not represented on this website, I strongly urge reading The Complete Kay Francis Career Record.

Following the Fair Use Clause of Section 107 of the amended Copyright Act of 1976 (17 USC Section 107), images on this site are used for a non-profit use only. The placement of photographs on this site is strictly for the educational use regarding the career of Katharine Edwina Gibbs, professionally known as Kay Francis.

Watermarked photos on this site are used for non-profit use. Any violation of copyright laws from the sources the images on this site originate are strictly between the two parties. If the owners of any copyrighted material feel that images are being wrongfully used, please email me.

---Michael O'Hanlon, December 2009