Kay Francis' Life and Career

Welcome...

2010-01-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

August 15, 2010 News Flash: FIVE Kay Francis movies have just been released on DVD from the Warner Brothers Archives. Check out the UPDATES page for more information! :)

A message from the webmaster...

This is my blog website for Kay Francis. Use this page as a way of accessing all of the information I have posted on Francis.

Notice the list of links on the right-hand side. The "Website Links" will take you to the Main Page, This one ("Kay Francis Main"), and more information about this Kay Francis tribute ("About this site..."). Below that are links to my Kay Francis biography. I divided them into separate pages because it was too lengthy and overwhelming on one.

Below is a detailed chronology of her life. Click the distinguished decade to view information. Remember, to get back to this page, just click the "Kay Francis Main" on the Website Links bar.

Finishing out the information on Francis are links to pages I have created for Kay Francis movies. They contain my personal reviews and information about the specific title.

Note that only the Kay Francis movies I have seen are the ones reviewed on this site, for further information on her other movies, I suggest purchasing the books listed. Unfortunately, searching for movie posters for Kay's movies is extremely difficult. A few of the photos on this site are watermarked from their source, note the "About / Links" page for more information.

*Titles indicate that there is box office information for that title available.

Below this is an Introduction written by Lynn Kear, author of Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career and The Complete Kay Francis Career Record.

Any questions, please email me. I am always grateful corrections or concerns.

---Mike O'Hanlon, 2009

Introduction by Lynn Kear...

One of the most fascinating women who ever worked in Hollywood was Kay Francis. Researching her life and career produced many surprises. Perhaps most intriguing, she was an intensely private person who also kept an unbelievably scandalous diary. The woman who claimed she only wished to be forgotten did everything she could to make sure she wasn't.

Even without the diary it's unlikely Kay would have been forgotten. Devoted fans and more recently Turner Classic Movies have ensured that many of her films are still available.

New fans every year learn that in addition to being a captivating personality Kay was also a talent. She could play comedy and drama, and her best work remains charming and compelling.

Interestingly, although she had no children some of her best performances were of mothers. Who can forget her as the tormented mother in such films as The House on 56th Street or Confession? Or the well-meaning yet murderous mother in Alottment Wives? Other unforgettable performances include the doomed young woman in One Way Passage and Madame Colet in Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece Trouble in Paradise.

Michael O'Hanlon has spent years researching Kay's film roles. This unique website is an homage and a resource. He is to be commended. Long live Kay!

January 2009
Lynn Kear
Author of Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career
and The Complete Kay Francis Career Record

Below: Kay on the Warner Brothers lot in 1937 with makeup artist Perc Westmore, one of two men responsible for the Kay Francis image.

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

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Cast:

Miriam Hopkins ... Lily
Kay Francis ... Madame Mariette Colet
Herbert Marshall ... Gaston Monescu
Charles Ruggles ... The Major
Edward Everett Horton ... François Filiba
C. Aubrey Smith ... Adolph J. Giron
Robert Greig ... Jacques, Mariette's Butler
Leonid Kinskey ... The Communist
George Humbert ... Waiter

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
Based on the play by Aladar Laszlo.
Adaptation by Grover Jones.
Written by Samson Raphaelson.
Cinematography by Victor Milner.
Art Direction by Hans Dreier.
Costume Design by Travis Banton.

Released October 21, 1932.
A Paramount Picture.

Box Office Information:
Cost of Production: $519,706
Domestic Gross: $475,000
Forgein Gross: (?)
Profit/Loss: (?)

Salaries:
Kay Francis: $4,000/week
Herbert Marshall: $3,500/week
Miriam Hopkins: $1,750/week

Background:

With the years from the Golden Age of Hollywood a distant memory of the past, some of its stars have become best known for their best movies. Katharine Hepburn’s work in The Philadelphia Story (1940) is a fine example. Unfortunately for others, they are best known for films which are beneath their talents. A fine example of this is Norma Shearer’s work in The Women (1939).

But for Kay Francis to be best known for her work in Ernst Lubitsch’s brilliant Trouble In Paradise (1932)…well, “shut up and kiss me!”

Aladar Laszlo’s A Becsuletes Megtalalo, American title reading The Honest Finder, opened in Budapest in December, 1931. The play possessed a certain spark, probably because it had been based off of the life of a real criminal, George Manolescu, who had published his autobiography in 1907. His story was filmed as Manolescus Memoiren (1920), a German silent film directed by Richard Oswald and starring Conrad Veidt.

By the time Paramount acquired the rights to Laszlo’s play, America was in the worst stages of The Great Depression. With millions out of work, movie audiences needed comic relief to get through the tough times. Production began in July, 1932, with Kay Francis even cancelling her planned vacation to even appear in the film. She had just wed Kenneth MacKenna about a year or so ago, and they had finally found the time to really get away. Then Kay reconsidered, “I weighed my honeymoon against the honor of this meant, against the things I would learn under his direction---well, Lubitsch won.”

Though she was the highest paid actor in the film, she was disgruntled over Miriam Hopkins top-billing. This was Kay’s only film for Paramount after completing her contract for them and moving to Warner Brothers. Perhaps they were bitter over her new-found success at a new studio. Perhaps they wanted their own actress to get to the honors because of Kay’s leaving. Whatever the case, they were forced to bill Kay equally in all movie posters and advertisements, and she was billed over Herbert Marshall.

Both Hopkins and Marshall began their film careers around the same year Kay did. And like Kay, they had proved themselves valuable Hollywood assets, due in a large credit to their work on the stage. By the time Trouble in Paradise was made, Hopkins was already the favorite actress of Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian. She would progress at the studio to such works as Design for Living (1933) and The Story of Temple Drake (1933), the latter being one of the most notorious films ever produced.

When Kay’s work in Jewel Robbery (1932) was released on August 13 to great reviews and a warm box office welcoming, Paramount began to anticipate capitalizing off of her success in the film with this one, originally titled The Golden Window. Reviews for Trouble in Paradise were highly favorable, but the film was a financial disappointment. While audiences wanted comedy, they preferred Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery to Lubitsch’s “touch,” and spent their dimes watching Norma Shearer and Fredric March in the classic tearjerker, Smilin’ Through (1932).

A popular vehicle or not, the censors had a fit. Trouble in Paradise was pulled from the screen altogether by 1934, and would not be seen again until the late sixties. Never released on VHS and made only available on DVD as of 2003, the fact that Trouble in Paradise remained so popular for so long without being viewed for decades proves the power of great movie making.

Below: Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall appeared together only once on screen in Trouble in Paradise.

Webmaster's Review:

Crook Gaston Monescu feels like he has found his true love in pickpocket Lily. Both know what the other is, but feel that the other is oblivious to their own intentions. Over dinner, Lily tells Monescu that he is a crook. To which he responds that she is a thief, and that she has picked his wallet right out of his pocket. He pulls back the curtains, and shakes it out of her. She asks him for the time, and when he reaches for his watch, it’s not there. She smiles, and pulls it out of her bag and hands it to him.

He smiles as he pulls out her garter. She blushes as he kisses it, throwing it into the air behind him. They collaborate to work as a team, targeting one of the richest women in Europe, Madame Mariette Colet.

Madame Colet oversees a product line of perfumes and fragrances which has been well-established for decades. Since she knows little about the business, and can really care less as long as she receives a pretty penny to play around with, Adolph J. Giron keeps a sharp eye on the company. He has known her family for forty years, in which a secret about his connection to the family isn’t revealed until the end of the picture.

Attending an opera, Mariette looses an expensive handbag. She posts a reward in the local paper, to which everyone and his brother arrives at her doorstep claiming to have found her bag. It isn’t until Gaston walks in and reveals it when she can finally tell Jacques, her butler, to send everyone home.

While she looks all throughout her maid’s room for the checkbook to give Monescu the reward, he takes notice of everything about where she keeps her most important assets. He memorizes the combination to her safe, where she keeps one-hundred thousand francs. When he seems surprised at the amount she keeps in her own house, she asks if he believes she is keeping too much money in the safe. He insists not. If anything, he persuades her, she should put as much more of her money into the safe because of the unstable economic status of the world.

She charmingly smiles and agrees.

Within two weeks, Monescu is working as her secretary, with Lily serving almost as an assistant to him. Monescu handles the bookwork. He gets involved in Mariette’s financial status, fixing out flaws and putting all of her money into one place where he and Lily can seemingly walk away with it.

During all of this robbery, Mariette suspects nothing. She finds herself being more and more tempted to get intimate with Monescu, much to the dismay of Francois Filiba and The Major, both of whom are admirers of Mariette.

At an outdoor party, Mariette flaunts Monescu to all of her guests. They speculate and gossip abour her relationship with him, to which Giron requests Monescu’s private permission. Alone, Giron insists on knowing everything about Monescu’s intentions, and whether or not he should be trusted by Mariette. Monescu insists that there is nothing to hide.

Monescu approaches jealous Filiba and asks where they have met before. Filiba rudely insists that they have never met before, and comments to a guest at how pathetic of a conversation starter that was.

The relationship between Monescu and Mariette begins to seriously ruffle the feathers of Lily, who insists on leaving the house immediately. Monescu comes to agree, but gets distracted before Mariette leaves for a party one night. Things are about to get very serious for them, and Monescu insists that she leave for her party before anything happens that might altar the relationship between them.

She reluctantly agrees.

While half attending the party and half day-dreaming about Monescu, the Major and Filiba talk of their skepticism of Monescu. The Major says that he doesn’t seem to be the secretary type, that Gaston struck him as more of a doctor. Filiba realizes that he has indeed met Monescu before; that Monescu posed as a dentist and robbed him blind just a few weeks earlier.

The accusations of Monescu’s true intentions are enough to have Mariette leave the party.

Meanwhile, Giron is at the house and tells Gaston that he knows about everything. Monescu concurs with the accusations, but insists that if Giron call the police on him, that he will return the favor. There’s no one better than a crook to uncover the work of another, and, while going over the finances, Monescu realizes that Giron has conned millions away from the Colet family for the forty years he has known them.

Mariette returns home. Lily and Monescu have a major argument, to which she insists that she is leaving right away with all of the money that Mariette has hidden in the safe. When Mariette comes to realize that Lily and Monescu have been planning to con her out of everything, she’s dumbfounded, though more disappointed that she couldn’t have to opportunity to be with Gaston.

They leave immediately.

In the cab, Lily and Monescu reveal two handbags, pearl necklaces, and the one hundred thousand francs they have stolen from Mariette. They laugh and reconcile, planning to stay with each other.

While this is a good movie, I guess I will never understand what everyone has to say about it. I think it’s alright, but I’m more of a fan of the direction and dialogue than of the actual situation. The constant use of thievery for comedy gets a little old after a while, and I don’t like the ending with Kay being left alone. But my opinion differs from that of the rest of the world, for everyone else recognizes Trouble In Paradise as brilliant movie-making, and that is a conclusion I must respect.

This movie is very well directed. There are really great set ups, such as the use of a clock to show the drastic change of time while we only hear the voices of the characters. And the silhouette of Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall about to kiss being shown over a bed. And who can forget the comedy of Miriam Hopkins telling Kay that she can have her lousy one-hundred thousand francs before she finishes giving Kay a piece of her mind, then rushes over to the bed to grab it and storm out of the room.

Of the three leading stars, Herbert Marshall gets the most attention from the camera. He is the real star of the film, is given control from all of the other characters in the story, and dominates this movie with his debonair persona, acting talent, and ability to love a beautiful silver-screen lady of the Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins mold.

He is intelligent. He knows all of the tricks, but there is not one stain on his image. One can not think less of him for his criminal activities, but rather admire him for his work. His assistance by Miriam Hopkins is phenomenal. She was always a great physical comedienne, making the most of her body movements and, best of all, facial expressions which are enough to make one laugh out loud.

So many of her comedy scenes remain as fresh as the day they were filmed. Her work has greatly withstood the test of time, which is difficult to achieve for most comics.

Kay Francis does well with stealing a lot of the movie for herself, but her approach to the comedy is dated, though it seems to work here. She smiles knowingly, says all of her lines overly ditzy with a smirk on her face, all while throwing her hands about in the air as she makes her point. But whatever she does it pays off by the final reel. She is beautifully photographed, and her gowns are almost as memorable as the movie itself.

Look at the fur she wears to the dinner party. Consisting of two foxes, they hook together at the mouths. It’s so bizarre, making one wonder if that was designed purposely for comedy or not. There were so many outrageous movie costumes back then, and Kay wore many of them herself, but this is one of her most memorable to me.

What greatly helps Marshall, Hopkins, and Francis is their dialogue, which is brilliant. After watching so many Warner Brothers movies, listening to the soundtrack of a first-rate Paramount production is like finding an entire new medium. The lines are so clever, so snappy yet intelligent, and the delivery of them by the headlining cast deserves accolades for all of them.

Almost as strong as the movie dialogue is the soundtrack. After five years of perfecting the technology, sound recorders were making movie soundtracks more and more important to the finished films. In Trouble In Paradise, the music is plays equally as big a role as the headlining actors do. Giving a correct atmosphere to the film, it defines several scenes.

Also a character in this movie is the use of overt sexual innuendos.

My personal misunderstanding of Lubitsch comedies aside, this is a film masterpiece, and considered worthy enough to be in the National Film Registry. And if this is the most known Kay Francis film, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. As other authors have pointed out, had she made only this movie people would still talk about her.

Below: Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins had first made 24 Hours (1931) together. Trouble in Paradise was the last film they made with one another, though they would later be announced as the stars of The Sisters (1938). The property was given to Bette Davis and Anita Louise.

Vintage Reviews:

Surely "Trouble in Paradise," a picture which was presented at the Rivoli yesterday, points no moral and the tale it tells is scant and innocuous, yet, because it was fashioned by the alert-minded Ernst Lubitsch, it is a shimmering, engaging piece of work. In virtually every scene the lively imagination of the German producer shines forth and it seems as though he were the only person in Hollywood who could have turned out such an effective entertainment from such a feathery story.

Mr. Lubitsch has drawn heavily upon Paramount's resources for his scenic designs, which are an important adjunct to this flippant film. Here the director has a flair for beautiful clocks of various types and in one sequence, while the voices of two players are heard carrying on their bantering, all one sees is a clock on a table. When the characters pass into another room, there is still another clock. Upstairs there is a modernistic, grandfather clock and outside a window there is the tower from which chimes tell the hour. The settings are lovely and spacious with meticuluous attention to furnishings. No more inviting example of 1932 decorations has been offered on the screen.

This merry trifle, which was first spun as a play by Laszlo Aladar and arranged for a motion picture by Grover Jones and Samson Raphaelson, deals, if you please, with those light-fingered gentry who rob and pick pockets. Imagine the charming Miriam Hopkins impersonating an ingratiating, capable thief! Then try to visualize Herbert Marshall as a delightful scoundrel who might look upon Alias Jimmy Valentine as a posing blunderer! They are such an interesting pair of crooks that it is not altogether astonishing that the other characters find them companionable.

First one has a glimpse of Venice with a refuse collector singing "O Sole Mio" as he steers his craft through the canals. The camera then introduces Gaston Monescu posing as a baron, and later Lily, whom Gaston calls his "little shoplifter" and "sweet little pickpocket."

This pair eventually turn their attention to Paris and Mme. Marianne Colet, the widow of a wealthy perfumery manufacturer. Marianne, impersonated by Kay Francis, has two suitors, neither of whom finds much favor with her. One is the Major, played by Charles Ruggles, who stays quite sober throughout the proceedings, and the other is Francois, who has been an easy victim for Gaston in the City of the Doges.

Through returning Mme. Colet's precious bag, which he had stolen, Gaston, after accepting the 20,000 francs' reward and explaining that he is one of the new poor, soon is ensconced in Marianne Colet's mansion as her secretary, and Lily, not long afterward, is employed as a typist. She has to sit on her hands when talking to Marianne Colet, for fear she might hurt the chances of stealing 100,000 francs in cash—cash being always better than jewelry—by pilfering one of the pieces of jewelry in a box.

As for Marianne Colet, one might say that her interest in Gaston is keener than most women, who employ secretaries, and it prompts the fair but reprehensible Lily to tell Gaston that she admires him as a burglar and a thief, but she warns him not to sink to the low level of a gigolo.

After their fashion, they have a romantic and busy time at Marianne Colet's. There are moments when it looks as though Mr. Lubitsch were going to let fly a few ideas like René Clair's, but he stops himself and never for an instant can it be said that Lubitsch ever copies another director. Time and again in this feature he offers ideas which will undoubtedly be well imitated in Hollywood. He does not take this fable seriously at all, but he leaves nothing undone to make it the sort of thing that will keep audiences in a constant state of chuckles.

Mr. Marshall is as smooth and easy as ever. He looks more the baron than the thief Gaston. It is not surprising that Marianne thinks of promoting him from secretary to husband. Miss Hopkins makes Lily a very interesting person, who steals as another girl might sing. Lily even steals her way out of the last scene in the film. Kay Francis is attractive and able as Marianne, whose sins consist of being too credulous and in being very fond of romantic adventures.
Written by Mordaunt Hall. Published in the New York Times, November 9, 1932.

Despite the Lubitsch artistry, much of which is technically apparent, it's not good cinema in toto. For one thing, it's predicated on a totally meretricious premise. Herbert Marshall is the gentleman crook. Miriam Hopkins is a light-fingered lady. Kay Francis is a rich young widow who owns the largest parfumerie in Paris. She's decidedly on the make for Marshall, and his appointment as her 'secretary' inspires beaucoup gossip.

Rest becomes a proposition of cheating cheaters as the well-mannered rogue exposes C. Aubrey Smith, the parfumerie's general manager, at the same time climaxing into a triangle among the two attractive femmes and Marshall.

The dialog is bright [from the play The Honest Finder by Laszlo Aladar] and the Lubitsch montage is per usually tres artistique, but somehow the whole thing misses.

There's some good trouping by all concerned, plus the intriguing Continental atmosphere of the Grand Hotel on the Grand Canal, Venice, plus ultra-modern social deportment in smart Parisian society.
Published in Variety in November, 1932.

Lobby Cards:

Movie Posters:

Press Book Centerfold:

Updates...

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Above: The portrait of Kay was taken for I Found Stella Parish (1935), but used to advertise the 1937 rerelease of One Way Passage (1932).

Updates:

August 15, 2010. NEWS!!!! Five, yes, FIVE of Kay Francis' movies have been released on DVD from the Warner Brothers Archives!!! These titles include: The House on 56th Street (1933), Stranded (1935), Living on Velvet (1935), The Goose and the Gander (1935), and Give Me Your Heart (1936). These DVDs can be purchased from the Warner Brothers website at this link, here. Please, even if you are slightly interested in Kay Francis, do us fans the favor of showing your support by picking up at least one of these titles. The more Kay Francis movies purchased, the more likely to be issued on DVD. Below is the cover art for the DVD cases.

May 08, 2010. Added new pictures to the pages for A Notorious Affair (1930), Guilty Hands (1931), and Transgression (1931). Added new a movie poster to Women Are Like That (1938) and a lobby card to Raffles (1930).

January 19, 2010. Added box office information for In Name Only. The information came from The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, volume fourteen.

January 6, 2010. Added photos to the Stolen Holiday (1937), When the Daltons Rode (1940), and Play Girl (1941) pages.

January 3, 2010. Added movie posters and lobbby cards for Little Men (1940), The Man Who Lost Himself (1941), Always in My Heart (1942), and Allotment Wives (1945).

January 1, 2010. Added a page for Trouble in Paradise (1932).

December 25, 2009. Added a page for When the Daltons Rode (1940).

December 23, 2009. Added a page for The Man Who Lost Himself (1941).

Upcoming Kay Francis Films on TCM:

January

Play Girl. January 12, 07:45AM.

The Goose And The Gander. January 13, 07:00AM.
Another Dawn. January 13, 08:15AM.
Comet Over Broadway. January 13, 09:30AM.
My Bill. Jan 13, 10:45AM.
Secrets Of An Actress. Jan 13, 12:00PM.
Women Are Like That. Jan 13, 01:15PM.
It's A Date. January 13, 02:45PM.
The Feminine Touch. Jan 13, 04:30PM.
Always In My Heart. Jan 13, 06:15PM.

February

One Way Passage. February 02, 06:45PM.

March

The Keyhole. Mar 15, 09:45AM.
Living On Velvet. Mar 15, 02:45PM.

When the Daltons Rode (1940)

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Cast:

Randolph Scott ... Tod Jackson
Kay Francis ... Julie King
Brian Donlevy ... Grat Dalton
George Bancroft ... Caleb Winters
Broderick Crawford ... Bob Dalton
Stuart Erwin ... Ben Dalton
Andy Devine ... Ozark Jones
Frank Albertson ... Emmett Dalton
Mary Gordon ... Ma Dalton
Harvey Stephens ... Rigby
Edgar Dearing ... Sheriff
Quen Ramsey ... Clem Wilson
Dorothy Granger ... Nancy
Robert McKenzie ... Photographer
Fay McKenzie ... Hannah

Directed by George Marshall
Based on the novel by Emmett Dalton and Jack Jungmeyer.
Screenplay by Harold Shumate.
Original Music by Frank Skinner.
Cinematography by Hal Mohr.
Film Editing by Edward Curtiss.
Art Direction by Jack Otterson.
Set Decoration by Russell A. Gausman.
Costume Design by Vera West.
Assistant Direction by Vernon Keays.
Stunts Yakima Canutt by Cliff Lyons.
Musical Direction by Charles Previn.

Released August 23, 1940.
A Universal Picture.

Background:

After the block-buster successes of Stage Coach, Union Pacific, Destry Rides Again, and Jesse James, all produced and released in 1939, Hollywood became aware of a major fact: Westerns were back in vogue.

The genre had really taken shape in the silent cinema, where directors like John Ford and William Wellman perfected their craft by making cheaply produced cowboy stories made for the sole purpose of getting a fast buck for the movie studios.

But the genre died with sound movies, where lavish musicals became the new big thing---as well as other techniques which couldn’t be achieved in silent film.

During the 1930s, the majority of Westerns being produced were of the B stamp. To the big studios, Westerns were for the small-town entertainment only. The real profits were to be made in the big cities, where audiences preferred to see Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee (1934), Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Rose Marie (1936), and Kay Francis in Stolen Holiday (1937).

Only after the successes of Stage Coach, Union Pacific, and Destry Rides Again did they come to realize that a lavish Western could bring in the big bucks, also.

When Daltons Rode was based off of the legend created by the real-life circumstances surrounding the gang and of course the book by Emmett Dalton and Jack Jungmeyer, which was the basis for this excellent piece of Western material.

Randolph Scott had proved himself capable of handling this genre with notable works in The Texans (1938), Jesse James (1939), and Virginia City (1940). Unfortunately, When the Daltons Rode wouldn’t showcase him riding high with the Dalton Brothers, holding up stagecoaches and being in the middle with shoot-outs with officers. Filling in for a role which was originated for Walter Pidgeon, who became ill prior to production, in When the Daltons Rode he wound up sitting on the sidelines, loving Kay Francis instead of shooting a pistol.

By the time she appeared as Julie King, Kay Francis’ career had basically covered all of the basics but the Western. She proved she could do light comedy, musicals, and melodrama. The West was the last frontier for her to arrive, and she grabbed on to this project with more enthusiasm that she had since playing the villainous bitch of In Name Only (1939).

Her excitement is showcased with a stellar performance, more alive than she had been for some time. And for a woman so identified with fashion and glamour, she was perfectly fitted into this movie, unlike her other costume films where she tended to stand out like a soar thumb.

Director George Marshall began his career with Across the Rio Grande (1916). He was one of the directors of the silent cinema to make the Western genre one of the most popular. He had directed Destry Rides Again to a major box office success, and repeated his triumph with When the Daltons Rode.

The film was released to favorable reviews and a potent box office success to make Universal Pictures produce a follow-up, The Daltons Ride Again (1945), which featured none of the headlining actors in this film.

As with so many sequels, it didn’t prove a fair follow-up to its predecessor.

Below: When the Daltons Rode had one of the most distinguished casts of its released year.

Webmaster's Review:

Todd Jackson arrives in a Kansas town looking for his old friends, the Daltons, but all he seems to find is trouble. Peering into a photo studio, he laughs at a man who falls backwards, collapsing the entire setup. The man rushes outside to tell Todd off, who responds with an apology, but admits it was pretty funny.

A gun fires, and out comes Ozark Jones and his girlfriend Nancy, who has caught him cheating on her. Ozark grabs the back of Todd’s arms and uses him as a shield. Everyone laughs at the situation, and the man from the photo session responds by having his brother do the same thing while he pretends to fire. Todd’s bag opens up and his clothes go everywhere, and when the gag is all over he looks at Todd and sarcastically apologizes but says that was funny also.

Todd says “Yeah, so is this,” as he pushes the man into a crate of water, which causes a fight.

The mother of the two young men runs out with her other two sons. She asks what’s the matter with them, and, when Todd recognizes one of their first names, and the brogue of the mother, he comes to realize he has met his old friends.

They laugh about the situation, and insist that Todd come back to the farm with them for their mother’s birthday part. He agrees, but needs to send out a telegram first.

Todd meets Julie, the telegram writer, as she is counting the number of cows in a nearby stable. He is smitten with her, though she resists him, and when he says he will be attending a part later on, she insists that she is also, but doubts they would be seen together at the same place.

Of course they are.

At the party, Todd goes on to Bob Dalton about the girl he met. Bob appears to be interested, and when Julie shows up and Todd gets all excited Bob goes over to her and welcomes her. Unfortunately for Todd, Bob and Julie are engaged to be married, but there are no hard feelings on Bob’s part.

The Dalton ranch is being eyed up by a Kansas Development Company. The family has owned the land for ten years, but the corrupt business is doing their best to have it taken away, even having Ben Dalton wrongfully accused of murdering one of their workers just to get it.

Since Todd is a lawyer, he must do his best to help his friends, though he and Julie are falling more and more in love with each other as the days pass.

At the trial, Todd stages a major argument between the jurors over a stolen horse. Gunfire soon follows, and the judge calls for a recess, but before the trial can go any further, the Daltons whip out pistols of their own and cause a major shoot-up to get Ben out of the courtroom.

Succeeding in their escape, now they are on the run.

The local newspapers do their best to tarnish the boys’ image, blaming them for every robbery and hold-up in the nearby counties when, in reality, they are starving in a barn they are using to hide in. Fed up with being blamed for everything, they decide to make the rumors come true, and feed their stomachs, by holding up a few trains and banks of their own.

Ben Dalton makes his way back to town during a train hold up, and runs into Julie’s office, though the local deputies quickly find him and wrestle with her to get into the room where he is being hidden. Once he is captured, his brothers come back to save him.

The boys do their last major hold up of a train ironically filled with deputies protecting a large amount of money being carried. A chase leads them back into town, where they hide out until the final reel.

Ma sends for Julie, thinking she will be glad to see Bob. He insists that the boys are done; they’re going to South America to get married while everyone else heads out to California. Julie refuses, basically giving him the reason that she loves Todd now, and has forgotten about him.

Furious, Bob rushes over to Todd’s over where a fight breaks out. Julie and Ma run in trying to stop it, and Bob comes to his senses when he goes to strike his own mother. Since Todd is on the floor unconscious, Bob tells Julie to tell Todd he’s sorry about the while thing.

She agrees.

Meanwhile, outside the rest of the boys are going to hold up First National Bank even after Bob told them not to. The deputies have been tipped off, and the final big shoot out occurs, with all of the Dalton Brothers being killed except for Bob, who saves Todd’s life before a gunman can kill him, after which he is gunned down himself.

Todd and Julie are married, and the film ends with their preparation to leave town and start a life together.

This is a really good movie, perhaps the second best one Kay made as a freelance actress, the first being In Name Only (1939). There’s tons of action to keep this one moving, so don’t expect any dead moments for a bathroom break or popcorn.

Work from the stuntmen is phenomenal, especially when one falls off a stagecoach, grabs on underneath and works his way up the back and takes the driver by gunpoint.

The acting is uniformly excellent, particularly on the parts of Randolph Scott, Broderick Crawford, Brian Donlevy, and Kay Francis. Though top billed, Scott does loose audience attention for a good thirty minutes of this movie while the Daltons are out on their criminal runs. Here he doesn’t get the opportunity to play with the action, as he had done in the majority of his Westerns. In When the Daltons Rode his action is limited strictly to suits and the courtroom.

I don’t even recall seeing him with a gun.

Kay plays the typical love interest, but she has some really good scenes. Her best is when the officers break into her office to get Ben Dalton. The extras, who are extremely rough in a very convincing manner, manhandle her in a way which tops her entering the crooked union deal at the end of Stranded (1935) with George Brent.

She allows herself to get pushed around by the best of them.

Her second best is at the end, when she’s over Randolph Scott’s unconscious body yelling at Bob, telling his mother that he has changed; that her son would never be to selfish and irrational. Here Broderick Crawford also does great with his realization of how much life has changed him.

And for fans of Kay Francis, director George Marshall does a good job at checking back with her current situations while the Daltons are away. The only actor we loose contact for a while with is Randolph Scott, but everyone shares the action and honors here, which is something remarkable in the middle of all that gunfire.

Also good enough for a mention of praise is Mary Gordon as the mother and George Bancroft as Caleb Winters.

On the down note is Andy Devine, who gets annoying quickly.

Many point to When the Daltons Rode as following the cliché Western plot, but it still works. A very entertaining piece of work, it is fortunate that this title is available on a major DVD release for anyone to watch and enjoy.

Below: The riots from extras in the film was no better than this scene, in which Mary Gordon, who plays Ma Dalton, gets knocked to the ground when local town mobs go after her sons.

Vintage Reviews:

Of one thing you may be sure: Universal will never make a sequel to "When the Daltons Rode." [Webmaster's note: I love it when jerks like Bosley Crowther are wrong. The film was given a sequel in 1945 called The Daltons Ride Again.] No, sir, friends, you'll never see a "Return of Bob Dalton," for coincidence, or "The Daltons Ride Again"—not within the realm of reason, anyhow. For the climax of this titanic Western, which blasted its way into Loew's State and eleven other theatres in the metropolitan area yesterday, results in such wholesale tribal slaughter, such a complete patrilineal blackout of the clan, that "When the Daltons Rode" is decisively the last of the Daltons. We have long wanted to see one of these shootin' pictures in which the final scene is a smoking ruin with everybody dead. This one comes mighty close to being it. At the fade-out there are only a few pious and inconsequential folk, like Randolph Scott and Kay Francis, standing around. The Dalton gang is no more.

But, boy, while those buckos are living, they certinly do put on a show! Like the James brothers before them—or, at least, like the Twentieth Century-Fox Jameses—they start out a law-abiding family of Kansas farmers, back about 1891. But when the inevitable railroad "land grabbers" try to move in on them, when one of the boys accidentally kills a villain and it looks like the end of a rope for him, though the brothers automatically constitute themselves a fraternity of fighting fiends, go marauding around the country robbing banks and sticking up trains and eventually go down in a furious battle with their backs against the walls of Coffeyville, Kan.

We wouldn't like to suggest that this is the true saga of the famous Dalton gang. Neither would we highly recommend the romantic by-play of Miss Francis nor the ineffectual intervention of Mr. Scott in the plot. But we will say that Brian Donlevy, Broderick Crawford, Andy Devine and others of the gang make some fine desperados; the picture itself is straight, fast Western fare, and for folks who like plenty of shootin', here is your gunpowder.
Written by Bosley Crowther. Published August 23, 1940 in the New York Times.

Below: Kay and Broderick Crawford.

Movie Posters:

The Man Who Lost Himself (1941)

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Cast:
Brian Aherne ... John Evans / Malcolm Scott
Kay Francis ... Adrienne Scott
Henry Stephenson ... Frederick Collins
S.Z. Sakall ... Paul
Nils Asther ... Peter Ransome
Sig Ruman ... Dr. Simms
Dorothy Tree ... Mrs. Van Avery
Janet Beecher ... Mrs. Milford
Marc Lawrence ... Frank DeSoto
Henry Kolker ... Mulhausen
Sarah Padden ... Maid
Eden Gray ... Venetia Scott
Selmer Jackson ... Mr. Green
William Gould ... Mr. Ryan
Russell Hicks ... Mr. Van der Girt
Frederick Burton ... Mr. Milford
Margaret Armstrong ... Mrs. Van der Girt

Directed by Edward Ludwig.
Produced by Lawrence W. Fox.
Based on the novel by H. De Vere Stacpoole.
Screenplay by Eddie Moran.
Original Music by Hans J. Salter.
Cinematography by Victor Milner.
Film Editing by Milton Carruth.
Art Direction by Jack Otterson.
Set Decoration by Russell A. Gausman.
Gowns by Vera West.
Special Effects by John P. Fulton

Released March 21, 1941.
A Universal Picture.

Background:

In the year The Man Who Lost Himself was made, the year America entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, Kay Francis made four memorable comedies. This was the only year in her entire Hollywood career where she did not make one dramatic film.

In some ways it’s good. In other ways it’s not.

Kay started the year off with Play Girl, made for RKO. It was a so-so film, floating between the low A and high B range in production value. After that she went on to this movie, then to a supporting role in Charley’s Aunt and then The Feminine Touch, with Rosalind Russell, Don Ameche, and Van Heflin.

While her talents for light comedy were fine, ably assisted by her charming smile and hearty laugh, it was in the heavy dramatic roles in which she really shinned. This was something Warner Brothers immediately picked up on, which is why she suffered on screen for so long before her roles finally began to lighten up a bit, causing a down-turn in her popularity, and her decision to leave the studio and work as an independent star.

Unfortunately, her popularity was still undecided by the movie studios. After her contract at Warner Brothers ended it became clear Hollywood didn’t exactly know what to do with her talent, though she had come to realize by then that moviegoers weren’t happy unless she was longing for a lost child or lover.

But by the time The Man Who Lost Himself went into production, she could care less about what the public wanted to see her in. As a freelancer, Kay had her pick of assignments, and picked as many good films and she did bad ones.

This advanced her career yet also damaged it. From now on, when a Kay Francis movie bombed at the box office, there was no guarantee that she would be given another chance to make up for it. So when her independent movies didn’t prove to be so hot, she began working as a leading lady supporting her male costar as actors like George Brent and Ian Hunter had done for her back in her Warners years.

The Man Who Lost Himself is a fine example of this.

Based off of a novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, The Man Who Lost Himself had been filmed previously in 1920 starring William Faversham and Hedda Hopper in the roles later taken on by Brian Aherne and Kay Francis. By 1940, after he had completed Gone with the Wind (1939), Leslie Howard picked up this assignment, planning on producing as well as starring in it. The war caused him to abandon the project, it was picked up as a vehicle for Cary Grant and Kay, though when the project landed at Universal Studios Cary was recast with Brian Aherne.

Aherne was a British stage actor who had begun his career at the age of eight. By the time he appeared in The Man Who Lost Himself he had worked with Joan Crawford in I Live My Life (1935), with Constance Bennett in Merrily We Live (1938), and Madeline Carroll in My Son, My Son (1940), a film which was originally conceived as a vehicle for Kay. The year he made The Man Who Lost Himself, he also appeared with Jeanette MacDonald in a Technicolor remake of Smilin’ Through.

He was one of the most popular actors of the time, and Kay’s equal billing to his in film credits as well as all advertising materials proves her own popular status as late as 1941, when she was reportedly “washed-up.”

Reviews for The Man Who Lost Himself were largely favorable without being too enthusiastic. Variety found it to be “neatly packaged farce amply fulfilling its aim of light and fluffy entertainment.” Today, it survives as an antique piece, something interesting only to those who have an eye for this kind of subject matter.

Below: The Man Who Lost Himself provided Kay Francis fans with a chance to see her all dressed up in designer gowns again. This time, her clothes were designed by Vera West.

Below: Brian Aherne and Kay on the set of The Man Who Lost Himself. Kay's onscreen wardrobe became more memorable than the movie itself. Check out the Vera West hat she has on her head.

Webmaster's Review:

Malcolm Scott has just escaped from a mental institution. Being a wealthy man, no reason is ever given on why he was in one, though everyone clearly dislikes him. He is in the middle of a divorce with his wife, Adrienne.

In a hotel bar, he runs into John Evans, a man who looks exactly like him though they have no relation whatsoever (of course). He also runs into Adrienne and her attorney, causing Malcolm to get into a heated discussion with the two, leading to his idea which is the concept of this film.

Malcolm gets John drunk and has him sent to his home. When John awakens in the morning, everyone assumes John is Malcolm, giving him the same icy receptions which reveal their huge dislike of the man everyone expect him to be.

One aspect of Malcolm’s life that John would like to get to know better is Adrienne, though she is obviously still resistant of him. She has a new boyfriend, Peter Ransome, and insists that Malcolm will never change. He tries to seduce her, giving her a passionate kiss that leaves her dazed and confused.

Unfortunately, word gets out that John Evans---in reality, it’s Malcolm who has taken John’s place---has been stuck by an automobile and killed. There is speculation to whether it was suicide or someone pushed him.

Meanwhile, Peter asks Adrienne if she is beginning to fall in love with her husband again. She doesn’t quite know, but tells Peter that they mustn’t see each other anymore (obviously, she’s back in love). Adrienne clearly makes up her mind a few minutes later, when she returns to the Scott house, drags John upstairs and begins to undress herself, causing John to up and leave the room immediately (if this was made ten years earlier, they would have slept together).

The family decides that Malcolm needs to be returned to the hospital, and, drugged up, John is placed in a straight jacket and taken away. Shortly after, Adrienne hears that her husband was the one who was killed, and rushes over to John to inform doctors that they have the wrong man.

Everything is cleared up, and John insists that everyone call him by his real name now, Mr. John Evans.

Adrienne slips herself into the straightjacket with John, announcing that “Soon I hope you’ll be able to call me Mrs. John Evans.”

Don’t expect another Strangers in Love (1932) with this film, but it really isn’t that bad of a movie, and certainly has its moments.

First of all, the situation is very ridiculous. These ones always are; the whole “unrelated look-a-like” thing was only done well in a handful of movies, most notably in Lady of the Night (1925) with Norma Shearer. But it usually comes off as corny and embarrassing for moviegoers in most films, and points of this one leave the audience feeling both reactions.

What makes this movie is its cast. Brian Aherne, Kay Francis, and S.Z. Sakall equally share the honors here. Though Aherne has the dual role, Kay and Sakall do keep up with him ably, taking some of the scenes from the highly regarded British stage actor and upstaging him considerably.

For fans of Aherne, this role would most likely be a disappointment. He was so good in Juarez (1939), and it becomes clear that he is one of those talented actors who can’t make stale property come to life (which is the difference between an actor and a star). In his drunk scenes he is over the top, slurring his speech in an exaggerated manner and waving his arms up and down.

But one thing he does have is charm, and it rubs off considerably. One can see why Kay, as Adrienne, is so taken by him.

And while Ahrene floats back and forth between lame and not-so-lame, Kay is better than she had been in years. In The Man Who Lost Himself she has come back to her famous onscreen glamour, gowned beautifully by Vera West in furs and evening gowns which are more memorable than the movie itself. She has one of the more attractive 1940s hairstyles, and is completed with pearl necklaces and large earrings.

Here there is no Deanne Durbin or Carole Lombard to distract from her attention, wild Western-shootings, or a sentimental tear-jerker by Louisa Mal Alcott. She takes advantage of all of her scenes, being at her best when she reveals her sexual frustration for everyone to see. She makes no effort for subtlety. She’s a woman who knows what she wants, and that is for Brian Aherne to undress her and give in to what she knows they both would really like.

As I had mentioned, if this movie would have been made prior to the Production Code there would have been some serious action going on. But by the time this movie was made there would have been none of that going on without the film loosing its overall light-comedic purpose. That light-comedy is perfectly suited to Kay’s talents as a movie star, which is why this becomes more of her movie than it does Aherne’s.

And while this is far from being a Meet John Doe (1941) or Ball of Fire (1943), certainly The Man Who Lost Himself deserves to be seen. Owned by Universal, it has become one of the more obscure titles of Kay and Brian Aherne’s respective careers.

Below: S.Z. Sakall and Kay stole most of the honors in The Man Who Lost Himself.

Movie Posters:

1960s-on

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1960
[Roy Stark plans to remake One-Way Passage, but the project never materializes.]

1961
Summer. Kay breaks off her relationship with Dennis Allen. They spend the summer apart, and while Dennis is at Fire Island, Kay hears that he has met another woman, whom he married later that year. Dennis neither saw nor heard from Kay again.

1962
[Kay has dinner Harold J. Kennedy, drinking so much it takes three men (Harold, the waiter, and the owner) to carry Kay out into their ride home. When a passer-by asked if that was Kay Francis, she half-opened her eyes and smiled, saying, "It used to be."]

1963
[Around this year, Kay undergoes several surgeries, including two for a lung and kidney removal. She soon not only fractured her ankle, but also her back, which hampered her mobility.]

1964
[Kay battles breast cancer, though by the time the mastectomy is performed, the cancer has spread.]

1965
[Ross Hunter contacts Kay about playing Lana Turner's mother in Madame X. Because of health problems, Kay is forced to decline what was her final movie offer.]

1966
[Kay is confined to her bed because of poor health.]

1967

1968
August 26. Kay Francis dies.

August 27, 1968-On

1968
August 28. Kay's will is made public. She leaves small divisions of her estate to friends, though at least $1,000,000 of her life fortune is left to The Seeing Eye of Morristown, New Jersey.

1976
[Author George Eells' Ginger, Loretta, and Irene Who? is published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. The book, which gives biographies and photographs of stars from Kay's generation of Hollywood, is well-researched but gives a dreary look into Kay's personal life and retirement. Eells writes Kay off as a sell-out and bitter recluse, still angry with her "great struggle" with Warner Brothers.]

1991
[Trouble in Paradise (1932) is added to the National Film Registry.]

1994
April 14. Turner Classic Movies debuts with Gone With the Wind (1939, a film which Kay was considered as a possible lead) as first film on schedule. Through TCM Lynn Kear, Mick LaSalle, myself, and millions of others are introduced to Kay Francis.

2004
January 13. In honor of Kay's birthday, TCM feautres an "all-day" marathon of Kay Francis movies.

2006
[Two biographies on Kay---Scott O'Brien's Kay Francis: I Can't Wait to be Forgotten and Lynn Kear's and John Rossman's Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career---are published.]

2008
January. Lynn Kear's and John Rossman's The Complete Kay Francis Career Guide is published.
September. Kay is featured as Turner Classic Movies' "Star of the Month."

1950s

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1950
February 1. Celebrating William Powell's sixty-first birthday, Kay meets her old friend at the 21 Club.
March 8. Kay appears in "Let Us Be Gay" at the Sombero Playhouse in Phoenix, Arizona.
March 27. Kay appears in "Let Us Be Gay" at the Penthouse Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida.
May 14. Appearing on This is Show Business, Kay Francis makes her television debut.
May 23. Kay begins her tour in "Goodbye, My Fancy" at the Flatbush Theatre in Brooklyn.
August 14. Kay tours in "The Web and the Rock" at the Spa Theatre in Saratoga Springs, New York.
November 7. Kay appears on Prudential Family Playhouse, her second television appearance.

1951
January 8. Kay appears on Hollywood Screen Test .
February. Kay and Patsy Ruth Miller briefly consider reviving "Windy Hill" with Joel Ashley as Kay's leading man.
March. Kay briefly vacations in Mexico for about two weeks.
April 2. "Nothing happened and lost Somerset Maugham show---damn!" That entry in Kay's diary was about being rejected for the infamous Sadie Thompson role in a TV production (which was never made) of Rain.
April 24. Kay breaks two toes---without ever explaining how in her diary---and is in bed for most of the following weeks.
May 10. Kay recieves an award for "The Most Co-operative Star" in summer theatre at the Astor Hotel. The male recipient of the award was Basil Rathbone, Kay's costar of two films.
May 21. Kay appears on The Betty Crocker Show .
June 19. At Bill Green's Arena Theatre in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Kay appears in "Let Us Be Gay."
June 26. At The Play House in Sharon, Connecticut, Kay appears in "Let Us Be Gay."
July 9. Kay's tour in "Mirror, Mirror" begins at the Westhampton Playhouse in Long Island.
September 3. Kay's tour in "Mirror, Mirror" ends at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
September 8. Noting of a bad summer season in her diary, Kay describes it as a "horror season!"
October 3. Kay undergoes a surgery that she never elaborated on in her diary.
October 20. Kay appears on Beat the Clock .
October 31. Kay appears on The Frances Langford-Don Ameche Show .
November. Kay discovers and moves into an apartment at 32 East 64th Street.
November 11. Kay appears on Celebrity Time .
December 2. Kay cancels her appearances on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.
Late December. Kay attends Katharine Cornell's revival of Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife .

1952
January 10. TV Host Ed Sullivan expected Kay to appear on his variety show, Toast of the Town. Sullivan had planned a tribute to Kay, who backed out because of fear. The tribute was cancelled as a result (ouch!).
January 18. Dennis Allen and Kay Francis meet for the first time about his casting in a revival of Somerset Maugham's "Theatre."
March 5. At the Central Florida Drama Festival in Winter Park, Florida, Kay debuts in what becomes her most successful stage project, "Theatre." Kay's teenage son was played by Anthony Perkins (of Psycho fame) and Dennis Allen, Kay's new love interest and final lover of her life.
April. Kay serves as a presenter for the Stock Managers Association awards at the Hotel Astor.
April 3. "Dennis and I to see 'Don Juan in Hell'," Kay tells her diary, "Sardi's for one drink and then to Bon Soir---fun evening."
May 17. Kay appears on The Ken Murray Show.
August 18. Bette Davis attends Kay's performance in "Theatre" at the Ogonquit Playhouse in Ogonquit, Maine. After the show, Bette and Kay meet backstage and go to a local bar, where the night is spent going over their "glory years" at Warner Brothers. During the evening, after Bette asks why Kay tolerated Jack Warner's attitude so much, Kay spits out that famous quote of hers, "I didn't give a shit. I wanted the money."
May 19. Kay travels to Bermuda to appear in "Theatre" at the Bermudiana Theatre in Hamilton.
September 24. Because of her huge success in "Theatre," Kay is offered the opportunity to play the "Julia Lambert" role she had immortalized in a made for television movie. She backs out and is replaced with Sylvia Sidney.

1953
[Kay hears about her casting in Warner Brothers' The Helen Morgan Story. She is rumored to play the mother of Judy Garland, who is to play the title character. Garland is replaced with Ann Blyth and the character of the mother is eliminated from the final screenplay when the movie is released in 1957.]
January. In Wichita Falls, Kay meets Dennis' family. After their stay, Kay and Dennis relocate to New Orleans, where Kay visits old friends Clay Shaw and Eva Gabor.
March 2. A local newspaper in Pheonix, Arizona reports that Katherine Clinton (Kay's mom) attended one of Kay's performances of "Theatre" at the Sombrero Playhouse. "What does an actress consider the best seat in the house? Kay Francis picked sixth row center for her mama for last night's show at the Sombrero. 'Twas the first time her mother had been within flying distance of her stage engagements."
July 19. Getting bored with Dennis, Kay writes in her diary, "Dull day & dull stupid people."
August 4. Kay's tour in "Theatre" closes at the Lakewood Playhouse in Skowhegan, Maine.
August 26. Attending a showing of Trouble in Paradise at the Museum of Modern Art, Kay describes the night as a "great evening" in her diary.
September 27. After a fight with Dennis, Kay still recognizes that he is possibly the best boyfriend she has ever had. In her diary, she writes, "Very quiet---non-speaking day!---so sick and I am an ass!"
Thanksgiving. Kay and Dennis celebrate the day at Bucks County.
December 25. Kay's Christmas is spent sick with the stomach flu, though she and Dennis manage to see The Solid Gold Cadillac.
December 31. Kay and Dennis bring in the New Year with a quiet evening in front of the television. Kay's diary entry for that night, which detailed her evening with Dennis, turned out to be the last one she ever wrote. After 32 years, Kay Francis ceased writing in her diary, for reasons unknown, though it is possible that it represented a transition period in her life.

1954
May 25. Kay begins the summer tour of "Theatre" with an opening show at the Biltmore Playhouse in Miami, Florida.
June 22. Kay returns to the Biltmore Playhouse in Miami to open her new show, "Black Chiffon." Dennis was the director of the production.
July 12. Kay again revives "Theatre" at Pickwick Players in Birmingham, Alabama.
July 27. After appearing in "Theatre" at the Town and Country Playhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana, Kay tells a reporter for the Indianapolis Star that "I'll never---well, perhaps I shouldn't say never---but doubt seriously if I'll ever go back to Hollywood."
August 9. Kay Francis---unintentionally---ends her career with a performance of "Theatre" at the Grove Theatre in Lake Nuangola, Pennsylvania. Ironically, Kay's final performance had her making an unusual exit. When the play ended, she got down from the stage, walked up the isle, greeting her fans along the way, and exited through the theater doors in the main lobby. (The true end of an icon!)
December. Kay falls and fractures her shoulder.

1955
January 13. Not only does Kay turn 50, but she celebrates a career which has spanned 30 years! Newspapers report that she has no scheduled plans for the summer season.
January 24. Despite being scheduled to appear in Travelers Joy at the Niagara Falls Theatre, Kay cancels because of her shoulder.
November 1. The New York Journal American reports that "Goldie Hawkins nearly gave Kay Francis a fast case of apolexy the other night when she dined at his New York bistro. Kay was wearing a huge bib necklace with a five-inch bracelet to match. And Goldie complimented her with a Suth'n accented 'Mah, what pretty beads!' The 'beads' were genuine rubies and topazes---over 50 of each in the necklace alone---and, worth a maharanee's ransom."

1956
[Kay considers a return to summer theater---and possibly Broadway. Projects considered are Brock Hollow, But Quite Unbowed, Obelists at Sea, Larger Than Life, and The Human Voice.]

1957
January 29. Kay's mother, Katherine Clinton, dies, aged 82. Before her death, she wrote a heartbreaking letter to Kay, "My Precious Babe, I want you to know what a wonderful daughter you have been but really darling I never thought I'd live on so long to be a burden to a very smiling child. I have loved you always more than anyone in this world---but you know that. I wish I could have left more as you have given so much but a very great many things have unexpectedly had to be done and I have tried to keep the place in good condition for you to dispose of as you see fit. I have no debts and the only bills will be the monthly ones. I wish I could have been of more help to my one ewe lamb but just remember me a loving and devoted mother."
When Kay cleaned out her mother's home, she discovered about twenty-nine scrap books, filled with clippings about Kay streching back from about 1923 all the way to the date of her mother's death.

1958

1959

1940s

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1940
January. Production on It's a Date is in progress.
January 13. Kay celebrates her birthday with Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell.
February 28. Production on It's a Date is complete.
March 3. Kay appears on The Silver Theatre.
March 18. Kay appears on Lux Radio Theatre.
March 22. It's a Date released.
May 1. After throwing a party for Charles K. Feldman, Kay takes him back to her house for sex. "Slept with him and he may be the best of them all!" she told her diary. "Christ, I am a slut!"
May 17. Probably at a social event in Hollywood, Kay and Jack Warner make up for their differences. She bluntly notes in her diary, "Made up with Jack Warner!"
June 7. On the set of When the Daltons Rode , Kay gets news that Erik has been wounded.
Summer. Kay begins her affair with Rouben Mamoulian.
Borden's very own Elsie is loaned to RKO to appear in Kay's newest starring picture, Little Men .
July 13. Kay begins a sexual affair with Fritz Lang.
July 23. Mary Pickford writes to Kay, congratulating her on her work for the Women's Committee of the Motion Picture Division of the Red Cross. Pickford was the Chairman of the board.
July 26. Hearing news that Erik has recently married, Kay makes a major note of her unhappiness in her diary.
July 29. Production on Little Men begins.
August 23. When the Daltons Rode released.
September 23. Production on Play Girl begins.
Late October. Production on Play Girl wraps up.
October 25. Kay makes note of her anniversary with Erik in her diary.
December 7. Little Men released.
December 15. Kay appears on The Silver Theatre.
December 20. Kay has another hemorriod operation.

1941January 6. Kay starts work on her latest project, Brian Aherne's leading lady in Universal's The Man Who Lost Himself.
January 29. Play Girl released.
February 15. Production on The Man Who Lost Himself completes.
March 3. Kay appears on Lux Radio Theatre.
March 8. With a hectic work schedule and social life, Kay tells her diary that "I must get off merry-go-round."
March 10. Noting her diary of another hectic day, Kay writes that she had a publicity photo shoot for Bundles for Bluejackets, a war charity, shopping at Saks, and lunch and dinner plans with celebrity friends.
March 21. The Man Who Lost Himself released.
May 12. Production on Charley's Aunt begins. The film, a major production by Fox, becomes the eighth highest-grossing film of the year.
May 18. Kay appears on The Jack Benny program to promote Charley's Aunt .
May 24. Kay is called in to begin her work on the Charley's Aunt production.
June 24. Work on Charley's Aunt completes.
June 19. Kay sells her house, hoping that a change of surroundings might up-lift her mood.
July. Most of Kay's time is spent with the Motion Picture Production Defense Committee, which entertained troops stationed in California.
July 1. Production on The Feminine Touch beings.
July 29. Production on The Femine Touch completes.
August 1. Charley's Aunt released.
September. Warner Brother's new contract star, Walter Huston, demands Kay as his leading lady---top billed---in his first movie for the studio, Always in My Heart . The studio is forced to satisfy him, and sign Kay for the role of Marjorie Scott later that month---at her salary demand.
October. Kay moves into her new house at 1735 Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills.
Mid October. Production on Always in My Heart begins. There's talk of Kay returning to Warner Brothers herself as a contract star, though her growing interest in War efforts distracts her attention. The studio even announces plans to star her in Miss Willis Goes to War , with Ann Sheridan and Olivia de Havilland. The project, however, never materializes.
October 13. Kay appears on The Cavalcade of America.
November 8. Kay invites Grace Moore over for dinner in the new house.
Late November. Production on Always in My Heart completes.
November 26. Thanksgiving is spent with Cary Grant and Barbara Hutton.
December. Kay travels to New York for a vacation which extends throughout the Holidays.
December 7. The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, drawing the US into World War II.
December 12. The Feminine Touch released.
December 24. Christmas Eve is spent with Ivan Goff.
December 25. Christmas Day is spent with her mother and two soldiers she invited to her home for dinner.
December 31. Kay brings in the New Year with the Arthur Hornblows.

1942
January 1. Despite success throughout the previous year, Kay remains unhappy. "Crying all night," she tells her diary, "hell of a New Year---no plans---I guess I am a pretty stupid unattractive person. Wonder if I will live the year out? Hope not!"
January 16. Carole Lombard, one of Kay's closest friends and costar in Ladies' Man (1931) and In Name Only (1939), dies in a tragic plane crash. For reasons unknown, Kay makes no mention in her diary, but decides to leave the screen and aid the war effort in Lombard's memory. She turns down all offers until her return to the screen two years later in Four Jills in a Jeep (1944).
February-March. Kay works with Myrna Loy at the Long Beach Naval Auxiliary Canteen. Their usual jobs include passing out refreshments, clothing, cigarettes, games, and magazines.
February 25. Kay and Myrna are told their station was on a yellow alert and were told to quickly leave. The two became witnesses to the famous false air raid of 1942.
March 13. Always in My Heart released.
April. Kay and Constance Bennett are co-hosts of the Bluejackets Ball in Culver City. Two soldiers get into a fight over Constance, and the two stars accompanied one of the men to the hospital, then home.
April 17. Production on Between Us Girls begins.
June 6. Kay's depression is at an all-time low. "God, I am lonely!" she tells her diary.
June 20. Kay moves into her new home, has dinner with Cole and Linda Porter, goes to a party for Elsie Mendl, then goes out for drinks with Rosalind Russell.
July. Kay begins throwing pool parties at her new home, having sex with Larry Fox in the pool itself after all the guests of one party had left that evening.
July 17. Production on Between Us Girls is completed.
August 23. Kay attends the wedding of Norma Shearer and Marti Arrouge. The star-studded event was completed with Kay, Greer Garson, Jack Warner, and Lady Sylvia Ashley, among others.
September. Kay begins her affair with Otto Preminger, noting that he wasn't that great of a lover in the beginning, but made improvements over the following weeks.
September 4. Between Us Girls released.
October. Kay travels to Europe, then North Africa, for a USO tour. She is accompanied by Carole Landis, Mitzi Mayfair, and Martha Raye. The girls were slightly intimidated by Kay's star power and popularity with the troops. At nearly every stop on their tour, Kay was mobbed for autographs and photos. The tour strechted 37,500 miles, 125 performances, and 150 personal appearances. The girls were lucky to take a bath more than once a week, and sometimes wore the same clothes as long as six days at a time.
Mid-November. The girls arrive in London, staying at the Savory Hotel. To avoid bombing, the hotel is kept as dark as possible. During their London stay, Kay is hospitalized for laryngitis.
December 4. Kay and the others put on a show for the Royal Family, though King George did not attend.

1943
Early January. The troupe leaves Europe for North Africa.
January 13. The girls arrive in Africa on Kay's birthday.
Late January. Kay suffers from influenza and then a torn ligament.
January 29. With the tour complete, Kay arrives in Alma, Georgia.
February 11. Kay appears on Stage Door Canteen.
February 20. Returning to Hollywood, Kay attends a party at Pickfair.
March. Kay is offered six weeks to be film a movie version of Four Jills in a Jeep, and be top-billed. Her salary offer reached as high as $30,000, but it took most of the year to settle on a suitable script. By the time the movie was released, it had become more of a marquee-musical than a recreation of the USO tour.
March 1. Kay appears on Lux Radio Theatre.
March 24. Kay appears on Stage Door Canteen.
July. Kay, for the first and only time, refuses to help out service men who request use of her private pool. She writes a non-confrontational, but firm letter refusing their request.
October 14. Readings for Four Jills in a Jeep begins.
October 19. Carole Landis spends the night at Kay's after dinner.
October 25. Kay comments in her diary of Otto Preminger's kindness to her.
November 8. Kay is hospitalized for kidney problem. Otto frequently visits her over the course of the next few days.
November 11. Kay is released from the hospital.
November 25. Kay appears on Soilders in Grease Paint.
November 28. Kay appears on The Silver Theatre.
December 11. Kay appears on Command Performance.
December 31. Bringing in the New Year with Tim Howard, her latest boyfriend, the two dinned at the Savoy and then attended a party at the Goldwyn's.

1944
January. Kay's affair with Otto Preminger comes to an end when he catches her in a lie. After trying to reach Kay on the telephone, she later told him that she was at the Mocambo. In reality, she was intimate with Tim Howard. Preminger told her that he had searched the Mocambo for her with no result.
January 11. Kay's affair with Tim ends when he returns to Washington, D.C.
January 13. Otto, realizing that Tim's out of the picture, helps Kay bring in her thirty-ninth birthday.
January 18. Kay attends an intimate party to celebrate Cary Grant's birthday.
Late January. Kay takes a vacation to the Arrowhead Springs resort with Charles Feldman's wife, Jean.
February 18. Kay leaves for a USO trip with Patty Thomas, Teddi Sherman, Reginald Gardiner, and Nancy Barnes. Their destinations are Canada and Alaska. Kay finds time to meet a new lover, Don King (the pilot), on the tour.
March. The USO tour comes to an end, and Kay travels to New York.
March 22. Kay meets Tim for dinner for the last time. "Finally went to bed with him and Christ, that is the end!" she told her diary. "The worst ever! Goodbye!"
Late March. On her return to California, Kay meets Don in Chicago, has sex with him (even though he's married to a kind woman she met on tour) then asks her diary why she always has to fall in love with the wrong guys.
March 31. Kay leaves Chicago.
April 6. Four Jills in a Jeep released.
April 7. Kay attends Mitzi Mayfair's wedding to Charlie Henderson.
April 12. Kay and Otto break-up (again), but are back together a few weeks later.
April 21. Kay leaves for Canada on more war effort.
Early May. Tensions on the set of Laura (1944) are at an all-time high. Rouben Mamoulian and Otto Preminger, both lovers of Kay, refuse to speak to each other. Mamoulian eventually leaves the picture to Preminger, who completes the film himself.
May 6. Kay returns home from Canada.
Late July. Kay meets with producers at Monogram Pictures to discuss an interesting film offer---the offer to produce and star in three films for the low-budget studio. A letter written by Kay on July 25 reads, "My first one starts about the 20th of September and the tentative title is Divorce. The writers are now working on a story treatment and will begin the script while I am 'spreading cheer' up north."
July 26. A doctor orders Kay to stay home after realizing she has a fractured rib. She refuses, and travels to Seattle for more tours of hospitals.
October. Kay begins attending meetings at Monogram for her first production.
November. Kay travels back to Seattle to see Don.
December 25. Kay celebrates Christmas in New York with a small group of friends, and goes to bed---alone---before midnight.
December 26. Hedda Hopper praises Kay for doing so much in "her quiet way." Kay hated Hedda Hopper with a passion, and could care less what the wannabe-movie star turned trash-hound had to say about the "Most Glamorous Star of the Screen." A diary entry of Kay's put her feelings about Hopper in simplest form, "Hedda here. What a bitch."

1945
January 13. Kay celebrates her 40th birthday with a party at El Morocco. Don gives Kay forty red roses, completed with one in white.
February 19. Production on Divorce begins.
Early March. Production on Divorce completes.
March. Kay and Don are ending their relationship. Though they still talk, communication between the two is getting less and less frequent. They eventually drift out of each other's lives completely.
April---May. Kay travels to the Caribbean and then to South America for a USO tour.
May 30. Ruth Chatterton approaches Kay about starring in her new stage production, "Windy Hill."
June 19. Production on Allotment Wives begins.
July 2. Production on Allotment Wives completes.
July 9. Kay takes a vacation to Las Vegas with Patsy Ruth Miller.
Early August. Kay travels to New York for "Windy Hill" rehearsals.
August 13. "Windy Hill" has a tryout show in Montclair, New Jersey.
August 18. Divorce released.
September 20---May 25, 1946. Kay tours in "Windy Hill."
December 29. Allotment Wives released.

1946
January 3. Jetti Preminger, a "Windy Hill" costar of Kay's, gives Kay a stylish pair of boots.
January 5. Kay discovers that the boots Jetti had given her were stolen by Jetti and given to Kay as a "gift."
February 13. In her diary, Kay notes that the cast had grown bored with the play.
March 16. Kay tells her diary of some new habbit of hers---a combination of pills and alcohol. Over the next few years, Kay's problems with booze and pills took a major toll on her health.
May. Kay meets with Phil Karlson in Chicago to discuss her next picture for Monogram, Wife Wanted.
May 25. "Windy Hill" closes.
May 27. Kay returns home to California.
June 19. Production on Wife Wanted begins.
June 26. Kay meets with Leland Hayword, producer of "State of the Union," to see if Kay could replace Ruth Hussey, who had gotten pregnant. Kay accepts the offer.
July 3. Production on Wife Wanted completes.
July 4. Kay packs her bags and heads to New York.
July 7. Kay arrives in New York, moving into the Hotel New Weston at 34 East 50th Street. New Weston became Kay's home for the next two years.
September 2. Kay begins her run in "State of the Union." One of the first people to attend Kay's new production is Greta Garbo.
November. Kay becomes ill with abdominal pains.
November 2. Wife Wanted released.
November 30. Kay leaves "State of the Union" and returns home for medical treatment. During her absense, Edith Atwater takes over.
December 3. Kay undergoes a successful hysterectomy.
December 24. Kay celebrates the Holidays at Kendall Milestone's party.
December 25. Christmas is spent sick in bed for Kay, though she did manage to make a quick visit to her mother's.

1947
[Sometime during this year, Allied Artists producer Jeffrey Bernerd asks Kay to appear in The Maze, and other movies for the studio. She turns down the offer.]
January 1. Kay celebrates the New Year by listening to the Rose Bowl on the radio after turning down the offer to celebrate the New Year with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr..
January 4. Kay leaves for New York to return to "State of the Union."
January 20. Kay makes her return to "State of the Union."
January 26. Grace Moore, one of Kay's closest friends, is killed in an air crash in Copenhagen.
March 23. With her new lover, Howard "Happy" Graham, aside her, Kay watches Maurice Chevalier perform at the Henry Miller Theatre.
April 13. Kay and Happy see Finian's Rainbow.
May 18. The cast of "State of the Union" takes a vacation from the touring schedule.
June 15. The vacation for the "State of the Union" cast ends.
September 13. "State of the Union" ends its run on Broadway.
September 18. "State of the Union" begins its theatrical tour across the country the rest of her year is spent on the road.
October 12. Kay pays legal fees to bail Happy out of jail after he hit Rudolph Duro, a 22-year-old who had wanted to show Kay photographs from her African USO tour. Duro dropped all charges.

1948
January 22. Kay writes her activities down in her diary, "Shopping---early dinner---after show all hell broke loose and me too many pills."
January 23. Kay writes more dramatic activities down, "Out and almost for good! White Cross Hospital at 7am---ambulance---Dr. Rosoff---Hap in jail for 5 hours---murder charge!"
This day and the days following, newspapers covered the famous story of how Kay Francis almost lost her life.Kay's lover, Howard "Hap" Graham, had discovered her in her hotel room in a semi-conscious state. When the police arrived, it was discovered that Kay had taken a lethal combination of pills and Scotch, and was covered in third-degree burns from her knees to her hips. She had been suffering from a cold, and Hap had followed doctor's orders by giving Kay fresh air, propping her up where she accidently burned her legs against a hot air register. To make matters worst, Hap poured hot coffee on her neck.
Both were heavily intoxicated, and Hap's charge was dropped. Kay underwent several surgeries within the next few weeks.
March. Kay is physically recovering, though still prone to crying fits because of her chronic depression.
March 21. Kay finally leaves White Cross Hospital.
April 14. Kay interviews Joel Ashley for a role in her new stage project---a revival of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney by Frederick Lonsdale.
June 7. Kay begins her run in The Last of Mrs Cheyney with a show in Princeton, New Jersey at the McCarter Theatre.
September 20. Kay's run of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney ends in Montclair, New Jersey.
Fall. Kay is heavily involved with Joel. Typical of Kay Francis romances, she hates him one minute and loves him the next. But Joel fit the bill for the ideal Kay Francis lover: He was married with children, had a terrible drinking problem, but, unlike the others, was remarkably younger than her---by fourteen years.
December 25. Kay begins her tour in "Favorite Stranger."

1949
January 9. Kay appears in "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney" at the Penthouse Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia.
January 14. The tour of "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney" ends its run in Atlanta.
April 1. After a performance in Pittsburgh, Kay and Joel went to the Dixon Cafe, where they foolishly brought three men back to their hotel room, where Joel got beaten up. Both Kay and Joel were heavily intoxicated.
April 2. Kay tells her diary, "Finally got a doctor for Joel---a mess!---2 shows---closed 'Favorite Stranger'---left for New York on 12:42 AM train."
May. Kay selects Rachel Crothers' "Let Us Be Gay" as her next stage production. The choice for her leading man is simple, Joel.
June 3. Kay begins her tour of "Let Us Be Gay" at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
September 6. "Let Us Be Gay" ends its summer run at the Maryland Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland.
September 19. Scheduled to make her television debut on Chevorlet Tele-Theatre,a fearful Kay withdraws "on orders of her physician." She is replaced with Vicki Cummings.
October 22. Kay revives "Let Us Be Gay" at the Penthouse Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia.
November 7. Kay revives "Let Us Be Gay" at the Greater Hartford Drama Festival in Hartford, Connecticut.

1930s

2009-12-12T17:13:00.003-08:00

1930
January 2. Kay makes her test for Raffles.
January 6. Behind the Make-Up released.
January. Kay films Raffles for Samuel Goldwyn after he rejects the idea of having Bette Davis play the part. Kay has only a small, but second billed, role in what is really a Ronald Colman feature.
January 31. Street of Chance released.
March 22. Kay travels by train to New Orleans to see Katty. Unfortunately, their lesbian love affair ends and Kay goes back West.
April 10. Kay returns to Hollywood.
April 19. Paramount on Parade released.
April 25. A Notorious Affair released.
June 28. After attending a preview of A Notorious Affair, W.E. Oliver of the Los Angeles Evening Herald hails Kay's performance as "Hollywood's most disturbing portrayal since Hell's Angels."
July. Kay makes her first appearance on a movie magazine cover for the July issue of Modern Screen.
July 18. For the Defense released.
July 24. Raffles released.
July 26. Kay starts getting serious with Kenneth, who seems to be taking up much of her social life. She writes in her diary on this day, "Ken worked until 6 A.M. and then came and fucked me! God, I really do love him."
August 20. Let's Go Native released.
October 24. The Virtuous Sin released.
December 19. Passion Flower released.
December 24. Despite Kay's success in Hollywood and fun with Ken, she still battles with depression and boredom. She writes in her diary, "I guess I should be very happy."

1931
January 11. Kenneth proposes marriage to Kay.
January 17. Kay Francis marries Kenneth MacKenna in Avalon, California by a justice of the peace.
January 21. Kay signs her first contract with Warner Brothers which pays her $2,000 a week (at Paramount, Kay received $750 weekly). Rumors begin circulating that Paramount starts giving Kay films of less quality for revenge. Although she indeed signed the contract for Warner Brothers in 1931, her employment at the studio was not to start for another year.
January 23. It is annouced by Louella Parsons that Kay will costar with Gary Cooper in City Streets, a film to be directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Kay is replaced with Sylvia Sidney, however.
February 6. Scandal Sheet released.
April. Kay is announced as George Bancroft's costar in Rich Man's Folly . However, she is replaced by Frances Dee.
April 30. Ladies' Man released.
June 5. The Vice Squad released.
June 12. Transgression released.
August 28. Guilty Hands released.
September. Kay breaks up a fight between her dog and another, dropping her purse. When she breaks the dogs apart, she realizes that several pieces of jewelry are missing from her purse, including her wedding ring. Kay also attends a party at Gloria Swanson's. Her drinking causes problems and Kay apologizes the next morning.
October 2. 24 Hours released.
October. It is announced that Kay Francis will be Fredric March's leading lady in The Master Key, later retitled Strangers in Love.
October 30. Girls About Town released.

1932
January 1. Kay begins to doubt her marriage to Ken. "I wonder if Ken and I will be together a year from now?" she writes in her diary.
January 9. Kay's last day at Paramount.
January 10. The False Madonna released.
January 11. Kay's first day at Warner Brothers.
January 23. Kay attends a party at Edmund Goulding's, her former sex buddy back in New York. Kay comes close to having sex with Edith Head after Tallulah Bankhead calls her [Kay] a lesbian.
January 29. Warner Brothers purchases the rights to A Dangerous Brunette as Kay's first Warner Brothers feature. The film is later retitled Man Wanted.
March 5. Strangers in Love released.
Mid March. Ken is fired by Fox, and a few days later gets into an explosive fight with Kay, hitting her out of rage.
April 15. Man Wanted, Kay's first movie for Warner Brothers, released.
May 26. Street of Women released.
June 13. Kay is cast in Trouble in Paradise. "I do a Lubitsch picture!" she writes in her diary.
June 22. Kay's plans to depart for Europe on this day are canceled due to her Trouble in Paradise offer.
July 21. Jewel Robbery released.
End of July. Trouble in Paradise starts filming. Kay gets annoyed that Miriam Hopkins receives top billing, though Kay has the highest salary of any actor in the film, $4,000 weekly.
July 30. Despite her success in Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage, and her recent casting in an Ernst Lubitsch picture, Kay still battles with depression and boredom. "Did something and had a good time but can't remember," she writes in her diary.
August. It is annouced that Kay will star in 42 Street. Unfortunately, because of her contract which was set to expire, Kay looses the part to Bebe Daniels.
October. Kay goes back to New York, reuniting with Juliana Cutting, Neysa McMein, Dwight Francis, and Kay Johnson, among others. She returns home by the end of the year.
October 13. One Way Passage released.
November 8. Trouble in Paradise released.
November 9. Kay signs a new contract with Warner Brothers. She spends the rest of the day in bed getting drunk.
December 24. Cynara released.

1933
January 19. Kay travels back to New York on the Chief, stopping in Chicago to visit friends.
January 23. Kay arrives in New York on the 20th Century. She attends the opening of Design for Living.
January 26. Kay goes to another showing of Design for Living. She enjoys the play but hears that Paramount purchased the rights for Miriam Hopkins. Kay, dissastisfied with her recent Warner Brothers assignments, begins to regret her decision to switch studios.
February 4. Kay and Ken get into an explosive arguement, she spends the night at Julia Hoyt's.
February 28. Kay returns to Hollywood.
May 20. Kay attends a cast party for Mary Stevens M.D.. She drinks too much and is carried out by Ken.
March 30. The Keyhole released.
May-June. Kay begins a brief flirtation with Gary Cooper, having sex with him at least once, though nothing really ever developed between the two.
July 21. Storm at Daybreak released.
August 3. Mary Stevens M.D. released.
September 2. Kay and Ken host a barnyard party.
September 21. I Loved a Woman released.
September 30. After en explosive fight with Ken, Kay indicates in her diary that she wants a divorce, though they made up a few days later.
October. It is announced that Kay will star in the lavish biopic Madame DuBarry. Luckily, Kay is replaced with Dolores del Rio. The film becomes a major flop with critics and audiences, bringing an end to del Rio's career in America.
November 29. Ken leaves for New York.
December 1. The House on 56th Street released.
December 13. Kay follows Ken back East.
December 19. Kay and Ken decide that it would be best for them to seperate.

1934
End of January. Kay begins her affair with Maurice Chevalier. Their relationship starts with much sex.
February 15. Mandalay released.
February 21. Kay divorces Kenneth MacKenna.
February 28. Wonder Bar released.
March 10. Journal of a Crime, Ruth Chatterton's last movie for Warner Brothers is released. She leaves Warner Brothers because of a slip in popularity after ridiculous film offers from the studio. Kay becomes the Queen of the Lot, though her title is not official until a new contract offer at the end of 1935.
March 11. Kay writes in her diary, "Had merciless afternoon with Maurice - four times in 2 hours."
May 16. Still fighting depression and boredom, Kay attempts suicide by cutting the artery in her right hand. Loosing two quarts of blood, she nearly dies, but is saved possibly by her maid.
May 31. In an effort to spice up their sex life, Maurice begins suggesting new ideas to Kay. She writes in her diary, "Swell evening - very exciting, discussing about lesbians and a threesome. Not practical, I'm afraid."
June. Maurice returns to Europe, leaving Kay more depressed than ever. As a result, Kay travels to New York.
June 20. Dr. Monica released.
June 23. Kay, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Richard Barthelmess, boards the Rex, an Italian cruise liner. She goes on a second European sex binge.
September 12. A Paris doctor confirms that Kay is again pregnant. She has an abortion again soon after.
September 20. British Agent released.
Early October. Kay returns to New York, being mobbed by press and fans. Kay also informs reporters that there is no truth to the rumors about her wedding plans with Maurice Chevalier.
October 19. Kay returns to Hollywood. Suffering from complications from an abortion, Kay spends the next few days in bed.
October 27. Kay is hospitolized for ignoring the advice for bedrest from her physician (she attended a party at Pickfair despite doctor's orders).
November 10. Kay's first day back to work for her new movie, Living on Velvet, with Warren William and George Brent.
Mid November. Mauriece Chevalier returns to California.
December 7. In an interview with Harrison Carroll for the Los Angeles Evening Herald , Kay names her favorite male movie stars - Jackie Cooper, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Richard Barthelmess, James Cagney, Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, William Powell, and Maurice.
December 25. Kay celebrates Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. Richard Barthelmess, then heads over to Samuel Goldwyn's for a party. She then parties into the morning with Ruth Chatterton and Jessica Barthelmess (Richard's wife).
December 31. Kay celebrates the New Year with Maurice, attending parties at both Charles Boyer's and Tim McCoy's.

1935
January 4. After performing some scenes from Living on Velvet with George Brent, Kay has a one night stand with her leading man. She writes, "He told me afterwards that I had helped him tremendously and that he appreciated that. Big fucking! And he got the jitters."
February 5. While suffering from the flu, Kay has a miscarriage.
Mid February. Though she has not recovered from her flu, Kay hosts a major party at the Vendome restaurant, inviting 300 guests (which included James Cagney, Fredric March, and Samuel Goldwyn) to celebrate her divorce from Ken, who had just had a major Broadway comeback with Merrily We Roll Along.
March 7. Living on Velvet released.
Mid March. Maurice returns to Europe after a series of fights with Kay. A few days later, she finds a new lover in Delmer Daves after meeting him at a party hosted by Frank Borzage.
April 15. Del leaves Kay to vacation in Annapolis. Kay starts to realize that she's fallen in love with him and out of love with Maurice.
April 16. Kay helps open the House of Westmore, a saloon established by Perc Westmore. Myrna Loy, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard, and Claudette Colbert also attended.
April 20. Kay leaves for New York.
April 26. Kay leaves for Europe on the S.S. Aquitania, accompanied by Anderson Lawler, Kay's costar in Girls About Town. While on the trip, Anderson claims that Kay showed up at his door, drunk and completely naked, and screamed, "I am not a star. I am a woman, and I want to get fucked!" The story turned legendary, though it never happened. Not only was Kay in love with Del, but Anderson was also gay, who more than likely made up the rumor to protect himself.
May 24. While in London, Kay has a successful operation to remove her salivary gland.
June 5. Kay meets with Maurice to break the news to him about Del. He takes it good and they settle for a friendship.
June 20. Kay returns to New York. Stranded released.
June 22. Del brings Kay to Lake Louise in Canada. At the time still barren, the location is still breathtaking. Kay describes the vacation as being like an unofficial honeymoon.
Early July. Del and Kay take another vacation to Washington State.
July 19. Kay and Del return to Hollywood.
September 1. Kay starts work on I Found Stella Parish.
September 12. The Goose and the Gander released.
September 25. After finding out that she was indeed pregnant, Kay undergoes another abortion.
October. Kay's physician, Bill Branch, informs her that there are rumors going around Hollywood that she had syphilis. Surprisingly, the rumors of Kay Francis having an STD were false.
November 4. I Found Stella Parish released.
November 6. Jack Warner offers Kay a new contract, one which gets her the Queen of Warner Brothers title.
Early December. Kay meets with Samuel Goldwyn to discuss her casting in Dodsworth. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers refuses to lend Kay's services. The part goes to her friend and former Warner Brothers star, Ruth Chatterton.
December 28. Kay writes in her diary about her trip to Del's cabin in Lake Arrowhead, describing how happy she was.

1936
January 1. Kay writes in her diary, "Beginning the New Year with my lover. May he be in the same bed with me next year this time."
January 2. Kay is seriously disappointed when Warner Brothers sends her her new assignment, a biopic about Florence Nightingale titled The White Angel. "Read my new script," she writes. "Dear God!"
January 13. Friends throw Kay a surprise birthday party.
January 14. Kay leaves for New York.
January 17. Kay signs the new contract with Warner Brothers presented to her in November.
March 25. Kay's home is surrounded by police when a young woman named Carol Lawrence delivers a note to Kay's residence which reveals a death plot. James Crawford explained that he "had it in for K. Francis." "K. Francis" turned out to be Kathleen Francis, a Hollywood extra.
April 3. Because of Kay's reputation for fashion, she gives her opinion on the six best-dressed women of the screen to Harrison Carroll for an article in the Los Angeles Evening Herald. She names Constance Bennett, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard, and Myrna Loy.
June 12. Kay undergoes another abortion. "Jesus, it's awful," she writes. "Who do I always get caught and have so little fun."
June 22. Kay has teeth extracted. She gets an infection as a result.
June 15. The White Angel released. The film tanks with critics and audiences. As a result, Warner Brothers gives Kay time off to let the public cool off and forget about the film.
July 13. After a relapse with her infection, Kay goes in for surgery.
Early August. Kay's relationship with Del becomes strained.
August 26. Kay meets David O Selznick at his home to discuss her casting in Gone With the Wind.
August 30. George Cukor tells Kay that he could see her as Scarlett O'Hara. The project drops when Selznick and Cukor change their minds for Norma Shearer.
September 11. Kay has an extreme panic attack.
September 17. Give Me Your Heart released.
October. Kay's neighbor, David Niven, kisses her on her doorstep. Del catches them, leaving Kay for the night.
November 25. Kay boards the Normandie and sails for Europe.
December 25. While still in Europe, Kay spends the Holiday sick in bed with a cold.
December 31. Kay celebrates the New Year by watching a skiing competition, then drinking the night away while fighting with Del.

1937
January. Rumors begin to spread around Hollywood about how much damage Warner Brothers had done to Kay's career by handing her lousy scripts and refusing to lend their top moneymaker out to other studios.
Mid January. Kay returns to New York from Europe.
January 24. Kay is diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia.
January 31. Kay returns to Hollywood.
February 1. Stolen Holiday released.
February 6. Because of her sickness, which doesn't seem to be getting any better, Kay is rushed to the hospital.
February 9. Kay returns home.
February 23. Rehersals for Confession start.
March 3. The New York Times reports that Kay was Warner Brothers' highest-paid employee of 1936.
March 6. Ginger Rogers throws a roller-skating party at Rollerdome. Kay attends with Joan Crawford. Despite Ginger's claim that her party was the best ever thrown, Kay complained in her diary that the party was dull.
March 7. Kay's dachshund Winnie dies.
March 9. Kay takes an absense for the first time in her entire Hollywood career to attend a showing of The Plainsman.
Mid March. Kay gives an interview to Maude Cheatham of Motion Picture. Despite her success and fortunes, Kay, while knitting during the interview, claims that her life has been "singularly uneventful."
April 14. Confession completes production. The crew presents Kay with a box filled with gardenias, and an Eighteenth Century snuff box.
May 31. Kay has another abortion.
June 18. Another Dawn released.
Late August. Kay and Del are on the verge of a break up.
August 19. Confession released.
August 29. Women Are Like That begins production.
September 4. Kay Francis files suit against Warner Brothers to release her from her contract.
September 20. Kay writes in her diary of Del, "I am sick of his superiority."
October 24. Kay meets Erik Barnekow at a party thrown by Dorothy di Frasso, who replaces Del in Kay's life.
Late November. Kay and Erik get intimate for the first time.
December. A final agreement is made between lawyers, Kay's contract would expire September 28, 1938.
December 23. First Lady released.
December 25. Kay asks Erik to spend Christmas at her house. She writes, "We baptized the library floor. Good fucking."

1938
Early January. Warner Brothers begins to negotiate the rights to Dark Victory with Kay in mind.
January 14. A studio memo regarding Dark Victory sent to Hal Wallis reads, "I think you would have a good Kay Francis picture in a reasonably short time and one that would not cost a fortune to make. Moreover, Kay herself is, I understand, very much in favor of it."
February 17. Production on Lovely Lady starts. The film is completed in mid-March. For unknown reasons, the film is shelved and released later in the year as Secrets of an Actress .
March 31. The production of My Bill starts.
April 5. Kay loans Erik $1,000. "I wonder if I will ever get it back?" she wonders in her diary.
April 11. Women are Like That released.
May. Warner Brothers finally purchases the rights to Dark Victory, but gives the lead to Bette Davis.
May 16. In an article titled "Dead Cats," published in TIME, Kay is listed, along with Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, and Garbo (among others), as "Box Office Poison." The article reads that "Kay Francis, still recieving many thousands a week, is now making B pictures."
May 25. Production on King of the Underworld begins. Kay replaces Ann Dvorak in this terrible remake of Doctor Socrates (1935).
June. Bette Davis turns down the lead in Curtain Call (retitled Comet Over Broadway). Miriam Hopkins takes over, get sick, and Kay is forced into one of the most ridiculous movies of her career.
June 28. "Worried stiff about money," Kay writes in her diary, "about Erik being a bum, about his never wanting to go out!"
July 9. My Bill released.
July 14. Production on Comet Over Broadway begins.
July 16. Busby Berkeley, director of Comet Over Broadway , get hospitalized and is replaced with John Farrow.
July 19. Busby Berkeley returns to the production of Comet Over Broadway .
July 21. "Oh my God," Kay writes in her diary. "What am I getting into, I have no idea! Pray that it will come out alright, that's all!"
August 11. Production wraps on Comet Over Broadway .
September 2. Production on Women in the Wind begins. This is Kay's last movie on her Warner Brothers contract. During the filming, Kay gives an interview to Photoplay that turns out to be her most remembered. The title of the article was a direct quote from Kay, "I Can't Wait to be Forgotten."
September 27. Production on Women of the Wind is completed.
September 28. Kay Francis' employment with Warner Brothers is complete by contract experation.
October 8. Secrets of an Actress released.
Early December. Additional scenes for Women in the Wind are filmed. It's unknown if Kay was called back for retakes by a studio so desperate to ditch her.
December 16. Comet Over Broadway released.

1939
January 7. In his review for King of the Underworld in the New York Times , critic Bosley R. Crowther comes to Kay's defense about her latest backlash from Warner Brothers. "...considering the plot and everything," writes Crowther, "it is our settled conviction that meaner advantage was never taken of a lady."
January 14. King of the Underworld released.
January 16. "Had my ears pierced," Kay wrote in her diary, "started 4-day diet-142 lbs!"
February 22. Kay is signed by RKO for the role of Maida Walker in In Name Only (1939). The film starred Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, and Kay, who was equally billed to Lombard and Grant, proving her stature as late as 1939.
March. This issue of Photoplay publishes the infamous "I Can't Wait to be Forgotten" article. The article, emotionally unattached, frankly quotes Kay on her hatred of Hollywood and everything about it.
Also this month, Erik goes up in arms about Dorothy di Frasso's claim that he was a Nazi spy. "Someone must be mad," di Frasso said. "I do not know what his politics are, and I must say, I couldn't care less."
March 6. Kay appears on Lux Radio Theatre and does her last work with William Powell. They recreate their roles in One-Way Passage (1932). Kay took over when Norma Shearer proved too ill to perform.
April 13. Women in the Wind released.
April 17. Kay starts work on In Name Only (which was already filming when Kay got onboard).
Summer. Kay travels to Chicago and then to Ohio, where she stays with Louis Bromfield on his farm.
August 4. In Name Only released.
September. Louella Parsons reports, "One of the most gallant women in Hollywood is Kay Francis, who has been frightfully worried over her fiance Baron Erik Barnekow." Parsons' report hightlighted the trouble between Kay and Erik, and their romance on the rocks.
November. Kay tests for a role in My Son, My Son. The part goes to Madeleine Carroll.
December. Kay successfully tests for the second lead in It's a Date , Universal's new Deanna Durbin picture.
December 11. Kay appears on Lux Radio Theatre with Carole Lombard and Cary Grant to recreate their role in In Name Only and promote the film.
December 12. Douglas Fairbanks dies. Kay spends most of the month with his widow, Lady Sylvia Ashley (Kay even interviews maids for her).
December 17. Kay appears on The Silver Theatre.
Late December. Kay attends Basil and Oudia Rathbone's Christmas party, "A Night at St. Moritz." It was held at the Beverly Hills Hotel and was a benefit for the Hollywood Guild. Despite having Irene Dunne, Bette Davis, Gary Cooper, and other Hollywood favorites, Kay complained that the party was a loser.
Kay also attends the New York preview of Gone With the Wind.
December 24/25. Kay's Christmas Eve/Christmas is spent crying as she decorates the Christmas tree with her mother, as the two have Christmas dinner, and as Kay gets drunk with Miriam Hopkins.
December 31. Kay's New Year's Eve is spent sick in bed.

1920s

2009-12-12T17:13:00.001-08:00

1920
Fall. Kay starts attending the Cathederal School of St. Mary in Garden City, Long Island.
Winter. Kay makes her acting debut in a school production of "Let's Not and Say We Did." Kay, credited as Katie Gibbs, writes the songs and, because she's the tallest in the class, plays the male lead.

1921
Spring. Kay gets praise for a fashion sketch she draws. She briefly considers becoming a fashion designer.
Summer. Kay falls in serious love for the first time with a boy named "Reg." She never identifies his last name in her diary. The two become engaged and make plans to run away and elope, but Kay fails to "muster-up the courage to run away." She regrets the decision for the rest of her life.
Winter. Kay gets a job as an assistant to Juliana Cutting, a famous New York party-planner who lived in Park Ave. She teaches Kay how to host.

1922
January 3. While working for Juliana, Kay meets James Dwight Francis. They soon start dating.
Late April. Kay looses her virginity to Dwight.
May 16. Kay finds her first work as a model at Lundihn's Clothing store.
June 5. Kay starts work as a secretary at the McMillan Emerson and Co. investment firm.
June 27. Kay has her first abortion to terminate her pregnancy with Dwight's baby.
October 12. Kay has her second abortion.
Mid October. Kay and Dwight make plans to marry. They visit Dwight's parents for consent. They give it, but feel that Dwight and Kay are too young.
November 17. Kay receives her engagement ring from Dwight.
Nobember 24. Kay has her third abortion.
December 4. Kay marries Dwight at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church. They honeymoon in Boston, and settle into Dwight's apartment at 21 West 49th Street two weeks later.
December 31. Kay writes in her diary of 1922, calling it "My most wonderful year!"

1923
October 5. Kay undergoes a tonsillectomy.

1924
January. Kay has a hemorrhoid opperation.
February-April. Kay spends her time in Pittsfeild.
May 12. Kay writes in her diary that her marriage with Dwight is on the rocks.
May 25. Troubled with her personal life, Kay decides to bob her hair, like most flappers at the time.
Spring. Kay becomes Paul Abbott's lover.
Summer. Kay spends the entire season in Pittsfeild.
October. Kay and Dwight Francis seperate.

1925
January 1. Kay writes in her diary, "Beginning a new year - have resolution to make - not to be a damn fool!"
January 2. Kay makes mention in her diary that she admires William Gaston's smile.
February 25. Kay poses for portrait artist Sir Gerald Kelly. The painting was finished in March of 1926 and placed on display as London's Royal Academy later that year.
Late February. Kay poses for an ad for Franklin Simon & Co. The ad is printed in Harper's Bazaar.
February 28. Kay sails to Francis on the S.S. Minnetonka.
March 8. Kay arrives at the Paris Vendome Hotel. She immediately writes in her diary about wild nights filled with sex and alcohol.
March 26. Kay's divorce from Dwight becomes legal.
June 10. Kay arrives in London.
June 17. Kay returns to Paris, getting pregnant along the way.
July 15. Kay has another abortion.
September 26. Kay returns to New York and decides to become an actress.
October. Things between Kay and William Gaston get serious.
November 19. Kay and Bill get married. Since they decide to have a "modern marriage," they do not live together and sleep with other people.

1926
January 1. Kay writes in her diary, "1925 has been a very big year in my life - and on the whole I have behaved like a damn fool! What will 1926 bring forth?"
January 15. Kay receives an excellent modeling offer, posing for Porter Woodruff. The portrait ends up, unidentified, in Vogue.
February 19. Kay makes her first screen test for a role in D.W. Griffith's The Sorrows of Satan. Nothing comes of her test.
April 15. Kay signs with the Stuart Walker company, beginning many stage productions and touring all over the country.
August 8. Kay gets arrested! The police raid a party, where alcohol is being served, despite Prohibition, which Kay attends with players from the Stuart Walker company. They all en up being fined $15 each.
September 14. Kay returns home to New York.
October 7. Kay has an appendectomy, remaining hospitalized for a week.

1927
January. Kay models for Neysa McMein. The portrait is used for the May 1927 cover of McCall's.
July 1. Kay has another abortion.
Summer. Kay starts dating Allan A. Ryan, who was set to inherit $100 million from his rich grandfather.
September. Kay notes in her diary that she has become bored with Allan, but remains with him for the rest of the year.

1928
January. Kay gets pregnant with Allan's baby. She aborts it the same month.
Spring. Kay begins a stricly sexual affair with a young Edmund Goulding.
April 23. Kay writes in her diary that she has performed some unnamed sexual act with Goudling for the first time.
Summer. Allan begins to make marriage propositions to Kay, who turns him down.
August 28. Kay tells Allan their relationship is over for good. "What a bitch I am!" she writes in her diary.
September. Kay spends her time chugging whiskey and gin while having meaningless sex with random partners and crying herself to sleep at night.
Fall. Kay is interviewed twice by Fox studios about appearing in short films. Nothing ever stems from either interview.
October. Kay tests for the female lead in Gentlemen of the Press. She gets the part.
November 16. Paramount releases its first talking movie, Interfearence. The studio makes a list of Broadway stars they feel will replace silent move stars. Kay's name is on the list.
Early December. Kay poses with ski togs for an issue of Harper's Bazaar.
December 28. Rehersals for Gentlemen of the Press start.

1929
January. Kay and Millard Webb start dating.
January 31. Kay starts rehersals for her next movie, The Cocoanuts, starring the Marx Brothers.
Early February. Gentlemen of the Press ends shooting.
February 19. Retakes for Gentlemen of the Press start.
February 22. Gentlemen of the Press previews in Yonkers. To everyone's surprise, the movie is a success.
April. Realizing they have something on their hands, Paramount decides to send Kay out to Hollywood.
April 11. Kay boards the 20th Century Limited to Chicago. She spends the night with Katty Stewart, an old friend. Kay notes in her diary about her sex with Katty, "Slept with Katty only because she wanted me to - Damn!"
April 13. Kay boards the Chief.
April 15. Kay arrives in Hollywood and is greated by a studio photographer and publicist who hails her as one of the best dressed newcomers. That same day, Kay meets producer B.P. Schulberg on the Paramount lot for a tour of the studio.
April 17. Kay starts taking driving lessons.
April 18. Dangerous Curves, a Clara Bow vehicle, starts production with Kay playing the second female lead, "Zara," an art deco vamp-like character.
April 21. Kay visits an old friend, Kay Johnson, at her home. Johnson reveals her life-long lover for Kay. The two sleep together.
May 11. Gentlemen of the Press released.
May 24. The Cocoanuts released.
June 1. Kay writes about Katty Stuart, now her roomate, in her diary, "I really adore her - and I guess she really loves me."
Mid June. Production on Illusion starts with Kay in a small role.
June 21. Kay watches a preview of Dangerous Curves. She realizes quickly that the movie was strictly a Clara Bow vehicle.
Late Spring/ Early Summer. Much male, with some female, excitement starts running around Hollywood because of rumors that Kay Francis is an open lesbian who's prone to having random, meaningless sex with men. Kay begins fighting off sexual advances from Walter Huston, a close friend, and Paul Lucas, whom she can't stand. Kay spends this time, as well as the rest of the year, working as a supporting player in good pictures.
Early July. Kay becomes involved with Kenneth MacKenna.
July 13. Dangerous Curves released.
September 27. Illusion released.
October. This month's issue of Photoplay, the most popular movie magazine at the time, hails Kay's performance in Gentlemen of the Press as "one of the most astonishing first performances in the history of motion pictures."
December 13. The Marriage Playground released.

A Kay Francis Chonology...

2009-12-12T17:12:00.001-08:00

Above:
Kay Francis in real color, circa 1937. Click image for larger view.

This feature would not exist without the help of I Can't Wait to be Forgotten, A Passionate Life and Career, and The Complete Career Guide. Many thanks to Scott O'Brien, Lynn Kear, and John Rossman for their emphasis on exact dates and use of Kay's diary entries. When exact dates for an event which took place during a year are unknown to me, I have placed them in [brackets]. If there is no information for a specific year, I have the space below intentionally empty.

1905
January 13.Katharine Gibbs is born in Oklahoma City, OK.
November. Harsh weather in Oklahoma City causes the Gibbs family to relocate to Santa Barbara, California.
December. The Gibbs family moves from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles.

1906
[The family next relocates to Salt Lake City, Utah sometime within the first half of the year.
Around the same time, Katherine brings Katharine and herself back to New York, leaving Joe Gibbs, Kay's father, behind. Katherine decides to go back to work as an actress to support Kay and herself.]

1907

1908
[Kay sees her father for the last time while he's out visiting her and her mother in New York.]

1909
[Kay accompanies her mother, without performing, with the Lindsay Morison Stock Company. Katherine remains with the troupe for at least a year.]

1910

1911

1912

1913

1914
[Kay accompanies her mother on another tour, this time with legendary vaudvillian Harry Brooks in "The Old Minstrel Man."]

1915

1916

1917

1918

1919
January 20. Kay's father, Joe Gibbs, dies of pneumonia in St. Louis. Kay never hears the news, and lives the rest of her life not knowing whatever happened to her father. (He was survived by his new wife, Minnie, and their two daughters, four-year-old Virginia and five-year-old Helen, Kay's half-sisters. The Homer Masonic Lodge pays for his $15 funeral and burial.)
Fall. Kay, at fourteen, begins receiving her first professional education at the Ossining School for Girls in Ossining, New York.
September 10. Kay goes to NY to attend a homecoming parade for General John J. Pershing returning home from the First World War. A policeman picks Kay up, placing her on his shoulders so she can catch a glimpse of Pershing.

Later Career, Death, & Legacy...

2009-12-12T17:11:00.001-08:00

With Ruth Chatterton as director, and Patsy Ruth Miller on board for the production of Windy Hill, Kay Francis had made her triumphant return to the stage on September 20, 1945. Reviews and public response was largely positive, but Kay had been forced back to work because of her Monogram project. Now free from Hollywood, Kay Francis decided to set her sights on returning to the stage and leaving her film career behind for good. A year later, she made her first appearance in State of the Union on September 2, 1946 at the Hudson Theatre in New York. Reviews for the production were some of the best Kay ever received, and the play was so popular it ran for 765 performances.

For her next two projects, Kay dusted off two old hats: Frederick Lonsdale’s The Last of Mrs. Cheyney and Rachel Crothers’ Let Us Be Gay. Fay Kanin’s Goodbye, My Fancy followed. The popular success of all three shows gave her the idea that her work in a new play, George Oppenheimer’s Mirror, Mirror, would garner her the opportunity to return to Broadway. Unfortunately, a critical backlash and lack of public response killed the deal. Mirror, Mirror was the only Kay Francis play to flop with audiences. She revived herself with a healthy run in Somerset Maugham’s Theatre, which toured for over two years until Kay’s last appearance on August 9, 1954. Ironically, on that night Kay did something she had never done before, she ended the play by getting off the stage and greeting her audience in the isles, after which she walked out of the lobby.

Kay Francis’ career came to an end unintentionally. By the time her next intriguing offer came about, it was too late. She was offered the opportunity to play Lana Turner’s mother in Madame X (1966), but turned the part down because she was terminally ill with the cancer that would ultimately end her life. After her years as an actress, Kay did some traveling but mainly entertained a small group of friends and kept to herself. The death of her mother on January 29, 1957 severed her last tie to a family connection. Anna Weissberger, the mother of Kay’s attorney, looked after her in her later years while Kay’s romance with Theatre costar Dennis Allan hit the rocks.

Decades of heavy smoking and drinking eventually took its toll on Kay’s health. She lived in an era where people literally drank and smoked themselves to death. By the mid 1960s, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Ruth Chatterton, Marion Davies had passed on while Joan Crawford and Bette Davis took work in low-budget horror flicks and Norma Shearer remained a distant memory of the past. It must have been frightening to have out lived her own era. As biographers Lynn Kear and John Rossman pointed out in their Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career, Kay’s world was in art deco surroundings while gowned in a breath-taking Orry-Kelly creation. To think of her in an era of her an a flower-power generation is almost unimaginable.

Kay Francis died on April 26, 1968 in her New York apartment. Her seven page will left bequests to twelve people, while the majority of her million dollar estate was left to The Seeing Eye of Morristown, New Jersey.

From a little, lonely girl of Oklahoma City, to a noble woman of the world, to gifted stage actress and top-lining motion picture star, Kay Francis, like the women she portrayed on screen, always stayed true to herself. She never sold out for Hollywood. She could care less about trends and what people thought of her. And she could give a rat’s ass about anyone had to say about her choices.

After her death, Kay’s legacy became virtually forgotten. Historians wrote her Paramount work off as unimportant, considered her Warner Brothers movies sheer run of the mill glam dramas, and dismissed her freelance material (particularly her stint at Monogram) as an embarrassing end to an uneventful career. But like Vera Kowalska in Confession (1937), her memory survived.

The launching of Turner Classic Movies in 1994 helped resurrect the work of many forgotten or misinterpreted stars. Almost overnight Kay Francis took on a new importance in classic cinema. She was back to being considered Warner Brothers’ most important asset from 1932 until 1938, while the overrated Bette Davis was put back in her place. Kay’s freelance work, especially In Name Only (1939) and Allotment Wives (1945), was rediscovered as more entertaining than the melodramas she made at the peak of her success as a box office champ.

In 2005 two biographies, Scott O’Brien’s Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten and Lynn Kear’s and John Rossman’s Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career , were released. Two years later, Kear and Rossman put together the definitive Kay Francis reference book, The Complete Kay Francis Career Guide. In September of 2008, Kay was Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month.

Maybe her legacy was never as forgotten as people suspected. Whatever the case, despite a lack of color, high definition, or crisp sound, the films of Kay Francis remain some of the most intriguing movies ever made because of her combination of unique beauty, throaty sound, aloof personality, and, above all, intelligence to overcome any obstacle handed to her.

She did it for the money. Her fans loved her for the honesty.

Kay Francis lives.

---Michael O’Hanlon, August 26, 2008

Her Fall and Rise...

2009-12-12T17:10:00.000-08:00

According to her suit, Warner Brothers had placed Kay in roles “of inferior quality and had posted her name in a special interstudio register which kept other studios from bidding for her services.” Kay’s lawyers requested that her contract be terminated immediately. Whatever happened behind closed doors must have irritated Kay so much to the point where she suddenly changed her mind. Her decision was now to stay at the studio and fight for her $5,200 weekly salary while finishing out her contract in B pictures. After much attention in the press, a settlement was officially announced in December.

The Carole Lombard role in Twentieth Century (1934) had been written with Kay in mind. The Mary Astor role in Dodsworth (1936) was originally offered to Kay. George Cukor and David O. Selznick met with Kay August 30, 1936 about her casting in the Scarlett O’Hara role in Gone With the Wind (1939). On all three occasions Warner Brothers had denied permission to loan Kay out and in return had given her less than stellar assignments. For years, Jack and Harry pleased Kay with financial rewards over artistic opportunities. By now that decision from both parties had taken its toll on Kay’s popularity with moviegoers. She was no longer the top name at the studio, and with Bette Davis gaining more popularity and critical acclaim, Kay accepted the situation with her usual grace. If she was going to have to finish out her contract in B programmers, at least she could do it while collecting one of Hollywood’s highest salaries.

Women Are Like That (1938) started production on August 29, 1937, and, while the filming took place during Kay’s suit with Warner Brothers, it can easily be considered her first screen punishment from the studio. Despite her good chemistry with Pat O’Brien, the film was one of the worst of Kay’s career. Variety considered the movie “another disappointment for Kay Francis.” My Bill (1938) followed. Although the film was the first of the B movies she would finish her contract with, it turned into an unexpected hit with audiences. (In fact, the film was so popular Kay did an adaptation of the material for the Hollywood Hotel radio program later that year and again in 1941 on Cecil B. DeMille’s Lux Radio Theatre.) A critic for the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

If Warner Brothers forced Kay Francis to play a middle-aged mother of four adolescents in My Bill in an effort to discipline her, their plan has boomeranged laughably. The picture, previewed a few nights ago, is a triumph rather than a humiliation, for Kay.

The late 1937-early 1938 season saw a major transformation in the public presentation of Kay Francis from the Warner Brothers publicity department. Originally, Kay, Miriam Hopkins, and Jane Bryan were announced for the leads in The Sisters. All Rights Reserved was to be another teaming of Kay and Errol Flynn. Most importantly, the rights to Dark Victory had been negotiated for Kay in January of 1938. Both The Sisters and Dark Victory were handed to Bette Davis while All Rights Reserved never materialized. Instead, Kay was announced as a supporting player in the latest Boris Karloff vehicle, Devil Island, though the project never materialized. She found herself legitimately cast in Secrets of an Actress (1938), which was only notable because it was her last onscreen paring with George Brent, but most critics agreed the film was empty.

Admits her Warner Brothers headaches, Kay found time for a new lover. She first met Baron Raven Erik Barnekow on October 24, 1937 at one of Countess di Frasso’s parties. Erik was described by friends as a nobleman, aviator, inventor, stock broker, and businessman. According to legend, however, he was really a Nazi spy sent from Germany. In fact, Barnekow was really a deadbeat loser who milked Kay for her money and more than likely was a Nazi spy.

Her life at this point would have made one stellar melodrama, but her actual film material was getting worse and worse. Comet Over Broadway (1938) was a Bette Davis reject which is considered to be so bad it’s actually good. Directed by musical legend Busby Berkley, New York Post film critic Irene Thirer thought, “When a Kay Francis production reaches the Palace for its New York premiere as the lesser portion on a double bill which features ‘Hard to Get,’ it’s a sorry state of affairs.” Indeed it was. King of the Underworld (1939) was even worse. Costar Humphrey Bogart felt like a “real heal” for taking top billing over Kay. At the time, Bogart was still an unknown B movie star while Kay had been a top-lining attraction who’d fallen on hard times. Women in the Wind (1939), an unimportant drama about a female aviatrix, completed her contract with Warner Brothers.

At first, Kay Francis insisted on retiring from the screen when her Warner Brothers contract was finished. In fact, in an interview on the set of Women in the Wind, she made the facts quite clear:

Perhaps I’d have been better off if I had fought for better stories, but the end didn’t justify the means. I’d have been suspended and the time I was under suspension would have been added to the end of my contract. So instead of being free now, I would probably have had another year to go. And, even then, I’d have no guarantee the stories I picked would have been any better. Even if they had been, the only difference would have been that I would be retiring in a blaze of glory instead of more or less inconspicuously---and this is the way I want it. I’ll be forgotten quicker this way.

Her attitude towards the struggle made---and still make---many think of Kay Francis as a sellout. It didn’t help that her studio rival, Bette Davis, would become so remembered in a feministic fashion. While many think of Davis was the hard-shelled, determined actress who fought for better roles, people began to think of Kay Francis as a movie glamour queen who only cared about a hefty salary because she lacked the real talent to stretch her career out after she’d hit the skids. She would prove her critics wrong with her brilliant performance in her next movie, In Name Only (1939).

One of the more satisfying ideas which frequently popped up in the back of Kay’s mind was to return to the screen with a stellar comeback after Warner Brothers gave her their “kiss of death.” When RKO signed Kay Francis for the role of Maida Walker in In Name Only (1939), she had been unemployed for nearly six months. The film remains essential for several reasons. First of all, it’s the only real paring of Carole Lombard and Cary Grant in leading roles. Second, Kay receives equal billing to Lombard and Grant in the film and on all movie posters and advertisements, proving her popular status as late as 1939. Third, Kay’s excellent performance as the villainous bitch nearly stole the film from her costars. And fourth, the film showcases her own determination to make it back to the top. Here she was on thin ice with her career virtually over while she was making her big screen comeback playing the evil bitch to the much loved Carole Lombard and Cary Grant. Her performance outshines anything she ever did, even her work in Trouble in Paradise (1932), and the reviews she earned were some of the best of her career.

After her triumphant comeback at RKO, Universal hired Kay for the part of Georgia Drake in It’s a Date (1940). Her character was the mother of Deanna Durbin’s Pamela, and although Kay was second billed to Durbin in the film, the Durbin pictures at Universal were some of the most popular in the country. The good exposure for Kay earned her some great reviews, particularly in Time, who thought that Kay’s character provided her with “her best part in many a long picture.” Universal kept Kay on their payroll for the opportunity to play opposite Randolph Scott in When the Daltons Rode (1940). Second billed to Scott, the cast also featured Broderick Crawford and George Bancroft, and was considered to be “straight, fast Western fare” by a critic for the New York Times. Kay Francis, it seemed, was on her way to a stellar comeback. But with her success in films back on the rise, her personal life bean to spiral out of control.

Kay’s relationship with Erik was anything but stable when England declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Though she managed few calls here and here, Erik remained aloof when he returned to Germany on an American cargo ship. She spent the holidays with friends but was unable to enjoy the gatherings because of her depression. She cried while she decorated the Christmas tree with her mother. She cried through Christmas and the days following. And she remained sick in bed on New Years. As 1940 went on, Erik drifted out of Kay’s life for good. He had joined the German military soon after returning to Germany but was so emotionally traumatized by the circumstances that he shot himself in December of 1941. Though she never did find out exactly what happened to Erik, Kay accepted the circumstances and went on to have affairs with other men, though he heart still longed for the man she truly loved.

Upset in her personal life, Kay focused on her career and found the only joy in being a freelance artist. “I believe that as a free-lance I can learn more about acting than if under a studio contract,” Kay told an interviewer. “I’m happier at it, for life takes on new interest. And the more we players free-lance, the better served the public will be.” But the parts she was offered weren’t much better than Warner Brothers had offered her. Though she was a top contender for The Rains Came (1939), the part went to Myrna Loy. In its place, Kay went to RKO and appeared in the second film version of the Louisa May Alcott favorite, Little Men (1940). Better received by the public than critics, a writer for the New York Times found the film “too obviously rigged for tears and laughs.” Play Girl (1941) was another film for RKO---this time on the low-budget scale, though the film gave Kay a chance to do some good light comedy. In fact, all of Kay’s releases of the year would be in a comedic style. The Man Who Lost Himself (1941), made for Universal, was one of her better ones, which stands up today better than a lot of the fluff she was making back at Warner Brothers.

Twentieth Century-Fox next employed Kay for the fourth film version of Brandon Thomas’ Charley’s Aunt (1941). One of the most successful movies of the year, the film placed eighth on the top grossing films of the year list, and costar Jack Benny received a special Oscar at the 1942 Academy Awards Ceremony, the statue dressed in a skirt and smoking a cigar. The Feminine Touch (1941), made for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, featured a sort-of all-star cast, with Kay third billed to Rosalind Russell and Don Ameche. Today, Kay’s name being billed equivalent to that of Russell’s is proof of her star power as late as 1941, which many consider to be the downside of her career. In fact, Kay’s popularity was such that Warner Brothers came knocking on her door for an appearance in Always in My Heart (1942). Kay accepted, but on her own terms. She demanded, and received, top billing and her hefty salary. The film was fluff used to promote Gloria Warren, a Warner Brothers answer to Deanna Durbin who never caught on with audiences and retired after only a few films. Universal then used Kay’s name to promote Diana Barrymore in Between Us Girls (1942).

Like Myrna Loy, Kay Francis put her film work aside to focus on the World War. She volunteered at canteens, and began making appearances at bases all over the world. The first appearance was in July of 1942 in England with Mitzi Mayfair, Martha Raye, and Carole Landis. Excerpts of Landis’ diary, which chronicled the events the “Four Jills” witnessed, was published and materialized by Twentieth-Century Fox. With the success of Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and The Hollywood Canteen (1944) at Warner Brothers, Fox decided to produce an all-star cameo extravaganza to capitalize on the interest of Hollywood and the World War. Landis, Mitzi Mayfair, Martha Raye, and, top billed, Kay Francis all starred in the fictionalized account of their journey. The film, titled Four Jills in a Jeep (1944), featured cameo appearances by Betty Grable and Alice Faye, among others. Previewing to mediocre reviews, the film was more popular with audiences than critics.

When the War ended, Kay Francis was virtually unemployable in Hollywood. With her heyday long behind her, she next accepted an unusual offer from Monogram Pictures, one of the more notorious B studios for faded movie stars. Monogram offered her the opportunity to star, top billed, and co-produce three projects. Her first feature for the studio was Divorce (1945). A preachy, cheaply produced drama about a home wrecker, the film costarred Bruce Cabot and was dismissed by The Daily News as “ridiculous.” In terms of business, Divorce was more profitable than the usual Monogram picture, but it was clearly no I Found Stella Parish or Give Me Your Heart.

Kay’s second feature for Monogram, Allotment Wives (1945), is an unrecognized classic. The film is still a favorite among its admirers, and Kay’s performance is one of the best of her career. By the time she made the film, it was clear Kay had learned more about producing on a cheap budget. Costs were saved by improvising, and the storyline was easier to follow because of a more intriguing plot. At the time reviewers panned the movie, but critics today now recognize the film as more interesting take on the Mildred Pierce (1945) success at Warner Brothers. Actually, Allotment Wives makes it unfortunate that Kay didn’t go on to have success in film noir. She plays tougher and more realistic than Joan Crawford, with a physical appeal that’s much darker and deadly than Barbara Stanwyck’s. Her noir appeal was used again in Wife Wanted (1946), which turned out to be Kay’s last movie of her career. The film today is considered so bad that its good, but it was a sad end to a career which could have gone in a completely different direction.

During the first few days on the Wife Wanted shoot, Kay received a telephone call from producer Leland Hayward. Ruth Hussey needed a replacement for her theatrical run in State of the Union, an offer which Kay graciously accepted. For the first time since In Name Only (1939), she found an offer she could really seek her teeth into. And an offer to return to the stage in a stellar Broadway comedy was far more appealing than the offer from Allied Artists to appear in a film version of Maurice Sandos’ The Maze.

Queen of Warner Brothers...

2009-12-12T17:09:00.002-08:00

Warner Brothers employed a weak list of contract players throughout 1930. That year alone James Cagney and Joan Blondell had made their film debuts in Sinners’ Holiday (1930). Barbara Stanwyck completed her first film, Illicit (1930), for the studio. Bette Davis was still grinding out B movies at Universal. But at the time those names, now legendary, were still unknown. Kay’s decision to switch studios might have been provoked by something more important than a higher salary. Back at Paramount she was forced to share the spotlight with dozens of other stars on her level. Now at Warner Brothers, she placed second only to Ruth Chatterton in terms of studio competition, but was the star of her own movies. There would be no more fifth billings or thankless second leads, as her first movie for the studio would prove.

Man Wanted (1932) was taken from the Robert Lord story, A Dangerous Brunette. A breezy, light comedy about the modern woman’s option for marriage and a career, one of the most noticeable differences is a larger number of close ups and modeled lighting. Everything in Man Wanted is fitted to Kay’s screen persona, and her teaming with David Manners provided moviegoers the opportunity to watch one of the most attractive onscreen couples of the time. Though not entirely clever or unique, critical reviews for Man Wanted were surprisingly favorable. Street of Women (1932) followed. The property can largely be considered the movie that solidified Kay’s importance in the fashion world of that time. Paramount had given Kay some clever creations, and Man Wanted afforded her the opportunity to be stylish and professional, but in Street of Women she plays the owner of a dress salon and wears some of the most breath-taking costumes one will ever see in a 1930s movie. Its hands down the film that made Kay Francis a major influence on the style of that time.

Her career hit a critical peak with her four following movies. Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage (both 1932) marked Kay’s final parings with William Powell. The first opportunity was given to Kay when Barbara Stanwyck proved unavailable. A clever comedy about a crook and stylish sophisticate, the film was one of the most daring movies of its time, and Kay’s kittenish performance was well received by critics. One Way Passage was a well made weepy about a dying heiress and a condemned criminal. Biographers Lynn Kear and John Rossamn thought the film was “one of the best arguments for Kay being considered one of Hollywood’s greats.” The film garnered Kay a Photoplay award for “Best Performance of the Month.”

Paramount next requested Kay’s services for the first time since her departure from the studio. Her assignment was the lead in Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble In Paradise (1932). Considered to be one of the greatest pictures ever made, Trouble In Paradise is a film that never fails to entertain. “Miriam Hopkins may have received first billing on the credit card,” wrote a critic for the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, “but Kay Francis, borrowed from Warner Brothers, steals the honors. And what a lovely little thief she is!” The film marked the peak in Kay’s career, and while she certainly rose to a higher status over the course of the next four years, it can easily be said that Trouble In Paradise was the most important picture Kay Francis ever made. Cynara (1932), Kay’s final release of the year, was another teaming with Ronald Colman for a Samuel Goldwyn production at United Artists. A major success of its time, Cynara, along with One Way Passage and Trouble In Paradise, was considered by critics to be one of the must-see movies of that year.

William Powell was Warner Brothers’ original choice to play Kay’s leading man in The Keyhole (1933), but a contract dispute caused Powell to pack his bags and move over to MGM. Replaced with George Brent, the Francis/Brent chemistry caused a response from audiences almost immediately (as the William Powell/Myrna Loy pairings at MGM caused a more celebrated chemistry). And at least with her new leading man beside her, it was Kay Francis who was the box office name that drew the money in. In the past, Kay had often found herself in the role of Powell’s girlfriend or love interest, but now she was starring in Kay Francis vehicles, tailor made for herself to be front and center. Storm at Daybreak (1933) was her last loan out to another studio (this time to Metro Goldwyn Mayer for what was a Greta Garbo reject). The World War I drama might not have been spectacular, but it’s a good movie with Kay, Walter Huston, and Nils Asther all rising to top form.

The last three Kay Francis movies of 1933 included Mary Stevens, M.D., I Loved a Woman, and The House on 56th Street. The first was one of Kay’s best and one of the best examples for her being considered one of Hollywood’s greats. I Loved a Woman was a shoddy Edward G. Robinson tale about an adulterer who, yes, loved a woman. The House on 56th Street is hands down the best of the whole bunch. Many point to this film, a Ruth Chatterton reject, as being the movie that made Kay Francis a household name.

Mandalay (1934) is a PreCode classic about a woman (Kay) sold into prostitution by her lover (Ricardo Cortez), then murders him and gets away with it. Reviews were tepid, and Ruth Chatterton had turned down the material, but Kay made it into one of her most enjoyed movies. Wonder Bar (1934) was structured like Grand Hotel (1932) in a different form. Instead of a truly “all-star cast,” the movie was highlighted with big names like Kay Francis, Dick Powell, Dolores Del Rio, and Ricardo Cortez who ended up just playing second fiddle to a faded Al Jolson, then on a serious decline as a box office star. Kay’s appearance in the film was limited, and Wonder Bar was the first time Kay publicly complained about her casting. Dr Monica (1934), well received when first released, is today known as one of Kay’s worst movies.

Her importance at Warner Brothers was highlighted by the success of her movies. Mandalay earned $629,000 with a profit of $83,462. Dr. Monica---which was pulled from the screen weeks after its release because of the Production Code---earned $443,000 with a profit of $70,962. Wonder Bar, which had Kay top billed over the all-star cast, earned $2,035,000 with a profit of $756,962. Ruth Chatterton’s Female earned $451,000 with a net loss of $6,615. Bette Davis’ Ex-Lady earned only $283,000 with a profit of $60,385. So anyone who wanted to underestimate Kay Francis as a top Warner Brothers star at the time need only look at the box office receipts from her movies. Bette Davis was still a B movie star, Ruth Chatterton was on the wane, and Kay was taking over for the top female position at the studio. And by the end of 1934, Chatterton’s contract ended with no option for renewal. As for Davis, Of Human Bondage (1934), her most famous film of the year, grossed only $592,000 with a loss of $45,000. Kay’s position in Hollywood at the time was greater than both stars.

Professionally she was about to really hit her stride, but her personal life was a complete mess. Kay’s marriage to Kenneth MacKenna was ending when 1934 rolled around. After months of tension and explosive arguments, Kay and Kenneth divorced on February 21. She began an affair With Maurice Chevalier soon after her split from MaKenna, but not even a new lover could make things better for Kay. On May 16 she attempted suicide by slitting her wrists with broken glass. Almost dying after losing nearly two quarts of blood, she was rescued by her maid who called an emergency ambulance. Ironically, Kay’s suicide attempt occurred during the filming of her most prestigious movie for Warner Brothers thus far, British Agent (1934), proving that fame and fortune were not the real keys to happiness.

Feeling hopeless in her personal life, her attitude and depression found their way into her career as well. As a result, Kay began settling for assignments turned down by lesser stars. The House on 56th Street, Mandalay, and Dr. Monica were Ruth Chatterton rejects. British Agent and her role in Wonder Bar had been turned down by Barbara Stanwyck. On the contrary, Living on Velvet (1935), her next movie, was handpicked for her by Jack Warner. The only notable aspects of the film were Kay’s second teamings with George Brent and Warren William, and the fact that Kay’s wardrobe was the real draw of the picture. The trailer literally showed a montage of the Orry-Kelly gowns worn by Kay throughout the film. Stranded (1935) was Kay’s third pairing with George Brent and the only movie of Kay’s screenwriter Delmer Daves [her lover at the time] worked on. The Goose and the Gander (1935) was a real departure for her, and one of Kay’s most delightful comedies. The film can easily be referred to as the best of the Kay Francis-George Brent pairings.

With a turning point in Hollywood underway, Kay Francis reached the peak of her popular success over the next three years. Movie attendances were back up to pre-Great Depression numbers, and Kay’s importance at Warner Brothers was solidified with the success of her next movie, I Found Stella Parish (1935). A major hit with audiences of the time, Variety thought the film was a “Powerful story of an actress and mother love. For Kay Francis I Found Stella Parish is an ideal vehicle. She is one of the screen’s most charming women, and as Stella Parish of the London stage she is always a cameo of film loveliness.”

With a new-found confidence in the talents of their top female star, Warner Brothers made their only opportunity to garner her recognition from the Academy Awards with a movie biography about Florence Nightingale titled, The White Angel (1936). Censorship problems ruined what could have been an excellent script. After the success of The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), Jack and Harry Warner wanted an immediate prestigious follow-up to the outstanding Paul Muni masterpiece. The San Francisco Chronicle commented, “Kay Francis is beautiful enough and glamorous enough to transcend the monotony of a nurse’s uniform. And, by the way, that is something few Hollywood actresses can do…One other woman on the screen completely dominates the situation by merit of her light and spirit, and that woman is Garbo.” But the film was a major flop.

Surprisingly, The New York Times highly praised The White Angel, finding Kay’s performance “sincere and eloquent.” But the audiences stayed far away from the theaters. The film was a box office flop by most accounts, earning a not-so-hot $1,416,000. Unlike Greta Garbo’s Queen Christina (1934) or Norma Shearer’s Marie Antoinette (1938) the film had an empty story with no elaborate costumes or settings (though the lack of Hollywood glamour provided a more realistic touch to the film, which took place on the battlefront of possibly the bloodiest war in history).

Give Me Your Heart (1936) was a complete turnaround. The major success of the movie proved that it was not Kay who was responsible for the failure of The White Angel, but a lack of care from the screenwriters on the Warner Brothers lot. After the releases of Stolen Holiday (1937; Kay’s only movie with Claude Rains) and Another Dawn (1937; Kay’s only movie with Errol Flynn) Variety listed the top ten most popular female motion picture stars: Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Alice Faye, Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Jeanette MacDonald, and Janet Gaynor. Her position as the sixth most popular leading lady in Hollywood was made more official with a major salary increase. Now receiving $5,200 weekly, Kay topped the Warner Brothers payroll for both 1936 and ’37, earning more than her boss, producer Hal B. Wallis.

Confession (1937) can arguably be written off as the last great movie Kay Francis ever appeared in (and is no doubt the second best movie she ever made, the first being Trouble in Paradise). In the film Kay went “from opera to cabaret and, finally, to a courtroom on trial for murder.” Today we recognize the movie as one of the all-time great mother-love dramas, but when it was released critics and audiences found it just another “Kay Francis melodrama.” The film’s European touch proved an ineffective accomplishment in the eyes of critics at the time. A take-for-take remake of Mazurka (1935), the production of Confession was a complete mess. Director Joe May screened the film regularly on the set and even kept a stopwatch to match the scenes up perfectly. More than once did Kay walk off the set, and Joe May never made another movie for Warner Brothers, even after the success of the film.

In an effort to lift her sprits, Jack Warner allowed Kay the opportunity for comic relief. The chosen property was First Lady (1937), a film adaptation of the great Broadway success. “I am so tired of suffering for my art,” Kay told an interviewer. “For picture after picture I’ve had to shed buckets of tears over my little child or my poor, thwarted lover or something. I’m sick to death of crying.” Unfortunately, the failure of the movie was like a knife in the back for her, and after being replaced in Tovarich (1937) by Claudette Colbert, Kay Francis filed suit against Warner Brothers on September 4, 1937.

The Town’s Epitome of Glamour was ready for war against the toughest studio in town.

One-Way Passage to Stardom...

2009-12-12T17:09:00.001-08:00

Greeted at the train station by photographers and fanfare, a twenty-four year-old Kay Francis was hyped up by Paramount’s publicity department as a possible fashion rival to Constance Bennett and Lilyan Tashman. The competition, at first, did not seem easy. Kay later recalled:

When I first came out here, I was scared to death. I had heard how mean picture people could be to people on the stage. I hadn’t much self-confidence anyway. I didn’t know what to do about the camera.

However, Kay’s first assignment in Hollywood was Dangerous Curves (1929), a Clara Bow star vehicle that gave Kay a different opinion on Hollywood stars:

It’s wonderful how helpful Hollywood folks are. When I worked with Clara Bow, she was simply too grand. She said to me, “Now, Kay, I’m the star, so naturally they train the camera on me. But if you’ll cheat over just a little, you’ll get in it just right, too. You’ve got to keep that face in the camera you know, darling.”

In a review for the Washington Post, one critic thought that Kay in Dangerous Curves was “the possessor of one of the most charming voices yet to come through the microphone and she shows signs of becoming the vampire supreme of the screen.” It was type-casting from there on. Illusion (1929, with Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Nancy Carroll), The Marriage Playground (1929, with Fredric March and Lilyan Tashman), and Behind the Make-Up (1930, with William Powell and Fay Wray) all featured Kay as two-timing, manipulative, ice-cold vamps. Illusion exists only in soundtrack form (the actual film is Kay’s only lost movie). Marriage Playground was Kay’s first teaming with Fredric March, as Behind the Make-Up was her first work with William Powell. Still, Kay made an impression on cast, crew, and critics.

Her new-found importance in Hollywood was rewarded when Paramount gave Kay her first real lead in Street of Chance (1930). Her second pairing with William Powell, Kay’s part as the sophisticated and sympathetic wife of Powell was a real departure for her. “Kay Francis,” wrote a critic for the London Times, “is terribly fetching and her acting gives a sympathetic touch to an unsympathetic character.”

Paramount solidified Kay as one of their most important stars with an expensive Technicolor appearance in their most prestigious movie of 1930, Paramount on Parade. Typical of the movie revues of that period, Paramount on Parade was a major exposure for Kay, and her appearance in “The Toreador” was the first and only time moviegoers would get the chance to see Kay in Technicolor. A Notorious Affair (1930) followed. Arguably Kay’s best performance until that point, her dark and scheming performance as the Russian Vamp stole the film from experiences costars Billie Dove and Basil Rathbone. One critic for the Los Angeles Evening Herald thought that Kay gave the “most disturbing portrayal since Hell’s Angels.”

For the Defense (1930) was Kay’s third pairing with William Powell. Focusing on the Judicial System, For the Defense was one of the many popular shyster films of that era, which focused specifically on the lives and careers of lawyers. Raffles (1930) was Kay’s second loan out, this time to United Artists for the Samuel Goldwyn production. Really a Ronald Colman movie, Raffles offers Kay little to do but wear clever costumes, though she was second billed in a movie that was one of the top grossers of that year. Let’s Go Native (1930) was proof that Paramount had little idea of what to do with Kay Francis. This time she’s fifth billed and walking through a odd pairing of Jack Oakie and Jeanette MacDonald in one of the most absurd musical comedies of that era.

She followed a minor appearance in a bad movie with a lead appearance in a good one. The Virtuous Sin (1930) was Kay’s second film paring with Walter Huston and her first real starring role, although she is second billed. Clearly she had learned a great deal within her first year in movies, because she’s more comfortable in front of the camera than ever, with her acting more mature and refined. (During the shoot, Kay also began dating costar Kenneth MacKenna, who was to become her third husband a year later.) Passion Flower (1930) was Kay’s first top-billed appearance and final film of that year. A forgettable film (with the exception of the stunning publicity stills of Kay taken by George Hurrell), it went unnoticed by critics and audiences of that time.

Kay solidified her position in Hollywood with a social life that included parties with Jessica and Richard Barthlemess, Irving Thalberg and Norma Shearer, Rhea and Clark Gable, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, Samuel Goldwyn, Jeanette MacDonald, and Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who later wrote of Kay:

I never had the privilege of working with Miss Francis in a film. I knew Kay and Kenneth socially in the early ‘30s. Kay was lovely and very popular. She brightened many social occasions with her sparkling charm and wit. I don’t think she ever warmed up to Hollywood. I think of her as a true bon vivant.

But Kay’s social life was not without scandal. Throughout her first year in Hollywood she reportedly had affairs with Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, and Gary Cooper, among others.

The New Year began with a marriage to Kenneth MacKenna on January 17. Kay confided in her diary that she resented the intrusions of reporters, a downside that progressed steadily over the next few years, irritating Kay beyond belief.

Scandal Sheet (1931) was her first release of the year. Third billed, she appeared in few scenes in a role that really only allows her to wear nice costumes. Ladies’ Man (1931) was her fourth teaming with William Powell and first work alongside Carole Lombard. The Vice Squad (1931) was more unimportant junk from Paramount, which might have been looking to give Kay the payback they felt entitled to after she turned down the offer of a contract renewal. Kay Francis, along with Ruth Chatterton and William Powell, moved her employment over to Warner Brothers the following year for a hefty increase in salary and new-found stardom.

RKO next bid on Kay’s services for Transgression (1931). A campy soap opera, the film revealed what would later become the ideal Kay Francis formula: tears, sin, fashion, and forgiveness by a wholesome man who ultimately loves her. MGM then received Kay for second billing in Lionel Barrymore’s Guilty Hands (1931).

Paramount ended Kay’s employment with four of the best movies she would ever make for the studio. 24 Hours (1931) might have given Kay limited camera time, but the entire cast rises to excellent stature, giving performances that disregard the stereotype that Kay’s generation of movie stars couldn’t act. Girls About Town (1931) was a clever Pre-Code romp about gold diggers directed by George Cukor. It’s arguably Kay’s second best movie she ever made for Paramount, and she has great chemistry with costars Lilyan Tashman and Joel McCrea. The False Madonna (1932) might not have been Kay’s best, but it was a starring role from a studio that had only recently discovered her importance to them. Strangers in Love (1932) was Kay’s last work with Fredric March and one of her most charming pictures. Despite being strictly formula, the film never fails to entertain, and was well received by critics and audiences of both yesteryear and today.

Soon after completion of Strangers in Love, Kay Francis packed her bags along with William Powell and Ruth Chatterton and headed on over to Burbank, California for employment at a new studio and the opportunity to emerge as one of Hollywood’s top box office attractions.

I Found Kay Francis...

2009-12-12T17:07:00.000-08:00

Kay Francis emerged as the Epitome of Glamour during the height of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Her onscreen romances with William Powell, Ian Hunter, and George Brent were watched by millions, and she reigned as the highest paid employee on the Warner Brothers lot for three years. Her work in One Way Passage (1932), Give Me Your Heart (1936), Confession (1937), and In Name Only (1939) made her one of the town’s most respected actresses, with the box office draw to prove her stature as one of the era’s most sought-after stars.

However, Kay Francis’ years as an actress were never easy, often being dampened by private tragedies and an emptiness she never filled. At the height of her popularity, she dismissed her career and insisted she wanted to be forgotten.

Thought of as a quitter and sellout for decades, Kay’s memory went into a major eclipse after her death, with only knowledgeable film buffs knowing of her work. But in recent decades, Kay’s memory has begun to resurface, with new fans being drawn to the woman that their parents and/or grandparents were captivated by back when her movies could have been seen in the theater.

This is the story of Kay Francis.

Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born in Oklahoma City on Friday, January 13, 1905. Faced with bitterly cold temperatures, that week’s edition of the Daily Oakie had reported that one citizen had frozen to death that Wednesday. On the day Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born, the local forecast was zero with a high of 14. Katharine’s father, Joseph Gibbs, was an eccentric 42-year-old steward living at the Hotel Threadgill. (A rumor still persists that Joe Gibbs rode a horse through the lobby of a hotel and up the stairs to his wife’s room to greet his newborn.) Her mother was Katherine Clinton, a former stage actress who was 28 years old when she gave birth to her daughter.

By November 1905 the family had relocated to Santa Barbara, California, and then to Los Angeles soon after. It was after Joe Gibbs relocated his family to Salt Lake City, Utah that Katherine Clinton made the decision to leave her irresponsible husband. Returning to New York, Katherine found acting offers scarce, and historians have made the logical point of Katherine’s possible venture into prostitution to support herself and her daughter. Katherine and Kay last saw Joe Gibbs in New York in 1908; thereafter he remarried and died on January 20, 1919 of pneumonia.

The Lindsay Morison Stock Company employed Katherine in 1909, and Kay accompanied her mother throughout theater tours, growing up in hotels and boarding houses. It was an unconventional childhood, and the two were in constant financial trouble, though being raised in the theater world was excellent training for a girl who would grow up into one of the theater’s most delightful personalities. But it was not easy, as Kay later elaborated:

My childhood was a constantly shifting scene. Mother was on the stage and we were never in one place very long. She sent me to one convent school after another and none of them is clear in my mind. Only bits of pictures come to me now, like the time I had measles in one school and mumps in another and chicken pox in another.

Records of Kay’s education remain uncertain. For instance, Kay claimed to have attended the Ossining School for Girls from the time she was ten to fifteen, but no records of her attendance for these dates could be found. But Kay did attend Ossining in 1919 and the Cathedral School of St. Mary in 1920, it‘s possible she could have exaggerated her attendance in both schools. Schooling was never a priority in the eyes of Katherine Clinton, who later told interviewer Helen Starr, “Kay failed in geometry and I was pleased over that. I’ve always thought it ridiculous for an attractive, glamorous woman to study Latin and Greek.” But Katherine was not an unsupportive mother. In fact, Katherine had first envisioned a musical career for Kay, and was slightly disappointed when her daughter took up stenography.

Leaving the business world only weeks after she had entered it, Kay found work as an assistant to Juliana Cutting, one of the most elite party planners for the crème de la crème in Manhattan. It was through her association with Cutting that Kay met the man who would become her first husband, James Dwight Francis. The two met on January 3, 1922 and began dating soon after. Eight years older than Kay, Dwight was the wealthy son of Henry Francis, manager of the Pontoosuc Woolen Company. After getting intimate in late April, Kay aborted three of Dwight’s children before they were married on December 4, 1922. A short union, they were separated in early 1925, and were divorced on March 26 of that year.

After her divorce from Dwight, Kay went on a European jaunt that seems to rival her similar venture in Transgression (1931). After months of partying in Europe, Kay Francis returned to New York on September 26, with the dreary thought of her future ahead of her. With nothing else to lose, Kay Francis set her sights on acting.

Prior to her decision to go to the stage, Kay had done some modeling for Harpar’s Bazaar and other notable portrait artists. But her mother and friends seriously doubted her ability to make a successful actress of herself.

“Shakespeare’s Hamlet (In Modern Dress)” opened on November 9, 1925 at the Booth Theater in New York. Running for eighty-eight performances, the New York Times concluded that Kay “did not rate a mention.” After closing in early 1926, Kay was employed with the Stuart Walker Company until September of that year. None of Kay’s work for Stuart Walker was too distinguishable, though the production of “Love Is Like That” featured an up and coming Basil Rathbone as one of Kay’s costars.

“Crime” was Kay’s first major success of her career. Costarring Chester Morris, Sylvia Sydney, and Douglass Montgomery, among others, reviews for Kay were largely favorable. “Crime” was the production that got Kay Francis noticed, but her work in “Elmer the Great” could be written off as the stage production that made her unforgettable. Costar Walter Huston took immediate interest in Kay’s combination of legitimate talent and personality. He saw her potential, and, along with director Millard Webb recommended Kay’s casting in Paramount’s latest all-talking picture, Gentlemen of the Press.

Kay was surprisingly unenthusiastic about her film debut, suggesting that from the beginning she had opted for a movie career only because of the major increase in salary. But working on a film set was a learning experience Kay would never forget. “It was while we were making Gentlemen of the Press that I had my first real taste in studio jargon,” Kay later elaborated. “I was wearing a pink silk chiffon dress and thought I looked pretty nice. When I came on the set one of the electricians shouted: ‘Take the silk off that broad.’ I jumped and looked around to tell the man what I thought of him. ‘He’s talking about a light,’ a prop boy told me.”

Gentlemen of the Press was completed in February 1929 and released on May 11. Reviews were mostly favorable. Photoplay even credited Kay with giving “one of the most astonishing first performances in the history of motion pictures.” The Cocoanuts , Kay’s second movie and only film with the Marx Brothers, was an even bigger success.

Realizing that they had a possible star on their hands, Paramount’s Astoria Studio in Queens decided to transfer Kay out to Hollywood. At first she refused, but changed her mind and packed her bags for the West Coast. Boarding the 20th Century Limited on April 11, 1929, Kay arrived in Hollywood on the fifteenth, and soon began her rise to the top of the Hollywood heat.

24 Hours (1931)

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Above: I was unable to get a screenshot of the clock seen in the film, so I found this one on a search engine. Please email me with any questions or concerns with the use of this or any photo on this site.

Cast:

Clive Brook ... Jim Towner
Kay Francis ... Fanny Towner
Miriam Hopkins ... Rosie Duggan
Regis Toomey ... Tony Bruzzi
George Barbier ... Hector Champion
Adrienne Ames ... Ruby Wintryingham
Minor Watson ... David Melbourne
Charlotte Granville ... Sairna Jerrold
Lucille La Verne ... Mrs. Dacklehorse
Wade Boteler ... Pat Healy
Bob Kortman ... Dave the Slapper
Malcolm Waite ... Murphy
Thomas E. Jackson ... Police Commissioner

Directed by: Marion Gering.
Based on the novel by Louis Broomfield.
Screenplay by Louis Weltzenjorn.
Cinematography by Ernest Haller.
Gowns by Travis Banton.

Released October 2, 1931.
A Paramount Picture.

Background:

During the Pre-Code Hollywood years, two distinct types of movies were made. The first was the eyebrow-raiser, these were films packed with nothing but sex, drugs, and violence and made solely for profit. The second was the adult melodrama, of which 24 Hours falls under. These types of movies addressed serious issues of the times and the way society was coping with them.

Louis Bromfield’s 1930 novel, Twenty-Four Hours, struck a chord with readers across the country with its melodramatic plot involving the lives of some very shady and unpleasant characters. Paramount acquired the rights to the novel in April 1931 and used three of its most popular stars, Clive Brook, Kay Francis, and Miriam Hopkins, in the leading roles.

Clive Brook, a veteran matinee idol since the early 1920s, fitted perfectly into the English debonair character types most associated today with having been started by Cary Grant. Brook, however, had established himself as an English actor of the first rate when talking films arrived, and audiences were allowed to listen to him skillfully deliver the early clunky dialogue.

With this he became more than just a face. Paired opposite actresses like Ruth Chatterton in Charming Sinners (1929) and Anybody’s Woman (1930), he was allowed to show himself as an actor, and 24 Hours progressed his strong reviews from critics who praised his “well-toned performances” (Time, October 12, 1931).

He had been paired opposite Kay Francis in Scandal Sheet (1931), which featured Paul Lukas in the lead. So far she had been in Hollywood for about two or three years, and had progressed from her vamp roles into real leads. Some of these leads were slightly stale, and her character in 24 Hours is a prime example of that, but it was good exposure and experience for a starlet who would transform herself into one of the most profitable stars of the 1930s.

Rounding out the top three was a strong-willed newcomer named Miriam Hopkins, who had only appeared in three movies before her work in 24 Hours. Among those was The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), in which she held her own in Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy which also starred Claudette Colbert and Maurice Chevalier. After this one she went on to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), and a career that lasted well into the 1960s.

Director Marion Gering’s brief career included I Take this Woman (1931, with Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard), Madame Butterfly (1934, Sylvia Sidney and Cary Grant), and Good Dame (1934, Sidney and Fredric March). 24 Hours was his second work as a film director, and his list of credits only totals to seventeen, only two of which were made after 1937.

The New York Times, Time, and Variety all strongly praised the performances and direction of 24 Hours. One of 700 Paramount productions now owned by Universal, the film has unjustly fallen into the dark side of Hollywood, available only on third or fourth generation DVD/VHS copies.

Webmaster's Review:

There is a chilling snowstorm in the city this night.

Married couple Jim and Fanny Towner are attending a high-society party which seems to be plagued by a solemn atmosphere. Both know that their marriage is on the rocks, largely because of Jim’s uncontrollable drinking, and insulting attitude towards Fanny, who has been carrying on an affair with David Melbourne.

Actions such as Jim’s leaving the party without Fanny conclude in her mind that Jim doesn’t love her anymore.

Once outside, Jim has a brief conversation with the doorman, who, unknowing that Jim has been carrying on an affair with his sister, says that if his wife’s baby is a girl she will be named Rosie after her.

In a car ride with David, Fanny writes their names with her finger through the fog built up on the windows. She tells David how she thought that she loved him, but, even after all that has happened, she still loves Jim, and always will. She scribbles his name on the window, and gets out and spends the stormy night alone.

A man is shot and killed outside of a speak easy. His lifeless body is dragged inside, where the bloody snow on the ground remains when Jim enters. He has several drinks, becomes aware that there has been a murder, and takes off to Rosie’s where his mistress is the nightclub’s main attraction. She sings “I’m Yours for the Taking,” then has a few drinks with Jim before her husband Tony shows up.

Tony is a loser. He can’t tell the truth, has become victim to the Depression’s wrath, and wants Rosie back in his life because he really has nothing left to cling on to. Rosie asks him for the keys to her apartment back, but he claims he doesn’t have them, and when he gets rough with her, she has a guard throw him out.

Rosie takes Jim back to her place that night. He is in no condition to make it home alone. She puts him to sleep in one room, and locks the door and hides the key, knowing that Tony will be coming around.

When Tony does arrive, he tries to open the door to the bedroom where Jim is, but Rosie insists he is not there. Tony doesn’t listen, and gets pretty physical with her for that key, killing her in the struggle.

Jim gets up that morning and has to break the door in to get out of the room. He finds Rosie dead, and sneaks out of the apartment before he believes anyone sees him. Unfortunately, the doorman from last night (Rosie’s brothers) recognizes Jim while he quickly takes off, and Jim is arrested for murder.

Fanny reads of it in the paper, and rushes to the jail where Jim is being held. There they begin to discuss the situation from last night, and the events leading up to it.

Meanwhile, Tony is gunned down by shady characters, probably people he owed money to. Fingerprints reveal that it was he who killed Rosie, not Jim, and Jim is released, after which he and Fanny agree to reconcile.

This is a great movie for Clive Brook and Miriam Hopkins. They have great range with their characters, and steal the majority of the picture, though Regis Toomey does get a lot of attention as Tony. While Toomey does without any sympathy from the audience, his struggle with Hopkins is very realistic, and he comes across as a pathetic wimp throughout all of his scenes with or without her.

Brook, as alcoholic Jim, is nearly as icy cold as the snowstorm outside. No sympathy in him, and he doesn’t try to gain audience favor, either. He plays Jim exactly for what he is, the type of millionaire man who has become so bitter from his money that his sympathetic wife means absolutely nothing to him. His situation, which has stretched him to the point of having an affair with a gaudy nightclub star, is given no Hollywood glamour here.

This isn’t meant to be a scandalous shocker with a lot of overt sexual innuendos and drunkenness. It’s a true tale about the lives of very unhappy people, all affected by the toughness of the times.

There’s no fabrication for any of them.

Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins, though they have no scenes together, play off each other with contradicting characters sharing the same type of heart. Both honestly love Jim, but, as Hopkins tells him, “There’s one that always gets there first.” Their lives are in two complete directions. Fanny is a society girl living in a beautiful art deco apartment and comfortably adjusted to her husband’s wealth, while Rosie is working class. She hasn’t had it easy, as her brother makes clear, and she’s been used and lied to by almost everyone she has ever trusted.

Fanny knows none of that. The only pain she knows is how Jim can make her feel.

Kay is given a lot of redundant lines about loving Jim anyway, while the image of a dead Miriam Hopkins hanging over the side of the bed is the first image that pops into my mind when I think of this movie. Their camera time is about the same, but, please, this is a showcase for Miriam, who has the best character of the entire film.

Directed brilliantly by Marion Gering, 24 Hours has been unfairly relegated to bootlegged DVD copies from third or fourth generation transfers. For 1930s movie fans, it’s a great example of how well even the simplest of stories could be produced if done with the right budget, people, and direction.

Anyone interested in old movies is sure to find it admirable, especially when viewing on a snowy winter night.

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Storm at Daybreak (1933)

2009-11-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

Cast:

Kay Francis ... Irina Radovic
Nils Asther ... Capt. Geza Petery
Walter Huston ... Mayor Dushan Radovic
Phillips Holmes ... Csaholyi
Eugene Pallette ... Janos
C. Henry Gordon ... Panto Nikitch
Louise Closser Hale ... Militza Brooska
Jean Parker ... Danitza

Directed by Richard Boleslavsky.
Produced by Lucien Hubbard.
Based on the play "Black-Stemmed Cherries" by Sandor Hunyady.
Adapted by Bertram Millhauser.
Original Music by Dr. William Axt.
Cinematography by George Folsey.
Edited by Margaret Booth.
Costumes by Adrian.
Sound Direction by Douglas Shearer.

Released July 21, 1933.
A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Picture.

Box Office Numbers
Cost of Production: $280,000
Domestic Gross: $302,000
Forgein Gross: $334,000
Total Gross: $636,000
Profit: $121,000

Background:

Throughout the 1920s and 30s, after the chaos of World War I had calmed down in America, there were a slew of anti-war movies which featured screen giants in complicated plots playing characters whose lives were forever altered by the effects of war.

The message throughout these movies: War is BAD!

Greta Garbo had one of her most potent box office successes in Mata Hari (1931), playing the World War I spy opposite Lionel Barrymore and Latin lover Ramon Novarro (in their first and last screen appearance together). So it was no surprise when Metro Goldwyn Mayer purchased the rights to Sandor Hunyadi’s “Black Stemmed Cherries” with her in mind. Revolving around the life of a woman, her husband, and her lover, who is her husband’s best friend, “Cherries” began with the events leading up to and after the War, taking place within the countryside of Austrian-Hungary.

The exotic location would have been perfect for MGM’s Swedish superstar, but when contractual differences led to her absence from the screen for all of 1933, MGM contacted Warner Brothers for the use of their top female star, Kay Francis, whose striking looks and distant personality fitted nicely into a role which probably would have been to bland for Garbo, if the location itself hadn‘t.

This was the third screen paring of Kay Francis and Walter Huston, who had costarred with Kay in a similar film, The Virtuous Sin (1930), just three years earlier at Paramount.

Directed by Richard Boleslavsky, Storm At Daybreak did little for the reputations for those who participated in its production. Though it’s a nice little film, it has understandably become more forgotten as the years have passed, with little to it to garner attention from the mass audiences. Such a film remains a classic for those seriously passionate about any of the stars featured, or men who worked in the backgrounds to make it.

Below: A behind the scenes shot of Kay in costume.

Review:

Storm at Daybreak takes place within the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. It is June 28, 1914, and Archduke Ferdinand has just been assassinated by the Serbians. Young men, as young as twenty years of age, are drafted regardless of their inexperience with the service.

Tensions ride high between the Hungarians and Serbs, which cause some Serbs to desert their homeland to avoid having to fight with the Hungarian Army. Such deserters take refuge in the home of Serbian Irina Radovic, without the knowledge of her husband, Dushan, who is good friends with Captain Geza Petery of the Hungarian Army.

When the soldiers ride up to the Radovic home to look for deserters, Dushan invites Geza and his men in for a good time. Dushan gives his word that there are no men in the house, and asks Geza to spend the night. While Irina is playing a very sensual song over the piano, Geza hears deserters leaving while Dushan insists that he had no knowledge of them in his house until after he had given his word. Geza lets the situation go, his friendship with Dushan is to valuable, but Geza can not escape his feelings for Irina, Dushan’s wife.

On a train, Irina recognizes Geza amongst the wounded, and tells Dushan, who insists on having Geza stay in his home. It is here where the romance between Irina and Geza really takes off, though the two do not get intimate with each other outside of a passionate embrace and kiss.

When Dushan becomes aware of what is going on, he refuses to warn Geza that soldiers---among them a former friend named Panto---are arriving at his home to arrest him on treason. Irina pleads with him to go, and when she gets into a confrontation with Dushan over her love for Geza, she takes off on foot to warn him.

This is made even more dramatic by the dangerous rainstorm and thunder and lightening outside.

Dushan storms into Geza’s, where he finds his former friend and wife together, thinking that there is more to their love than there really is, and starts to strangle Geza. When he becomes aware that nothing really happened between the two, that they are two people who love each other dearly, but love Dushan enough to not have sex behind his back, he decides to save Geza’s life so the two can be happy together.

Sneaky Panto arrives to arrest Geza, but Dushan tells them that Geza has run off with Irina, and that he may go with him to find the two, and charge Geza and eventually execute him. Panto becomes aware of what is going on and the horse carriage over turns from high speed and tumbles down a cliff into the sea.

Dushan and Panto are killed, allowing Geza and Irina to finally be as one.

This is an iffy one. It has fans, but it has many people who can care less about this production. Certainly this isn’t the best example of Kay Francis’ or Walter Huston’s work, but it’s not a bad movie, either.

Kay is photographed rather unattractively, with her hairstyles being some of the worst she every sported in her movie career. The loosely pulled back look doesn’t work for her, and neither does the overly long one, with jet black locks curling down to her waist. Her gowns aren’t really attractive, and there is only one beautiful shot of her, and that one is when she sees Geza on the train.

Now I don’t have much to write about her performance, either. Again, it’s not bad, but it’s certainly not good. Her best scene is when she has the confrontation with Walter Huston over his decision not to warn Geza about Panto. She insists he let her go, and when he doesn’t, she shouts at him, jerks her arms out of his hands, and storms out the door.

That is the first scene with her that pops into my head when I think of this movie.

Walter Huston is exceptional as Dushan. He is brutish, and slightly repulsing. Insane with jealousy, he is at his best in the scenes where he realizes that Geza and Irina love each other. If this would have been a better movie, he might have gotten a little more credit for his performance in this one.

Rounding out the staring cast, Nils Asther becomes, thankfully, more masculine than I can remember seeing him for some time. With his pretty boy days behind him, and his career seriously on the wane, all of his star personality---for which he was so famous for in the silent movies of the 1920s---has disappeared here.

There are three major bonuses to Storm at Daybreak that make it desirable. The first is the realistic feel that director Richard Boleslawski and his crew gave the film in terms of settings and costumes. There is a very real feeling that we are sitting, watching a candid movie reel of people who actually lived through the First World War in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

The second is the montage effects of the war. There are some really eye-catching shots, most notable skeletons in uniform while officers shout orders in hostile voices.

The third and final bonus is the shadowy lighting, pre-dating the whole film noir movement by nearly a decade, Storm At Daybreak relies heavily on shadows and give a dramatic mood which is in tuned nicely with the decent performances by able players like Francis, Asther, and, especially Huston.

It’s not the best movie, but it’s not the worst, Certainly Storm at Daybreak deserves a good watching from fans interested in this sort of War-time drama.

Below: Walter Huston's brutish character dominated most of the film.

Vintage Reviews:

Published in the New York Times, July 22, 1933.
The commonplaces of romance have a familiar look, even in the Balkans, to which the new picture at the Capitol transports its audiences this week. "Storm at Daybreak" deals with the unhappy lot of an ardent Hungarian who finds it equally impossible to live with or without a handsome Serb who happens to be the wife of his best friend. Quartered for a large part of the war in his friend's home, he heroically declines the wife's invitation to make her the happiest woman in Serbia, out of deference to his old comrade. Although Richard Boleslavsky has made a good looking production and filled it with the huzzahs and halloos that go with picturesque costumes and romantic warfare, "Storm at Daybreak" is a dull entertainment.

Mischa Auer, looking properly morbid, murders the Austrian archduke and his consort in an effective recreation of the Serajevo assassination early in the film. It is also possible to enjoy the ironical spectacle of the Serbs dashing gallantly to battle against the Germans in comic opera uniforms, riding fretful chargers and taking gay farewells of the peasant lasses. A great many of them return from the front in hospital boxcars, broken and terrified by the slaughter-house methods of warfare employed by their more up-to-date opponents. In these scenes Mr. Boleslavsky reveals a small part of his talent.

But "Storm at Daybreak" is concerned less with the war than with the troubled triangle represented by Nils Asther as the passionate officer, Kay Francis as the young wife, and Walter Huston as the peasant land owner who is the husband. Although they know it is madness and make a conscientious effort to keep out of each other's way, the lovers are continually thrown together by the hospitable and unsuspecting husband. When the truth comes out, Mr. Huston has the opportunity to express his displeasure in several scenes that somewhat relieve the monotony of a domestic triangle in which the dialogue is as ordinary as possible. Finally, in a burst of magnanimity, he drives off into a night that is filled with the conventional rain and storm and commits suicide by taking his carriage over a gorge, accompanied by his worst enemy.

Mr. Asther has a romantic manner that is pleasantly suave, and Mr. Huston blusters picturesquely as the husband. Although Miss Francis is as attractive as always, she hardly seems suited to the enigmatic and mysterious qualities demanded in the rôle of the wife.

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My Bill (1938)

2009-05-31T19:00:00.001-07:00

Cast:

Kay Francis ... Mary Colbrook
Bonita Granville ... Gwendolyn 'Gwen' Colbrook
John Litel ... John C. Rudlin, Bank President
Anita Louise ... Muriel Colbrook
Bobby Jordan ... Reginald 'Reggie' Colbrook Jr.
Dickie Moore ... William 'Bill' Colbrook
Maurice Murphy ... Lynn Willard, Muriel's Fiancé
Elisabeth Risdon ... Aunt Caroline Colbrook
Helena Phillips Evans ... Mrs. Adelaide 'Duchess' Crosby
John Ridgely ... Mr. Martin the Florist
Sidney Bracey ... Jenner, Aunt Caroline's Butler
Bernice Pilot ... Beulah the Colbrook Maid
Jan Holm ... Miss Kelly, Rudlin's Secretary

Directed by John Farrow.
Produced by Bryan Foy.
Based on the play "Courage" by Tom Barry.
Screenplay by Vincent Sherman and Robertson White.
Gowns by Orry-Kelly.
Cinematography by Sidney Hickox.
Musical Direction by Leo F. Forbstein.
Original Music by Howard Jackson.
Film Editing by Frank Magee.

A First National Picture.
Released July 9, 1938.

Background:

“If Warner Brothers forced Kay Francis,” columnist Jimmie Fidler argued in a 1938 article for the San Francisco Chronicle, “to play a middle-aged mother of four adolescents in My Bill in an effort to discipline her, their plan has boomeranged laughably. The picture, previewed a few nights ago, is a triumph rather than a humiliation for Kay.”

Enthusiastic reviews like Fidler’s kept Kay Francis fans hoping that Warner Brothers would come around and give her career the great big sigh of relief that it needed. But his words far stretched the importance My Bill represented in the career of Kay Francis. My Bill was hardly a triumph in Kay’s career, but it did have the distinction of being the first B film of her career as a major Hollywood star. Also, it was the success of the film which gave the production executives at Warner Brothers a much deserved slap in the face.

After reigning as the most popular female star at Warner Brothers for much of the 1930s, Kay Francis’ career hit its peak during the 1936 and 1937 movie seasons. It was at this time she was featured in literally hundreds of publications, voted the sixth most popular star in the entire movie industry by Variety, and receiving the highest weekly salary of any other person in Hollywood, $5,250. However, it was also at this time when her relationship with the Warner Brothers executives began to dissolve.

Though her films were making good money at the box office, they felt that she was being paid too much, and when she began to have differences with them over the type of films she should be making, she filed a lawsuit against the studio to end her contract and allow herself to freelance as an artist.

From this came one of the most notorious big star v. bad studio wars in the history of the entire movie industry; one which still lingers like a black cloud over the history of the Warner Brothers studios.

At first, Kay’s demands to be released from her contract were ignored by the executives. She was far too popular to let her get away, but, in an interesting twist of sides, somehow the Kay Francis v. Warner Brothers battle ended with her staying on to collect her impressive salary, and their eagerness to do anything which would humiliate her enough to the point where she’d quit. They lowered her billing, filled her scripts with r’s and l’s (which she couldn’t pronounce), and forced her into what would become some of the worst films of her career.

My Bill was supposed to be one of those films.

Tom Barry’s 1928 play “Courage” opened in New York that same year starring Janet Breecher as a single mother of seven children, at least one of whom may be illegitimate. It was adapted for the screen by Warner Brothers in 1930 with Belle Bennett as the mother in a picture directed by Archie Mayo, who later directed Kay in Give Me Your Heart (1936), among other films.

Bryan Foy, a B movie producer for the Warner Brothers-First National Studios, was unimpressed with the original script, and fired that writer and replaced him with Vincent Sherman. On a Thursday afternoon Sherman was given the assignment, and told to hand in a finished script for My Bill to Foy’s office by Monday morning. Within that three-day period, Sherman managed to rush through the writing to complete his assignment on time, a flaw in the finished picture which stuck out like a sore thumb.

Production began March 31, 1938 and concluded on April 25. John Farrow was set to direct Kay as a forty-six-year-old mother with four children, one of whom was played by actress Anita Louise, who was only ten years younger than Kay, then only thirty-three, when the film was produced.

The New York Times dismissed My Bill as “all too pat, too incredible, too unimportant.” But the public did respond to the film, giving it a much more generous reception than it had met with the critics. In fact, My Bill proved to be popular enough to be revived on the radio again on March 3, 1941 when Kay and Warren William starred in a version of the play on Lux Radio Theatre.

Today My Bill holds little importance in the careers of any of the people who worked on it. Kay Francis became most remembered for her top-notch films like I Found Stella Parish (1935) and Confession (1937). Anita Louise is best remembered as a supporting actress in films like Anthony Adverse (1936) and Marie Antoinette (1938), and Bonita Granville is most remembered for her role as Nancy Drew in the recurring series.

Below: Kay Francis in a publicity still for My Bill. Many critics over the years have noted Kay's wardrobe as a single mother of four on the verge of financial ruin. Some consider that the film gave her the opportunity to be less glamorous, while others insist that she still was overdressed. I'll let you be the judge of that.

Webmaster's Review:

In Colbrook, Massachusetts, widow Mary Colbrook is raising her four children, Gwen, Muriel, Reginald, and Bill. She is the widow of Reginald Colbrook, who’s father William founded the city years ago. Because of this they are a well known family in town, but rumors and gossip linger around their household about Mary’s faithfulness to her late husband. In the eyes of many, Bill is an illegitimate child Mary had with lover John C. Rudlin, a banker in town. Caroline Colbrook, Reginald’s sister, is especially suspicious of Mary, and has decided that now is the time to do something about the future for Gwen, Muriel, and Reginald.

Unfortunately, Mary wasn’t wise with the money she was left by her late husband. She has squandered most of the family fortune by trying to live a lifestyle she couldn’t afford, and now the creditors and bankers are after their possessions. While Gwen is practicing her piano, Reginald walks in, distraught because the family credit isn’t even reliable enough for him to buy a simple tie. When men come to take the piano away from the house, Gwen, Reginald, and Muriel become suspicious of their own Mother. They insult the way she has managed the family finances, which may seem reasonable at first, but not when one comes to learn of their high demands.

Muriel insists that if she doesn’t get a new dress, she will refuse to go to her fiancé’s party. Reginald demands to know who is going to pay for his college. And Gwen babbles on with meaningless complaints about everything Mary does wrong in her eyes. The only child of Mary’s who appreciates her is Bill, who calls her “Sweetheart.”

Bill hates his siblings. He sees them for the spoiled, arrogant, and rude bunch they really are. His view on life is, if you want a new dress, save up the money and buy it yourself. If you want to go to college, get a job and take night classes. And the less time you leave for complaining, the more time you have for doing. Most importantly, if you see that your mother is in a financial disaster, try to help her out of it, instead of criticizing and belittling her every move.

They don’t see it his way, and pack up their things and move in with their Aunt Caroline, leaving Mary and Bill to fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, Bill has come across an unlikely friend. Playing football, he kicks one right through the window of old Mrs. Crosby, a woman rumored to be a bitter recluse. Bill befriends her after a rocky start, and becomes the only friend she can count on.

Mary is helped out considerably by Rudlin, which raises the eyebrows of Aunt Caroline, confirming the rumors in her mind of Mary’s relationship with him, and the fact that he may indeed be Bill’s real father. When the money runs out entirely, Bill starts a newspaper stand because Mary has trouble finding a job. With nothing left to keep them in Colbrook, Mary decides that it is time for her and Bill to pack up and move to New York City, where the work will be easier to find.

Bill runs over to Mrs. Crosby’s house, finding her in a serious condition. She is dying, and insists that Mary and Bill move in with her. They do so, and stick with her until the very end, and she rewards them by leaving Bill as the sole heir of her rich estate.

Gwen, Muriel, and Reginald have grown tired of Aunt Caroline’s stuck up attitude, and her insults about their own mother. They decide to return to Bill and Mary after Rudlin makes the facts clear to Reginald and Muriel that they need to grow up.

The film ends with Aunt Caroline being thrown out, the family being reunited, and Mary giving the explanation of what happened with Rudlin in front of Caroline and the children. As it turns out, they did love each other, but before Mary married Reginald, who was cruel and demeaning towards her. He accused her of having an affair with Rudlin, producing Bill as a result, but that wasn’t the case. Bill is just as much of a Colbrook as Gwen, Muriel, Reginald, and even Aunt Caroline are.

The children agree that it is time for Mary and Rudlin to finally be together.

This is such an over the top, corny film, but I love it. It’s not brilliant, intelligent, or obviously realistic, but it’s one of those movies that’s so cheesy it’s good. One could compare it to the Brady Bunch Television series in that sense.

Kay is really cheerful in this one. So much so it’s refreshing, and, as Lynn Kear pointed out in her books on Kay, she couldn’t have been happy during the filming of My Bill. So for those who want to belittle Kay’s talent as an actress, turn to this one to see how well she could disguise herself in a role. Not once does she come off as annoying, which other actresses would have done so with such a character as Mary Colbrook. She is quite a doormat, but Kay does a good job with her characterization.

This is a picture which may make one rethink the idea of having children. Bonita Granville, Bobby Jordan, and even the usually pleasing Anita Louise are rotten little brats who are long overdue for a good smack across their faces. Props to them for going for no sympathy here. They are so rotten, even at the end of the picture when they return home one is almost disappointed. It would have been nice to see Mary and Bill slam the door in their faces.

Stealing most of the picture, which is odd since he’s last billed under the leading cast, is Dickie Moore. He plays Bill almost as well as Mickey Rooney was playing Andy Hardy at Metro Goldwyn Mayer. After watching a few scenes of this movie, it makes one think that maybe Warner Brothers could have given his character a short series.

When one wants to think of the typical, low-budgeted, Hollywood programmer for small town America of the 1930s, no other picture than My Bill should come to mind. It’s quick, cheesy, and to the point. It wastes no time as mindless entertainment and ends almost as quickly as it begins.

One can see why some people really love this movie, and Kay Francis in it.

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Guilty Hands (1931)

2009-04-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

Cast:
Lionel Barrymore ... Richard Grant
Kay Francis ... Marjorie West
Madge Evans ... Barbara 'Babs' Grant
William Bakewell ... Tommy Osgood
C. Aubrey Smith ... Reverend Hastings
Polly Moran ... Aunt Maggie
Alan Mowbray ... Gordon Rich
Forrester Harvey ... Spencer Wilson
Charles Crockett ... H.G. Smith
Henry A. Barrows ... Harvey Scott

Produced by Hunt Stromberg & Lionel Barrymore.
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke & Lionel Barrymore.
Story and Screenplay by Bayard Veiller.
Cinematography by Merrit B. Gerstad.
Film Editing by Anne Bauchens.
Wardrobe by Rene Hubert.
Recording by Douglas Shearer.
Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons.

A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Picture.
Released August 28, 1931.

Box-office Information:
Cost of Production: $152,000.
Domestic Gross: $452,000.
Forgeign Gross: $234,000.
Total Gross: $686,000.
Profit: $282,000.

Background:

Metro Goldwyn Mayer…the powerhouse of the major three studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Kay Francis would complete four films for the company throughout her film career: Passion Flower (1930), Guilty Hands, Storm At Daybreak (1933), and The Feminine Touch (1941). All have a notable aspect to them regarding Kay’s career, but of the four, Guilty Hands was undoubtedly the best.

We can trace the brilliance of Guilty Hands back to two men, Lionel Barrymore, who not only starred in the film but co-directed it with W.S. Van Dyke, and Bayard Veiller, the legendary playwright who wrote the story and screenplay Guilty Hands was based upon.

Barrymore…like all other Barrymores…came to promise via stage success. He had done work in a few silent movies, but it wasn’t until his Madame X (1929), with Ruth Chatterton, where he found a home in Hollywood. Barrymore did not appear in Madame X, his was work was limited to directing only. He had received an Oscar nomination for his work on the film, and subsequently given an extended contract with MGM, which had produced and released Madame X to great success.

Following Madame X, he starred in The Mysterious Island (1929) for MGM, before remaining off the screen for two years, making his triumphant return opposite Norma Shearer in MGM’s A Free Soul (1931). The film earned him an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Barrymore went to work on Guilty Hands right after production on Free Soul wrapped.

Bayard Veiller had been a playwright and director of notable success, most famously with The Trial of Mary Dugan, a crime drama which starred Ann Harding on the New York stage and was brought to the screen with Norma Shearer in the title role. Veiller had worked on the final script for the film version while directing it as well. The Trial of Mary Dugan emerged as one of MGM’s most important films of the early talking years, considerably raising the fame and prestige of Norma Shearer and the studio.

Following Mary Dugan, Veiller brought his Within the Law to the screen via MGM with Joan Crawford in the film version, retitled Paid (1930). It was another hands-down success, allowing the genre of the crime drama to emerge in full bloom.

With Barrymore’s and Veiller’s success in the new genre, MGM decided to pair the two men in an original production and let the creative ideas really flow. With this came Guilty Hands, a film more thoroughly entertaining than Mary Dugan, Madame X, and Paid combined. As where the earlier three films had their slow moments, Guilty Hands would flow smoothly and quickly, with a sixty-some minute pace which rivaled that of even Warner Brothers, who could produce quality entertainment in a shorter running time better than any other studio.

Somehow in the midst of all of this, Barrymore, Veiller, and MGM decided that they needed Kay Francis for the role of Marjorie West. Her casting is still a mystery, but she must have impressed someone at the studio with her manipulative vamp roles at Paramount, for MGM was a studio with a roster of female stars better than any other in Hollywood.

Luckily, Paramount was more than willing to loan Kay out, and in return she got one of the best roles of her pre-Warner Brothers career.

After completing the unmentionable Vice Squad (1931) for Paramount, which featured Kay in yet another thankless second-rate lead, the studio loaned her out to RKO where she could be the star of her next picture, Transgression (1931). Transgression was a glossy soap-opera, but enjoyable and proof that Kay Francis could indeed be a star of her own films. Guilty Hands provided her with a complete turn-around.

Production on the film began June 4, 1931, and was completed on June 22. Originally, it was to be titled Shadows on the Wall, but this was changed prior to the preview of the film. Photoplay considered Guilty Hands “One of the best murder yarns produced, in which Lionel Barrymore gives an excellent and highly polished performance…Kay Francis and Madge Evans also contribute excellent performances.”

The other reviews were also largely favorable, but the film was neglected at the Academy Awards the following year. Still, it has the distinction of being one of the most intriguing films of the early talkie years in Hollywood. Few films of this era remain as watchable to modern audiences as Guilty Hands does.

Webmaster's Review:

Behind the titles we see decrepit hands…this gives a morbid mood from the beginning.

The film opens on a train. Richard Grant, a district attorney in New York for decades, is now returning home to slow down on his work. He prides himself on being an expert with murder, and states to others that there are some cases where it is justified.

Then there are other cases where it is not. That becomes the question we must answer by the final reel of this movie.

When he reaches his stop, he is greeted by his daughter, Barbara. At Gordon Rich’s home, Richard becomes perplexed with Gordon’s declaration of his intentions to marry Barbara. Richard knows Gordon too well to give his consent, and when Gordon tells him that there is nothing Richard can do to stop him. Richard throws out that he can murder him and get away with it.

Gordon is a man---if one can call him that---of a shady past, filled with the broken hearts of many innocent, young women. One of these girls was only sixteen when she threw herself from a high-rise building over her rejection from Gordon’s life. Richard will not let his daughter become one of those young ladies.

At a dinner to announce his plans to marry Barbara, Gordon upsets Marjorie West considerably. Marjorie is the one Gordon has left all of the money to in his will, and is really the one woman he will ever allow to love him fully, but he will not marry her. They have a questionable relationship, which makes one wonder how such an intelligent girl like Marjorie allow herself to be pushed around by a pig like Gordon.

But, then again, she can have the satisfaction of knowing she is the one woman who will come the closest to winning his heart, even if he will never even consider the idea of a marriage between the two of them. Even when the two meet after the dinner, Gordon tells Marjorie that he pretty much just going to marry Barbara to have her sexually---there is nothing more to their relationship, and he will return to her as he always does.

It is this trait of Gordon’s personality which fuels Richard’s determination to protect his daughter.

Sneaking into Gordon’s room, with the thunder outside to disguise the noise, Richard creeps up upon Gordon and shoots him straight through the heart. He places the gun in Gordon’s hand, and makes his way back to his bungalow. When he his informed that Gordon is dead, he rushes over and automatically declares suicide.

Since he was district attorney in New York for decades, no one dares question him. No one but Marjoie, that is.

Determined by her love for Gordon, Marjorie returns to Richard’s bungalow to figure things out. She discovers that a paper cut out of a facial profile placed on a moving phonograph can easily give the appearance of a shadowy figure walking up and down a room. She discovers that this was Richard’s way of proving that he was “in his room” the entire time. From outside, one would just presume that someone was pacing back and forth, but Marjorie knows better than this nonsense.

Back in Gordon’s room, she and Richard go back and forth over the whole suicide/murder speculation. Richard confesses that, yes, he did kill Gordon, but that she is only going to hang herself if she makes an issue out of this. As “the other woman,” Richard can easily prosecute her as the real killer, enraged by her jealousy of Gordon’s marriage to Barbara.

When the police come, she keeps her mouth shut, and the entire thing is written off as a suicide, but Gordon does manage to get his revenge on Richard. How? Well, you’ll have to watch this one to get the real details. It’s a great thriller, and I don’t want to give too much away.

For such a tiny film, Guilty Hands (1931) is incredible; clearly one of the best murder films Hollywood ever produced. The two distinct characters in the film are Lionel Barrymore’s Richard Grant and Kay Francis’ Marjorie West.

As Grant, Barrymore gives one of his best performances. Fresh off of his success in A Free Soul (1931), the film which garnered him his only Academy Award, he turns in a performance that, in my mind, at least, tops his Stephen Ashe. He is morally corrupt as Grant, suggesting from the beginning that not all murders are at the hands of killers. There are certain circumstances where it is justified, but, unfortunately, the end of Guilty Hands proves that his reason didn’t justify his actions.

He makes one hell of an attempt to prove his innocence, though. Marjorie is only one who questions his decision that Gordon shot himself out of guilt for his shady past.

Speaking of Marjorie, I would like to add that this is Kay Francis at her peak form during her early Hollywood years. She still seems a little green behind the ears, making facial expressions which kind of distract from her over all performance, but she is incredible to watch. Placed in good hands---Barrymore, Madge Evans, C. Aubrey Smith---she is on screen for nearly ten minutes before she scolds her first line, “That child. A mere child!” During that time she is given some interesting close-ups, suggesting there is a highly complex and clever character inside the appearance of this beautiful young woman. The shot of her playing the harp, as well as her reactions to Gordon’s announcing of his plans to marry Barbara, are most significant.

Marjorie West proved to be one of the most intelligent characters Kay Francis ever played onscreen.

Madge Evans does good with her virginal Barbara. She’s a saintly-soul, but not in such a way where she gets on the nerves of the audience. There is only one scene where she comes close to this, and that is when Gordon comes to just give her a simple kiss goodnight. Her reaction to the whole situation is a little ridiculous, but it motivates the plot.

Watch for Barrymore’s reaction where she tells him she had decided not to marry Gordon after the kiss.

There’s no musical score with the exception of the opening and closing credits. Barrymore rarely used music in his films, advancing the melodrama considerably. Barrymore’s Madame X (1929), with Ruth Chatterton, doesn’t even have a score for the opening credits, and no sound of music throughout the entire film. Surprisingly, this does not dull one minute of Guilty Hands at all.

Credric Gibbons’ sets are also of noteworthy importance. The house is beautifully decorated, the ideal setting of a murder mystery as intense as this one is. There are a lot of dramatic decorations which really help set a suspenseful mood. Whether or not this was intentional is beyond me. Metro Goldwyn Mayer did things a little differently than the other studios.

This is a great one. I’d recommend it to anybody just willing to watch a good movie on a stormy, weekend evening.

Movie Art:

About this site...

2009-04-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

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

Links to other Kay sites:

The Kay Francis Fan Page

I Can't Wait to be Forgotten

The Kay Francis Website

Links to sites I like:

Joan Crawford: The Best of Everything

Divas: The Site

Garbo Forever

Dr. Macro's High-Quality Movie Scans

Classic Movies: Everything for the Classic Film Fan

The Ultimate Cary Grant Pages

Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy: A Tribute

The Films of Joan Crawford

The Life and Legend of Carole Lombard

The Ravin Maven of Classic Film

Mandalay (1934)

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Cast:
Kay Francis ... Tanya "Spot White" Borisoff
Ricardo Cortez ... Tony Evans
Warner Oland ... Nick
Lyle Talbot ... Dr. Gregory Burton
Ruth Donnelly ... Mrs. George Peters
Lucien Littlefield ... Mr. George Peters
Reginald Owen ... Colonel Thomas Dawson, Police Commissioner
Etienne Girardot ... Mr. Abernathie
David Torrence ... Captain McAndrews of the Sirohi
Rafaela Ottiano ... Madame Lacalles
Halliwell Hobbes ... Col. Dawson Ames
Bodil Rosing ... Mrs. Kleinschmidt
Herman Bing ... Prof. Kleinschmidt

Directed by Michael Curtiz.
Produced by Robert Presnell & Hal B. Wallis.
Based on the story by Paul Hervy Fox.
Screenplay by Austin Parker & Charles Kenyon.
Cinematography by Tony Gaudio.
Film Editing by Thomas Pratt.
Art Direction by Anton Grot.
Costume Design by Orry-Kelly.
Music Direction by Leo F. Forbstein.
Music Composition by Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal, & Heinz Roemheld.

A First National Picture.
Released February 15, 1934.

Box Office Numbers:
Cost of Production: $294,000
Domestic Gross: (?)
Forgein Gross: (?)
Total Gross: $629,000
Profit: $83,462

Background:

Oh, boy…where does one even begin to start a blog post about Mandalay (1934)?

Well, I guess I’ll start off with the basics…Mandalay was based on a story by Paul Hervy Fox, and involved a young woman who faces the ultimate betrayal from the one man she truly loves. To pay off his debts, Tony Evans sells his fiancé, Tanya Borisoff, into the sex trade by conducting a corrupt deal with the owner of Nick’s Place, one of the most notorious brothels in Rangoon. At the notorious whorehouse, Tanya is taken advantage of, smacked around, and becomes notorious herself as “Spot-White,” singing the tediously titled “When Tomorrow Comes…” as part of her act.

But Tanya perseveres, freeing herself of her conscious and getting revenge on the only person she assumed she could trust.

Ruth Chatterton was the first choice for the lead in this film, made at the First National studios where Ruth had once reigned supreme. As she turned down stellar film offers such as Mandalay and The House on 56th Street (1933), they subsequently went to Kay, who transformed herself into the biggest star at the Warner Brothers-First National studios with Chatterton’s leftovers. Within a few months of completion on Mandalay, Chatterton was finished with the studio, and returned to New York with the hopes of reviving her stage career.

Interestingly, though, Mandalay was not only conceived as a vehicle for Ruth, but also her soon to be ex-husband George Brent. Both walked off the film for different reasons, Brent was in the middle of a contract dispute with the company which caused them to replace him with Ricardo Cortez. No choice could have been better.

Ricardo Cortez and Kay Francis appeared together for the third time together in Mandalay. Previously, they had worked together in Transgression (1931) and The House on 56th Street. After Mandalay finished shooting, the two were paired in Wonder Bar for the fourth in final time. It would be wise to note that the irresistibly sleazy “Latin Lover” (in reality he was Austrian) was murdered in all four of their films together, but his death wasn’t limited to his work with Kay alone, either. He was murdered in quite a good percentage of his films. Figure that one out.

Production began October 17, 1933 and concluded a month later. Of course the censors had a fit with Michael Curtiz’s finished film. But it was condemned before the cameras even finished rolling, appearing on a list of films complied by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which forbid the Catholics to spend their spare dimes on watching Kay parade a revealing collection of gowns in a notorious bordello in Rangoon, murdering her former lover and getting away with it in the end (sorry, but the “holy” need to keep their opinions quiet).

Luckily, all the Catholic fuss didn’t hurt Mandalay’s financial earnings, or Kay’s career. In fact, she benefited greatly off of the production, earning rave reviews and a salary increase the following year and proving that there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of sin once in a while.

Webmaster's Review:

Mandalay opens and takes place not in Mandalay, but mostly in Rangoon and on a steamship to Mandalay. In the opening scene, establishing location in Rangoon, we see Tony Evans discussing a financial deal with Nick, the owner of the most notorious and popular brothel in Rangoon. Tony agrees to stop by Nick’s place that night, and returns to his yacht where his beautiful girlfriend Tanya Borisoff has been relaxing in the sun all day.

Tony tells her to get ready, put on her white dress with the most “lovely” flowers wrapped around her shoulders. As she gets undressed and approaches the tub, she catches Tony playfully watching and runs over to him where the two embrace and kiss.

As Tanya and Tony enter Nick’s place, Tanya is in awe of the openness of the atmosphere, asking Tony “all these girls, Tony, what are they?”

“Just like café girls anywhere.”

“You mean?”

“Yes, my dear. That’s exactly what I mean.”

When Tanya follows Nick and Tony upstairs while they discuss their financial dilemma, she sits at a piano and begins to beautifully sing “When Tomorrow Comes…” Nick walks in to tell her that Tony has traded her into the sex trade, and she is now property of Nick’s. She struggles to resist, and her smacks her out of rage to keep her in line.

Depressed, Tanya doesn’t eat. She is given priceless information by an older, wiser countess, who instructs Tanya to stop making a fool of herself. Starving herself isn’t going to free her, but taking advantage of the men who come to the brothel will. The Countess instructs her to use men, take them for everything they have and use it against them.

Now equipped with the Countess’ tips on how to survive, Tanya makes a spectacular entrance into the brothel wearing a gold-sequined gown topped with an overly exaggerated feathered scarf. We see a montage of her smoking, drinking, dancing, and accepting jewelry from generous suitors.

Eventually, Tanya becomes the most notorious woman in Rangoon, prompting the police to execute plans to deport her back to Russia. She blackmails the officer, who has once come to Nick’s place himself for a little entertainment from Tanya, now known as “Spot White,” into giving her a huge amount of money to get herself financially stable and on her own two feet.

She runs away from Nick’s place and boards a steamship to Mandalay. There she meets an alcoholic doctor on his way to the same location, only going further inland to help fight an epidemic of black fever. It’s a suicide mission; as soon as he helps the village recover, he will likely die of the disease himself, but he insists that he must go, and that Tanya would never understand.

Onboard that steamship, Tanya runs into Tony, who goes out of his way to get her alone where he tries to make love to her. She fights him off, but the creep still doesn’t get it. He insists that they can go somewhere and open up their own brothel and make Tanya the headlining attraction. She refuses, and poisons him by slipping something into his drink.

“I loved you, Tony,” she tells him. “I loved you more than life. And what did you make of me? Spot White. I couldn’t go back to that. I couldn’t! Forgive me.”

He reaches out for her throat, but then throws himself overboard.

The next day, the ship arrives in Mandalay, and Tanya and the doctor head on for the black fever epidemic, knowing that they will die as a result.

I can’t stress how beautiful Kay appears in this film. From the establishing shot of her on Tony’s yacht, to the final walk into Mandalay, she is gorgeous. Her beautiful, tanned dark skin is contrasted by white gowns, and her hair is more grown out, with those jet black locks of curls flowing down to her shoulders. Rangoon was the perfect location for her exotic good looks, and she appears more exotic in this film than any of the others she ever made.

Her performance as Tanya is capable. It’s one of her best films, and a role which certainly isn’t that challenging, though Tanya’s circumstance is a little bit drastic. This is a well disguised attempt from First National Pictures to make Kay look like she’s acting when in reality she’s just doing what she does best: wearing stunning clothes and suffer in melodramatic situations.

For me, the most memorable aspect of this movie is Tanya's entrance into Nick's Place, walking down the stairs wearing that flashy gown. That, along with her entrance to a party in Stolen Holiday (1937) for me are the best she ever made. They don't film stuff like that anymore.

Ricardo Cortez has another role as a sleazy creep with nothing on his mind but financial gain. As in all of his movies, he meets his maker at the end of the film when Tanya poisons him…and gets away with it. Also good is Lyle Talbot as the alcoholic doctor. I like him here much better than I did in Mary Stevens, M.D. In Mandalay he is given a big task, and performs it admirably.

Mandalay was released with a huge success, despite being banned by the Catholic Legion of Decency. The direction by Michael Curtiz is brilliant, and probably would be a great example to show people who have never seen a movie made before 1950 a good example of how great the films from the early 1930s could be.

Vintage Reviews:

Kay Francis is a girl of doubtful past, present and future who eventually casts her lot with an outcast doctor in what an extra reel may have developed as possible reformation for both.

Picture trips along at a nice pace and except for one spot, toward the end, invites no adverse reaction. This is in connection with the faked suicide of Ricardo Cortez, a gun-runner who leaves an empty poison bottle and an open window in his ship's cabin as evidence of his act.

The audience is let in on the phony suicide, whereas it would have been more effective to spring the surprise and the explanation on the audience the same as on people in the cast, notably Francis.

Much of the action [from a story by Paul Hervey Fox] occurs on a boat bound from Rangoon for Mandalay. Earlier sequences are in the former seaport, where the heroine has been forced into a life of doubtful purity when her gun-runner boyfriend takes a run-out powder. This portion of the story isn't as convincing as it might be. Manner in which Warner Oland browbeats her into working for his joint is anything but convincing, either.
Published in Variety, 1934.

The screen of the Strand may be as near as most of us will ever get to Rangoon; if it is, "Mandalay" will make an adequate vicarious substitute. In the new film they have set the sultry picturesqueness of the East down on the screen so neatly that a New Yorker is tempted to throw his overcoat and earmuffs away, and cut a bee-line through the opium smoke to Nick's. Now if a spectator is willing to estimate "Mandalay" by its power to convince him he is no stranger to the sarong and the rickshaw, "Mandalay" is a good deal better than adequate. But what if the story of Tanya, and of Tony, who loved her, and of Nick, who desired her, begins to sound like old stuff in the second reel and becomes tedious by the fourth?

Kay Francis is Tanya in the story. Ricardo Cortez is Tony and Warner Oland is Nick. Tanya has been living with Tony, a munitions smuggler, who is forced to turn his girl over to Nick, the big chief, when he gets in a jam. As hostess in Nick's dive, Tanya sings a song called "When Tomorrow Comes" in a sultry contralto, and indicates, by many a narrowed eyelid that men are a total loss so far as she is concerned. Now, having saved her presents and jewelry, she says good bye to Rangoon and takes a boat for Mandalay, falling in love on the way with a clean-cut American physician who is bound for the black fever country. Meanwhile Tony reappears. He is wanted by the police. Apologizing profusely, Tanya puts poison in his whisky to clear the way for a new start in life.

A fundamental flaw with the film is that Ricardo Cortez generates so much sympathy as the villain that his demise removes the one character for whom the audience feels anything like affection. Warner Oland makes a usual sort of joss house menace, Miss Francis is highly decorative, and Lyle Talbot plays the young physician pleasantly.
Published February 15, 1934 in the New York Times.

Lobby Cards:

[ images appear courtesy of James King ]

Movie Posters:

Secrets of an Actress (1938)

2009-04-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

Cast:
Kay Francis ... Fay Carter
George Brent ... Richard 'Dick' Orr
Ian Hunter ... Peter 'Pete' Snowden
Gloria Dickson ... Mrs. Carla Orr
Isabel Jeans ... Miss Marian Plantagenet
Penny Singleton ... Miss Reid, Orr's Secretary
Dennie Moore ... Miss Blackstone, Snowden's Secretary
Selmer Jackson ... Mr. Thompson
Herbert Rawlinson ... Mr. Harrison
Emmett Vogan ... Joe Spencer, Fay's Agent (as Emmet Vogan)
James B. Carson ... W.P. 'Bill' Carstairs, Theatrical Manager

Directed by William Keighley.
Produced by David Lewis.
Based on the story "Lovely Lady" by Milton Krims.
Original Music by Heinz Roemheld.
Cinematography by Sidney Hickox.
Film Editing by Owen Marks.
Art Direction by Anton Grot.
Costume Design by Orry-Kelly.

A First National Picture.
Released October 8, 1938.

Background:

Secrets of an Actress…a rather intriguing title with a mystique to it which sounds like we’re in for some typical Kay Francis entertainment. As the reels progress, however, we just realize we’re in for Kay Francis. There’s little entertainment in this dud.

Kay Francis’ battle with Warner Brothers was in full-bloom during the production on this one, and their attempts to sabotage her career are evident in the lack of drama, story, and production value. Filming began February 17, 1938 and ended around mid-March.

For unknown reasons, Secrets of an Actress was initially shelved after it completed production at the First National studios. Then under the title of Lovely Lady---taken from Milton Krims’ Lovely Lady, the screenplay which inspired the film---it sat on the shelves until the release of Kay’s next B movie for the studio, My Bill (1938). Suddenly someone decided to dust of the prints, change the title, and Secrets of an Actress was released for theatrical exhibition on October 8, 1938.

Reviews for Secrets of an Actress were moderate; decent but not too enthusiastic. The New York Times noted that the only shocking thing about the picture was that predictable plot was still being used by the major studios. The Motion Picture Herald, however, wrote that “If Vitagraph wants to kill off Kay Francis, they are doing a swell job of it.”

Today, there is only one major detail to the film which makes it mentionable in the Kay Francis history books for a very special reason. This was Kay Francis’ final film with frequent costar George Brent. A sad finale to one of the great teams of the 1930s, years later he named Kay among the most glamorous women to ever appear on the screen (as did many of her costars). Ian Hunter had only one more film with Kay under his belt after this one, Comet Over Broadway (1938).

As with nearly all of the characters she portrayed on screen, however, Kay Francis did perceiver. Her long-awaited comeback would be seen the following year in one of the classiest soap-operas ever made, In Name Only (1939).

Webmaster's Review:

Fay Carter has reached a fork in the road of her acting career. She’s tired of theatrical touring. “There’s no road anymore,” she insists to her agent. “What used to be the road is now a double feature movie, a newsreel, a travelogue---and try to get in on bank night! No.” She gives him an ultimatum “Either I’m going to see my name in lights in New York or quit the profession entirely.”

It’s Broadway or nothing.

Fay gets a decent audition for a good part in a good play, but the producers back out because the financial backers want someone whose a sure box office star. They’re not risking money on an unknown actress to star in a big production and risk the chance of having it flop. The producers, who really see Fay as the lead part in the play, break the news to her by saying that the higher-ups think she’s “too sophisticated to play a milk maid.”

Out with roommate Marian, Fay finds herself again babysitting the other, who has gone on another drinking binge. Marian swings her right arm and hits Peter Snowden, an architect. He helps Fay take her back to their apartment, and between Marian drunkenly falling over both of them, they become acquainted in the back of the car. She tells him that she is an actress, the daughter of Henry Carter, famous for playing Hamlet on the stage for years. As it turns out, of course, Peter and Fay both appeared in one of Henry’s productions together, and Fay goes on about her new ideas for a play she’s written.

Luckily for her, Peter is interested in producing it. He asks his business partner, Dick Orr, to help him with the sets. At lunch, Dick and Fay go back and forth over what chances the production actually has to succeed. After they get nowhere, Fay, Marian, and Peter get Dick to change his mind and chance it.

“Springboard,” starring Fay Carter, opens in New York with Fay as the headlining attraction. It’s a success. “I wanted to show you your city,” Dick tells Fay during an intimate moment the two share on a balcony. “You took possession of it tonight when the curtain rang down on the last act.” They kiss.

Later, Peter unknowingly tells Fay that Dick is married to a world-class bitch named Carla, leaving Fay slightly bitter towards Dick. He sees Carla for a divorce, but she refuses to grant him one. Thinking that there’s no future with Dick, Fay agrees to marry Peter, although she is not in love with him. During a car ride home from a party, he comes to realize that the entire thing is a mistake. So, being played by Ian Hunter, Peter has to come up with a way to get Carla out of the picture for Fay and Dick.

Having drinks with Carla, Peter lies to her, saying he is going to fire Dick, which means Dick will be without a cent. Because of this, Carla agrees to divorce him. Fay tracks Dick down. He is onboard a parting ship for Norway, and she spells out “Carla” on one suitcase so he can read it from the deck, writing “Divorce” on another so he can put the two together.

It clicks in, and he jumps down and embraces Fay.

If My Bill didn’t make it clear to audiences that Kay Francis was old news on the Warner Brothers lot, Secrets of an Actress confirmed it. The plot is so empty, so unimportant, a canvas so blank it makes one wonder why they even stretched it out into the tiny duration it already has. They could have pieced this claptrap together in fifteen minutes and made it maybe slightly more entertaining.

For Kay Francis fans, you need only watch this one for her beautiful hairstyles and gowns. This appears to be the only extravagant part of the movie. And though she’s a little thicker in this one than her previous films, she’s still stunningly beautiful. Kay always looked good with longer hair, and in this one she appears in full advantage of her best features. Aside from her hairstyles, her gowns and hats are elaborately designed, though at times they are a little too over the top for an unknown actress running low on cash to be wearing.

This is one of the few movies in which you’ll see Kay Francis deny a cigarette. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember her having one in the entire film.

Notice how many times the script calls for her to say Dick’s name. In some scenes, she says it more suggestively than others. “Who is the woman with Dick?” Aside from all the R’s she’s given to mispronounce, it becomes clear the studio had the writers trying to make her into a perverted joke for audiences.

This is a good one for fans of Ian Hunter. It’s one of his best romantic leads, and in terms of his pictures with Kay Francis, he is given more time to be with her onscreen. Aside from Stella Parish, White Angel, and Stolen Holiday, their other films having them loving for only so many minutes of the entire print. Watch him when he realizes that Fay doesn’t love him. He’s at his best in these moments, and the final shot of him in the car at the end of the picture at least indicates that he’ll be moving on, perhaps to a woman who will love him for him, and not just as a business partner.

It would have been nice to see Rosalind Russell play the role of Marian. Isabel Jeans gets annoying, and Gloria Dickson is too predictable as Mrs. Dick Orr. Though she’s a convincing bitch, her hair is dyed platinum blonde, she wears a lot of makeup, and is gowned in strange clothing. It’s enough to make one almost tired of these types of characters standing in the way of Kay’s happiness in her movies.

As usual. George Brent play George Brent. And for those of you who recognize the actress who plays Peter’s secretary, she’s Dennie Moore, the manicurist in The Women (1939) who tells Norma Shearer the bit of gossip of “this Crystal Allan girl who’s hooked Mr. Haines.”

Lobby Cards:

Below: Warner Brothers printed this Tobacco Card with Kay's picture on it to promote Secrets of an Actress. It was one of their last efforts to garner Kay public attention.

I Loved a Woman (1933)

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Cast:
Edward G. Robinson ... John Mansfield Hayden
Kay Francis ... Laura McDonald
Genevieve Tobin ... Martha Lane Hayden
Robert Barrat ... Charles Lane (Credits), Phineas D. Lane (in Film)
Murray Kinnell ... Davenport
Robert McWade ... Larkin
J. Farrell MacDonald ... Shuster
Henry Kolker ... Mr. Sanborn
George Blackwood ... Henry
Walter Walker ... Oliver
Henry O'Neill ... Mr. Farrell
E.J. Ratcliffe ... Theodore Roosevelt
William V. Mong ... Bowen

Directed by Alfred E. Green.
From the novel by David Karsner.
Cinematography by James Van Trees.
Film Editing by Herbert Levy.
Art Direction by Robert M. Haas.
Costume Design by Earl Luick.
Hairstyles by Olga Collings.
Makeup by John Wallace and Perc Westmore.
Production Management by Robert Ross.
Assistant Direction by Frank Shaw.
Set Direction by C. Chapman.
Props by Pat Patterson.
Sound Direction by Francis J. Scheid.
Musical Direction by Leo F. Forbstein.

Released September 23, 1933.
A First National Picture.

Background:

I Loved a Woman (1933) ranks down among the least mentionable of Kay Francis’ films. It’s a decent movie, but its more of a star vehicle for Edward G. Robinson. Kay is just has some nice scenes as Robinson’s leading lady.

The film was based on David Karsner’s book about a determined businessman, loosely based on the life of Samuel Insull. However, many point out the similarities to the life of William Randolph Hearst, largely because I Loved a Woman has many similarities to the cinematic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941). Edward G. Robinson plays a character much like Orson Welles’ Charles Foster Kane, and Kay Francis as Laura MacDonald, a beautiful but not too talented opera singer, seems to predate the Susan Alexander mold. However, these characters are more neutral, and Kay isn’t a shrieking alcoholic bimbo with no respect for her lover or herself.

Robinson didn’t like the script, and made his objections loud and clear. But he did insist on having Kay as his leading lady, much to her disapproval. She wanted nothing to do with I Loved a Woman, and was not surprised when the 5’5” Robinson tried to cut the 5’7” Kay down to his size take after take. In many of their scenes together, Robinson was forced to stand on a box and have Kay lean into him. Years later, Kay still maintained that her best scenes had been cut from the final print, and that the film was a complete dud.

On top of losing her best scenes on the cutting room floor, being harassed by a temperamental talent, and working on something she wanted nothing to do with, Kay’s singing was badly dubbed by Rose Dirman. [Warner Brothers never made any effort to even find a singing voice which pleasantly resembled Kay’s, even though she was a long-term contract star.]

Released September 21, 1933, I Loved a Woman was written off by critics as unmentionable. As the authors of The Complete Kay Francis Career Record wrote, “[the film] makes you wonder what they---the studio, crew, actors, etc.---were thinking.”

But decades later, Edward G. Robinson wrote that the film seemed better than he had remembered it. “Let me give a small bow to Kay Francis,” he wrote. “Despite her lisp, despite her background as a model, despite her inexperience in the theater, she had that indefinable presence that somehow enabled her to be convincing as well as beautiful.”

Below: Robinson learns that Kay never really loved him.

Webmaster's Review:

Though John Hayden is an art lover first, his father had spent his life building the most prominent meat packing company in the entire United States. So when his father dies, John is forced to take over where his father left off, even marrying Martha Lane, whose father, Charles Lane, has built the second greatest meat packing company in the US.

Unfortunately, John knows little about business, and the company slips from first to sixth within the matter of only a few years under John’s watch. He is forced to borrow money from his father-in-law, while his marriage suffers considerably at the same time.

In his office one day, a young woman named Laura MacDonald arrives. She was sent from the Metropolitan Opera House, where she had studied, and asks John is he will sponsor her. An ambitious young woman, she has mapped out every single detail, and has John in awe of her before she even sings her first song. Going back to her place, his emotions overcome him as she sings “Home on the Range,” a tune that his father used to play to him when he was a child.

They come to a mutual agreement to remain friends before lovers, and Laura takes off to Paris to study more before she makes her debut. But before she goes, she tells John to think less of her, and more on turning the luck of his business around. He’s got the resources to really make a success of himself, she tells him, and he takes her advice seriously.

When the Spanish-American War begins, John gets a $50,000,000 dollar deal with the services to supply the meat for the soldiers. Unfortunately, his cheaply produced product causes “more soldiers to die from poisoned meat than Spanish bullets.” He can care less about the situation, having made his money and enough to pay his father back every cent he borrowed from him.

Confronted by Theodore Roosevelt at a party, John arrogantly dismisses the future president’s threats to tear down his corrupt business, and is even more cocky when McKinley wins the election, not seeing Roosevelt as a threat even in the Vice Presidency.

Meanwhile Laura returns to the United States, where she and John carry on their affair, though she insists that it never go beyond a “friendship.”

McKinley is assassinated, and one of Roosevelt’s first actions is to tear down the corruption of the meat industry. John is tried for manslaughter because of his ill-manufactured goods, but acquitted. Later, he discovers that Laura has been unfaithful to him all along. In reality, she has used him merely to get to the top. While she had respect for him as a friend, she never really loved him, and it’s John anger over this dilemma which causes his ruthless drive to soar higher than he ever has before.

Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated. World War I begins. John signs numerous deals with countries to supply meat products to their soldiers, going crazy on over sizing his business to meat the demands. The war ends, however, and John is left with an overstock of product, and crumbles faster than he had ever built himself up. Every bank turns him down for loans. Ruined, he goes back to Martha to see if she will go to her father for money.

Martha, who has known all about John’s corruption and affair with Laura, is glad to see him finally collapse from his own selfishness. She decides to finally leave him, and the next morning John is indicted, but slips away to Athens to escape.

It is there, ten years later, when Laura MacDonald returns to see him. At first he can not remember her, but it all comes back when he hears her play “Home on the Range.” As she gets nearer to John, who has aged considerably, he is unable to recognize the once dark brunette beauty who stole his affections. He claims he doesn’t know her before he announces how tired he is, before leaning back and probably dying.

While a little long, this movie does have production values. The sets are beautiful, and there is a realistic feel of the 1890s, completed with Kay and Genevieve Tobin looking radiant in the period wardrobe. Both women really take the honors in their scenes, sharing this picture for more than what it was probably worth.

Though she becomes spitefully vindictive by the end, there is a lot of sympathy for Tobin’s wronged wife throughout the movie. And she sticks by her husband, pretending that she has no idea what it going on when she knows perfectly well what a snake he really is. Watch her from the beginning to end. As she first learns of John’s shady deals, she carries on in a solemn manner; very quiet and long-faced. But by the end, especially that final scene in the bedroom, she has a nasty little smirk on her face because she knows he is about to get exactly what’s coming to him.

Now Kay does good with her character’s ruthless ambition to become a celebrated opera star, even if her voice is horribly dubbed with a voice that comes no where near to her own. However, though she is beautiful throughout the movie, she seems a little to modern---to art deco to be placed in Gay ‘90s surroundings. Her hair here is also beautiful, which is mentionable only because Warner Brothers seemed to be having a hard time finding a right style for her in these years.

In her first scene, the one where she meets John in his office to discuss his sponsoring of her, her dialogue is filled with R after R, and it gets a little difficult to follow her as she mispronounces word after word. Slightly embarrassing for her, it’s cute to watch for the audience.

Edward G. Robinson is all over the place. His performance is about as smooth and velvety as the Rocky Mountains. He bursts out with theatrical reactions in one scene, then is completely mannered down and appropriate in others. It’s a difficult part for any actor to play, and considering how talented he was faults can be put either on the director or screenwriters. Since the direction isn’t that bad at all, and the script is a little dull, I’d blame the screenwriters.

Filled with bizarre circumstances, and a classic cowboy song being played over and over again in the country’s second most hectic city, I Loved a Woman is far from being the best movie ever made, but is fun to watch. It’s one that doesn’t need to be seen more than once or twice, but its worth a look because of its cast of characters, and because of its strong influence over Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

Below: Genevieve Tobin stole many of the film's best scenes as Robinson's torn wife.

Vintage Reviews:

Edward G. Robinson's latest picture, "I Loved a Woman," which owes its origin to a book by David Karsner, is a worthy offering, even though it is open to the accusation of being anti-climactic. It is concerned with the crimes of Chicago meat-packers both during the Spanish-American and the World Wars and in it Mr. Robinson has an excellent opportunity for a definite characterization, of which, it need hardly be said, this efficient actor takes full advantage.

It has the further distinction of having been expertly directed by Alfred E. Green, who reveals his perspicacity in his selection of the supporting cast. These players include Kay Francis, who portrays a somewhat heartless opera singer named Laura McDonald, and Genevieve Tobin, who appears as Martha Lane, the girl who becomes the wife of John Hayden (Mr. Robinson).

The story opens in Athens, Greece, where Hayden is picking up art treasures, and it closes with Hayden in the same capital, to which he flees to escape the American authorities. It is a case of an individual with artistic inclinations having a business career thrust upon him. It is, perhaps, in revenge for this that he becomes a conscienceless man of affairs, one who does not hesitate to sell "embalmed beef" to the United States Government for the troops in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and later does virtually the same thing during the World War.

When he first takes his late father's place as the head of a packing concern which the Haydens have run for three generations, he is a gentle soul, whose sympathetic nature is revealed when he surprises his colleagues by trying to raise money to improve living conditions of the stockyard toilers. Martha inspires him to do this good work, but after she is married to him she seems to be mainly interested in society life.

Hayden's ambition to rise to the top and his change in business methods is due chiefly to Laura, who comes to him with a letter of introduction from a New York impressario and asks him to finance her operatic studies in Europe for two years. She is confident she will be able to repay the loan, being, as she says, as sure of success as she is of death.

The packer goes to her apartment to hear her sing and after she has sung several operatic arias. Hayden, somewhat demurely, asks her if she knows "Home, Home on the Range." Miss Francis delivers this song with fine effect and the refrain is heard at various stages of the film.

After a few flashes of fighting in the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt, impersonated by E. J. Ratcliffe, appears and he does not hesitate to denounce Hayden for sending bad beef to the soldiers. Hayden, through contributing to campaign funds, claims credit for having shelved Roosevelt as Vice President, but after the news of McKinley's assassination, the packers tremble and in course of time Hayden is indicted and tried, but he is acquitted.

One would imagine that this experience was enough, but he becomes more and more grasping in his business deals and, when the World War Armistice is signed, he finds he had overestimated the duration of the war in the matter of contracts and is in a sorry dilemma.

The story hangs together exceedingly well until Hayden's acquittal for his dealings with the government during the Spanish-American War, but thereafter the incidents are somewhat incredible.

Mr. Robinson's portrayal rivals his splendid impersonation in "Silver Dollar." Miss Francis is excellent as the opera singer and Miss Tobin gives one of her best performance as Martha.
Published September 22, 1933 in the New York Times.

Vintage Posters:

Cynara (1932)

2009-03-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

Cast:
Ronald Colman ... Jim Warlock
Kay Francis ... Clemency Warlock
Phyllis Barry ... Doris Emily Lea
Henry Stephenson ... John Tring
Viva Tattersall ... Milly Miles
Florine McKinney ... Garla
Clarissa Selwynne ... Onslow
Paul Porcasi ... Joseph, Maitre D'
George Kirby ... Mr. Boots
Donald Stuart ... Henry
Wilson Benge ... Merton, Jim's Valet
Halliwell Hobbes ... Coroner at Inquest

Directed by King Vidor.
Produced by Samuel Goldwyn.
Screenplay by Frances Marion.
Original Music by Alfred Newman.
Cinematography by Ray June.
Film Editing by Hugh Bennett.

A Samuel Goldwyn Production.
A United Artists Release.
Released December 24, 1932.

Background:

After working successfully opposite Ronald Colman in Samuel Goldwyn’s production of Raffles (1930), Kay Francis was loaned out from Warner Brothers to United Artists for Goldwyn’s follow-up picture with the Colman/Francis teaming, Cynara (1932), one of the more interesting melodramas of the early 1930s.

Many authors have found parallels between Cynara and the Adrian Lyne’s classic, Fatal Attraction (1987), starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and Anne Archer. In both, happily married men have extramarital affairs with women of mental instability. Cynara is modern in this fashion, but King Vidor’s direction of R. Gore-Brown’s “An Imperfect Lover” is different in tone and overall presentation of the subject matter at hand.

As mentioned, Cynara was based on Brown’s “An Imperfect Lover,” which had been turned into a London stage play by Brown and H.M. Harwood, and brought to the screen by Arthur Hornblow Jr., Myrna Loy’s future husband whom Kay later had an affair with herself. With a screenplay by Frances Marion, and a final production cost of $697,958, one would think that Cynara would rank a little higher up in popularity than it does. Yet, while some love this slow-moving melodrama, others can’t stand it.

Though Kay Francis is second-billed, she is seriously limited in her camera time. This is more of a showcase for Ronald Colman and Phyllis Barry, who made her film debut in Cynara. Having an uncanny resemblance to Kay Francis, Barry’s career continued until the late 1940s, and most of her film work was in minor roles in small movies. It is perhaps her resemblance to Kay which limited her career in Hollywood seriously. Knock-offs of big stars never quite turn out to achieve as much as the originals, but it is unfortunate since Barry shows us a great gift in her dramatic abilities as an actress. In styles and talent she varies between Kay and Ann Dvorak.

Slow-moving or not, however, Cynara was of major importance in the careers of both Ronald Colman and, in a way, Kay Francis. 1932 was Kay’s year to shine, perhaps the greatest she ever worked through. In that special year alone, she successfully switched studios, appeared in four of the most popular films of the year, and established herself as a star of major importance. She was no longer just an ordinary player on the level with Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis. Now Kay Francis had become one of the most watched and talked about stars in the entire movie industry, and her importance was represented in high box office grosses which were now topping that of Warner Brothers’ former female supreme, Ruth Chatterton.

But in her openly talked-about opinions, though, Kay Francis could honestly care less.

Webmaster's Review:

The setting is Naples. Jim Warlock was a successful barrister whose career has been ruined following an affair with a tragic young woman while his wife was away on a holiday in Venice. He tells Clemency, his wife, that he has no other choice but to leave the country. He’s now a ruined man. She asks him exactly what happened between him and this young girl, and we’re taken to a flashback some months before.

Clemency is planning to leave Naples for Venice because her younger sister, Garla, has had some romantic mishaps. Clemency and Jim have an ideal marriage, one built on honesty, loyalty to one another, and trust. Jim doesn’t want her to leave, but she insists that she must, that her younger sister needs to get away from Naples, but not without supervision to find the same sort of trouble in another location.

That night, after Clemency and Garla have left, Jim goes out to dinner with John Tring, a sinister old man who has a reputation for being a womanizer in his past. At dinner, he tells Jim that “no woman is respectable unless she’s dead,” and then he takes Jim to the next table to sit next to two young woman, Doris Lea and Milly Miles, who live and work together.

Following dinner, the four go to see a movie, Charlie Chaplin’s A Dog’s Life, and when Jim takes Doris home, she gives him her full name, number, and where she works. On the drive home, John jokes with Jim about having a relationship with Doris while Clemency is away, though he dismisses this with the gesture of tearing up the paper Doris wrote her contact information on, and then throwing it out the window.

Jim takes the offer of judging a swim competition, one which Doris is in, and wins first place for thereafter. When she collects her prize, she falls and sprains her ankle, and Jim picks her up and takes her back to her apartment where the two sit beside the fire and become more acquainted.

Weeks pass, and Jim and Doris become seriously involved with each other, so much so that her distraction from her work has caused her boss to dismiss her services. The two take a holiday together, and come to the conclusion that they must get used to seeing less and less of each other because Clemency will be returning home in a few days. Though Doris agrees, she is just telling Jim what he wants to hear, and when Clemency does return, Doris even goes as far as to call on him at his house, where he urgently meets with her in person to tell her to back off.

He caves due to her heartbreaking sincerity over her love for him, and agrees to see her again.

In his office, he writes a lengthy letter to Doris, telling her that he has changed his mind, and that their relationship must end at once. When he gets home, Milly arrives to tell him off, that he has cause Doris to loose her job, that she has no where to go, and that Jim won’t even help to pick her pieces up and place them back together again. He agrees to write her off with a check---pay her off to stay away from him, but it’s too late. A policeman arrives at the door to say that Doris has committed suicide by poison, and that she was found with the letter from Jim at her side.

A trial follows, with Clemency learning of the entire affair. While on the stand, Jim, a true gentlemen, doesn’t answer if Doris had been involved with other married men. The truth is she had, and when the scene goes back to Naples Clemency asks Jim if there were. He tells her the truth, and then tells her goodbye.

Right after Jim leaves, John shows up and guilts Clemency into tracking Jim down. He tells her that, first of all, the whole thing was Doris’ fault, and then tells her that Jim might take his own life, and that it would be Clemency’s fault in a way.

She arrives at the dock, where she and Jim embrace one another, then wave goodbye to John from the ship.

Forget Henry Stephenson. Forget Viva Tattersall. Forget Florine McKinney. Hell, even forget about Kay Francis. This one is all about Ronald Colman and Phyllis Barry, both of whom are excellent in this one. The relationship between their characters is the center of this movie, and the entire production revolves around their involvement with one another.

Being a veteran performer, Ronald Colman averages well. He really doesn’t have a best scene, though the final one with him and Phyllis Barry on the bench is quite touching. He does, however, garner audience sympathy before, during, and after his adulterous affair. While not exactly going out for it, he plays Jim Warlock as a man who is just lonely. A man who doesn’t want his wife to leave, and takes an interest to a young girl who has a striking resemblance to her (Kay Francis and Phyllis Barry look almost identical). Their affair is completely innocent as a whole without being childish.

There is a lot more to their relationship than sex. That’s what makes Cynara different then the other films of the time.

Phyllis Barry, who made her film debut in this one, comes across as mature of an actress who had been working in films for five or six years. She’s exceptional here, and doesn’t give Doris a dim-witted mindset. She’s an emotional young girl, with no family, who turns to anything who can give her the love she has been looking for since she was a girl.

That’s the starter conversation when she and Jim are first introduced at the restaurant; that she has no one but Milly in her life.

Henry Stephenson, always the wiser-older man, here gives advice that would make any feminist track him down with a pair of scissors and seal his goodies in a pickle jar. He has no respect for women here, so don’t be expecting him to be as kind and generous as he is in Give Me Your Heart (1936) or Marie Antoinette (1938).

It is, however, an example of his “versatility.”

Limited in camera time, though not totally overshadowed by a stellar cast and story, is Kay Francis as Clemency. She doesn’t have much to do but wear some nice costumes and make strange facial gestures, but catch a glimpse of her face when the police officer arrives at the Warlock residence when the movie is ending. She’s got one hell of a scowling look on her face. It’s a look that stays embedded in one’s mind.

Though it runs a bit longer than it needs to, the film has beautiful production values and stunning outdoor scenes. It probably would be a little more interesting had they trimmed some minutes off of it, but it’s not a bad film at all, and unlike the other precode movies of its time, perhaps one of the more mature films of the era.

Cynara deals with scandalous actions, but it doesn’t intend to “shock” or “stifle” audiences. The film just intends to show mature content for adult audiences ready to see more than flashy sets and ridiculous circumstances.

Movie Herald:

Street of Women (1932)

2009-03-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

Cast:
Kay Francis ... Natalie Upton
Roland Young ... Linkhorne 'Link' Gibson
Alan Dinehart ... Lawrence 'Larry' Baldwin
Gloria Stuart ... Doris 'Dodo' Baldwin
Marjorie Gateson ... Lois Baldwin
Allen Vincent ... Clarke Upton
Adrienne Dore ... Frances
Louise Beavers ... Mattie, Natalie's maid

Directed by Archie Mayo.
Produced by Hal B. Wallis.
Original Music by W. Franke Harling & Matty Malneck.
Cinematography by Ernest Haller.
Film Editing by James Gibbon.
Art Direction by Anton Grot.

Released May 26, 1932.
A Warner Bros. Picture.

Background

Soap Operas are really nothing new. Their origins can be traced back to the pre-television era, with films such as Street of Women (1932), which provided audiences the chance to watch some serious relationship melodrama unfold reel after reel until an ultimate conclusion is forced upon four people who love each other dearly.

The plot is that of a typical Kay Francis melodrama. She loves a rich, older man, whose daughter is love with Kay’s younger brother. Alan Dinehart plays the lover, Allen Vincent plays the younger brother, and, in her film debut, Gloria Stuart is the daughter. Which relationship has to end for these victims to find stability? That is the question asked by Street of Women, answered in the final reel after many tears from its female lead.

Kay had sparkled in Man Wanted (1932), her first film for Warner Bros. after completing three years of employment at Paramount. Now an established star at a new studio, Kay Francis was hyped up with the typical studio-generated publicity. But Street of Women was a decent turn out from a studio which tended to overlook the strength of a story for sharp costumed characters placed in elaborate surroundings.

The film was based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Polan Banks, which was adapted to the screen by Charles Kenyon. Directed by Archie Mayo, Kay was placed in the guiding hands of genius Hal B, Wallis, perhaps the greatest producer at Warner Brothers at the time. Designer Earl Luick created some beautiful clothes for Kay to wear as the owner of a fashion boutique in the center of Manhattan. This film can be pointed to as the one which cemented Kay’s influence in the fashion world off the screen.

Still, some were not impressed…

Running only 59 minutes, Movie Mirror noted that “Kay Francis, since she went to Warners, has been working hard and fast, turning out pictures rapidly. The chief trouble is they look like it. Her first Warner film wasn‘t any wow. Neither is this.”

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm from critics yet positive public response for both Man Wanted and Street of Women, caused Warner Brothers to take more care and effort on producing Kay’s next movie for the studio, Jewel Robbery (1932), with William Powell. The film was brilliant, as were her next few subsequent films which gave her a permanent status on the lot, and a popularity that they could not over-look.

Webmaster's Review:

The people of New York are frantic over the construction of the Baldwin Building, soon to be the world’s tallest structure. Perhaps the most ambitious project man has ever undertaken, behind that powerful man, Larry Baldwin, is of course a woman.

Natalie Upton owns a dress salon in Manhattan. She has been involved with Larry Baldwin for some time now, though she is not the typical selfish, younger mistress. She actually loves Larry for who he is, unlike his wife, Lois, who is with him only for social clout.

While Larry has paved some of the way for Natalie’s success, make no mistake, her eye for fashion is what made her salon a sensation. And it is the money she has gathered from her own creations which have paid for her brother Clarke’s tuition for the Paris School of Architecture.

When Natalie hears that Clarke is coming home, she tells Larry that they can no longer see each other. She tearfully tells him that Clarke is still very young, and wouldn’t understand the situation. “We’ve had our happiness,” she tells Larry, who agrees to her request.

Larry’s daughter Doris is having her debutante party, and Clarke is invited. Him and Doris have known each other for sometime now, and, since he is coming home, begin to take their relationship a few steps further. Neither Larry nor Natalie knew of the relationship between Clarke and Doris, and, in Natalie’s mind, this is even more of a reason for them to give each other up.

In the mean time, Lois has become suspicious of Larry’s affair. Already having denied permission for a divorce, she walks into Natalie’s shop and demands to see her. Without once telling Natalie she knows about the affair, Lois makes sure Natalie knows her name and unofficially insults Natalie’s taste of style.

At Natalie’s apartment, Larry stops by to see her. As the two discuss their predicament, Clarke walks in, overhearing everything. “Well, who do I owe thanks to my Paris education,” he asks, “the lady who gave her services or the gentlemen who paid for them?” When Natalie tries to explain, he jerks his head to Larry and tells him that he will repay every cent. Natalie tries to plead with Clarke, telling him that the money came from her salon, but he wont have none of it.

Clarke packs his things and abandons everyone, including Doris.

The two run into each other sometime later at a party. Doris is too emotionally wrecked to talk to him, and heads out. Clarke takes off after her, and they hop in Doris car, getting into a terrible accident discussing their relationship and breakup.

The two decide to marry, and Clarke also reconciles with Natalie.

As for Lois, well, she has agreed to a divorce, and heads to Reno to get it. Larry and Natalie are reunited in front of the Baldwin building, where they embrace.

This is one of my all-time favorite Kay Francis movies. This one represents everything she was so famous for, and since it is nice and short, is a perfect first-time Kay movie to watch. She wears great clothes, is photographed beautifully, and of course she suffers relentlessly until the final reel. Everything in here is in place for her screen persona, and not one detail needs to be changed about this picture.

While not an artistic triumph like Give Me Your Heart (1936) or Confession (1937), this Warner Brothers film with Kay gives her some great acting opportunity. In her first scenes with Alan Dinehart, she’s flirty and seductive making us believe that a woman as beautiful as she is can really be in love with a man of his appeal. She could have done way better than him looking for a pretty partner, but her warmth towards him has viewers completely and undoubtedly convinced she is in love with him.

Yes, Alan Dinehart is the man Kay Francis really loves here.

Their roles and performances play off of one another nicely. Natalie as the mistress of fashion, and Larry as the powerful builder, they have a power to their relationship that goes hand in hand. Both of them are determined people who are just as involved in their work as they are with each other.

Natalie has a motherly attitude towards Clarke that is touching. While he can not be too much younger than her, one can obviously tell she is of major influence in his life. She and he both know this, and the reason he reacts the way he does about her affair is because he can not think of his sister sleeping with a man for material value. Kay and Allen Vincent have a special chemistry between them that allows us to know that, whatever their situation is with their parents is, they always have each other, and are going to be their for each other no matter what choices the other one makes.

Though Vincent’s Clarke takes some time to realize this, deep down it becomes clear he always knows Natalie will be there for him, he is just upset over what she has done.

Again Roland Young has the wise character role in which he provides guidance for all of the character’s situations. Unfortunately, he is not as important in the film’s plot as he is in Give Me Your Heart. This is a very small role for him, but he still provides enough wisdom for the cast to make one give him credit.

Street of Women was Gloria Stuart’s film debut. She is amateurish, and it’s a little strange to watch her embrace and kiss her father on the lips (not her fault, that’s a sign of strange direction by Archie Mayo).

Fast-paced and ending just as soon as it unfolds, Street of Women is great for an introduction to Kay Francis movies. It’s one of the many brief movies she made in these years which kept the audiences going back for more.

Lobby Cards:

Vintage Reviews:

Love and the construction of a tall building are discussed in "Street of Women," a verbose triangle affair which is now occupying the screen of the Warners' Strand. It has several cleverly composed scenes and praiseworthy acting, particularly by Roland Young and Marjorie Gateson, who interpret the rôles of the more or less unfortunate beings in the story. Miss Gateson appears as Lois, whose husband, Larry Baldwin, does not conceal the fact he would welcome the idea of being sued for a divorce. As for Mr. Young, he portrays in his usual facile fashion, Link Gibson, who is so enamored of Natalie Upton that he proposes marriage to her at least once a day. His hopes of success in this direction are, however, blighted, for Natalie happens to be in love with Baldwin, who reciprocates her affection.

There is also to be considered the love existing between Larry and his daughter, Doris, and Natalie's devotion to her brother Clarke. Matters are further complicated by a romance between Doris and Clarke. Hence the idle thoughts of the young man in Spring are not neglected. But it does seem a pity that Link Gibson has to be left out in the cold, for he is far more sympathetic than Larry, who is seen in the person of Allan Dinehart.

Larry, who is supposed to be responsible for building Gotham's highest skyscraper, in a radio talk gives credit to a woman for the inspiration. His wife is congratulated, but Larry really refers to Natalie.

At the psychological moment in this tale there is the inevitable contretemps. Clarke is indignant when he hears that his sister is partial to Larry and off he goes to South America, believing that Larry had footed the bills for his education abroad. He returns, however, as all juveniles do in motion pictures, and, as might be surmised, he next encounters Doris at a dance. He follows her to her car and insists on riding with her and there is a crash, when, one sees by the speedometer, they are traveling at seventy miles an hour. Both are injured, but it is this accident that causes Lois to be a little less flint-hearted, for she announces that she is going to Nevada.

Allan Dinehart does fairly well considering the writing of his part. Kay Francis is attractive and pleasing as Natalie, and Gloria Stuart is satisfactory as Doris.

Other pictorial subjects on the same program are S. S. Van Dine's "Side Show Murder" and Bobby Jones's golf lesson on "The Spoon."
Published in the New York Times, May 30, 1932.

Man Wanted (1932)

2009-03-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Cast:

Kay Francis ... Lois Ames
David Manners ... Thomas 'Tom' / 'Tommy' Sherman
Una Merkel ... Ruth 'Ruthie' Holman
Andy Devine ... Andy Doyle
Kenneth Thomson ... Fred 'Freddie' Ames
Claire Dodd ... Ann Le Maire
Elizabeth Patterson ... Miss Harper, Lois' Secretary
Edward Van Sloan ... Mr. Walters, French & Sprague Manager

Directed by William Dieterle
Produced by Hal B. Wallis
Original Music by Bernhard Kaun
Cinematography by Gregg Toland
Film Editing by James Gibbon
Art Direction by Anton Grot
Costume Design by Earl Luick

A Warner Bros. Picture
Released April 15, 1932.

Background

Of all the most significant years in Warner Brothers history, perhaps 1932 was one of the greatest. That year alone, the studio inherited Ruth Chatterton, William Powell, Kay Francis, Bette Davis, Dick Powell, Paul Muni, and Ruby Keeler---all of whom had a notable career in the entertainment industry in one form or another. But three of those stars, Chatterton, Powell, and Francis, came to Warner Brothers as major film stars. Others like Bette Davis and Paul Muni had done work in front of the camera, but nothing to really make them stand apart from their contemporaries.

In January, 1932, Darryl Zanuck purchased the rights to Faith Baldwin’s Week-End Marriage with the idea of starring either Kay, Ruth, or Barbara Stanwyck in the feminine lead. Since Chatterton was the most established star at the studio---being paid $8,000 weekly---she was cast in the film, retitled The Rich Are Always With Us (1932).

To satisfy Kay, Zanuck purchased Robert Lord’s Dangerous Brunette---retitled Man Wanted---with only Kay in mind. The great William Dieterle, who directed Kay in The White Angel (1936) four years later, directed Kay, David Manners, Andy Devine, and Una Merkel in this sixty-minute programmer which is really a promotion for Kay. Even the theatrical trailer is all about hyping a new Kay Francis in her first film for her new studio, Warner Brothers.

Cameraman Gregg Toland, designer Earl Luick, and still photographer Homer Van Pelt all attributed to the creation of the new, polished Kay Francis, whom Warner Brothers felt was best suited in urban, modern dramas about the “new woman” of the 1930s. In Man Wanted she plays the chief editor of one of the most influential magazines in the country. She’s married to a playboy husband, but falls for a male secretary to answer her every beck and call.

Unlike her Paramount features, which featured Kay in either supporting roles or second leads, Man Wanted is all about Kay Francis. This gesture from Warner Brothers (their turning of Kay Francis into a major household name) was something she never forgot, even long after completion of her final film, Wife Wanted (1947), for Monogram Pictures. Quotes from Kay years later still pay tribute to the studio that believed in her, while everybody else considered her unworthy of attention.

Man Wanted was released on April 15, 1932, and credited by the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News as “good, light material which has the benefit of luxurious settings, pleasing dialogue, rather clever situations, and some good performances.”

With a successful film debut for her new studio, Warner Brothers began the idea of a long-term association with Kay Francis in which she would emerge as their most important asset. No female star employed by the studio during the 1930s would surpass her fame in that decade, even Bette Davis.

Webmaster's Review:

Lois Ames is married to Fred Ames. She’s the professional in the marriage, being the editor and chief of the 400 Magazine while Fred enjoys his polo and affairs with easy tramps. She has difficulty finding a secretary to work for her; being completely involved in her work, she needs someone who has as much drive and dedication as she does.

Meanwhile, Tommy Sherman and Andy Doyle work in a sports goods shop. Their boss instructs Tommy, who is involved with Ruthie, some cheap, annoying bimbo, to go to the offices of the 400 Magazine and demonstrate a rowing machine to Lois Ames. He does so, and is taken in by her loyalty to her work.

When she and her secretary have a disagreement over the working hours, she employs Tommy to work for her, where his pay steadily but rapidly increases as she is increasingly impressed with his dedication working for her. Of course they begin to feel attracted towards each other, but Lois is insistent that this is a serious, professional relationship. Nothing more.

Ruthie becomes enraged that Tommy is spending so much time working, and begins seeing Andy, who is Tommy’s roommate, out of spite. Tommy pays no attention to this, Lois is the one he wants, but, unfortunately, she is a married woman.

Luckily for Tommy, the marriage between Lois and Fred is dissolving. While they do not become bitter towards each other, they come to a mutual agreement that their marriage has ended, and they do agree to a divorce after Lois becomes fully aware of her husband’s infidelity when she discovers the key to a mutual friend’s room in his pants pocket.

Before Tommy can know all of this, he makes plans to marry Ruthie, quit the office, and work for her father. On his last night working for Lois, he learns of her divorce, and Ruthie, enraged after being stood up for a date by Tommy, barges into the office to see the two dining intimately.

“You’ve humiliated me for the last time!” she exclaims.

Indeed she has, because now with Fred and Ruthie out of the picture, Lois and Tommy can go on together as a husband and wife team of the 400 Magazine.

To many Kay Francis fans, Man Wanted is one of her best films. It’s easy to see why. Not only does she complete her characterization as Lois Ames with an intelligent, knowing performance in a film which doesn’t give her much to do, but she’s refreshingly cheerful and overly flirty with her leading men.

Watch her in her opening scene with Kenneth Thomas in the office. As they make their plans for lunch, she flashes a huge smile and gently rubs her nose against his. Then when she and David Manners are taking their notes, she dangles her shoe off of the tip of her toes.

Also mentionable is her stunning photography. Look how cinematographer Gregg Toland has her steadily approach the camera reading a note only to look up and smile as she firsts meets David Manners in the office.

It’s a million-dollar shot.

Interestingly, many pointed to David Manners as being a perfect choice for Kay’s leading man because of his youthful persona opposite her mature professional. Four years older than Kay in real life, he is one of her best costars. The two have unusually good chemistry. All of their scenes have them looking at each other with emotions becoming visible from within the eye.

What makes this even more mentionable is the fact that they really didn’t click during the production. In Kay’s mind, David played around too much, while he considered her uptight and not easy to worth with.

Andy Devine is the comedian as usual, which is how it should be. On the opposite side of the fence this time, Una Merkel really goes all out with her performance as Ruth. She makes no attempts for audience sympathy, and shrieks her way through the film, making one want to hop on the other side of the camera and smack her.

William Dieterle, who directed Kay in The White Angel (1936), among other films, does great with the thin material. He makes this enjoyable fluff easy to watch by wasting no time with unimportant asides and silly, unnecessary scenes. His ability to succeed with this material is that he doesn’t make the drama too over the top, and the comedy is done with a hesitance and subtlety which makes it unlike the other films of that era which were either going completely in one direction or another.

Man Wanted is one of those rare films with a touch of grey.

Vintage Reviews:

Kay Francis radiates so much charm throughout "Man Wanted" at Warners' Strand this week that the familiar theme somehow does not matter. She is ably assisted by David Manners and a well-balanced cast. The screen play, originally called "A Dangerous Brunette," is the very thing for Miss Francis, who dresses with such good taste.

As for the story, it is that of two ill-matched persons, an ambitious woman and an indolent husband, who become bored with each other. She finds the ideal secretary in the person of David Manners and harmony in work leads to dangerous intimacy. And thus the theme unfurls itself in a manner to be expected. The husband, instead of the familiar boorish person, is quite likable; the secretary's fiancée is not quite as refined as she ought to be, and Una Merkel does very well with this thankless rôle. As a picture "Man Wanted" is plausible and quite free from any jarring notes, and while it is neither original nor outstanding in any other way, it is somehow quite satisfactory.

The comic relief is injected in well-measured doses by Andy Devine. The directing work of Wilhelm Dieterle seems to be another feather in his cap.
Originally published in the New York Times, April 16, 1932.

Living on Velvet (1935)

2009-03-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Cast:

Kay Francis ... Amy Prentiss Parker
Warren William ... Walter 'Gibraltar' Pritcham
George Brent ... Terrence Clarence 'Terry' Parker
Helen Lowell ... Aunt Martha Prentiss
Henry O'Neill ... Harold Thornton
Russell Hicks ... Major at Flying Field
Maude Turner Gordon ... Mrs. Parker
Samuel S. Hinds ... Henry L. Parker (as Samuel Hinds)
Martha Merrill ... Cynthia Parker
Edgar Kennedy ... Counterman

Directed by Frank Borzage.
Produced by Edward Chodorov & Frank Borzage.
Original Music by Heinz Roemheld.
Cinematography by Sidney Hickox.
Film Editing by William Holmes.
Art Direction by Robert M. Haas.
Costume Design by Orry-Kelly.
A First National Picture.

Background:

Living on Velvet is one of those ideal Kay Francis films which is a perfect representation of what the “star product” meant back in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The film is fit to her screen personality, forcing her to rely not so much on her acting skills as her beautiful physique in stunning Orry-Kelly creations.

Apparently, Jack Warner had instructed Jerry Wald and Julius Epstein to come up with an ideal story to fit the Kay Francis formula. Wald and Epstein delivered a charming screenplay which may have not been another One-Way Passage (1932) or House on 56th Street (1933), but Living on Velvet was a reasonably entertaining story which didn’t require much from its audience.

Kay was reunited with George Brent for the second time since their first pairing, The Keyhole (1933). It was also her second film with the dashing Warren William, who had worked with Kay in Doctor Monica (1934). Both men played opposite Kay well, but Warner Brothers seemed more interested in Brent’s career than Williams’. By the time Living on Velvet rolled around, Warren William had been reduced to secondary roles, which is a shame considering he had so much acting talent and personality.

Costume designer Orry-Kelly went all out for Kay on this one. He designed a total of seventeen creations, most of which were inspired by samples by fashions which had struck Kay’s eye on a vacation in Europe. Louella Parsons predicted in her review for the film that “[Kay’s] gowns will be copied all over the world.” Obviously Warner Brothers thought so, too, because the theatrical trailer for the film showed a montage of a handful of Kay’s breath-taking wardrobe.

In another promotional effort, Kay, Warren, and George appeared on the radio show Hollywood Hotel on January 4, 1935 to reenact scenes from and promote the film. Released on March 2, 1935, Living on Velvet scored decent reviews but clearly had a more public appeal than critical one. Most reviews for Kay were favorable, but many pointed out that her role didn’t require her to do much.

That fact that she pulled it off is the proof of her magnitude as a star.

Webmaster's Review:

It’s February 1933. Terry Clarence Parker, his mother and father and younger sister, Cynthia, are flying with Terry, who is an aviator. He notices that the fuel tank is dangerously low, and they soon run out and crash into the ground. Terry’s family is killed, while he survives with only a couple of scratches and a headache. In the following two years, his name reads across newspaper headlines for his dangerous pranks and stupid actions.

On June 10, 1934 he crashes an aviation derby, and is detained by officers for his dangerous stunts. There his good friend Gibraltar saves him from the felony charges they are attempting to put on him. Back at Gibraltar’s, Terry listens to him talk about Amy Prentiss, the girl Gibraltar is seriously considering settling down with. When Terry asks what she looks like, Gibraltar basically tells him that he’ll find out that night when he meets Amy at a party being thrown by Amy’s Aunt Martha in her Manhattan penthouse.

That evening, Terry receives the could shoulder from all of the snobby guests except for one man, who grabs hold of Terry in a conversation about global warming. Bored by the conversation, Terry looks across the room to see a beautifully dark haired young woman being spoken to about the increase rain levels by an elderly woman. They look goggle-eyed at one another, and Terry makes his way across the room and introduces himself. The two decide to head out and grab some real food.

They have a lovely night on the New York town. In a horse carriage, Terry tells Amy that he loves the sound of her voice, and when he notices her speech impediment, he asks her to repeat after him. “Around the rugged rocks, the ragged rascals ran.“ She repeats his saying, with every R slurred into a W, and he is taken in by her sense of humor about her own flaws. They walk through Central Park and have coffee and doughnuts at a small diner until the early morning hours. When Terry finally takes Amy back to her place, they make plans to spend the next day together.

Briefly Terry disappears. Unbeknownst to Amy until Gibraltar receives a call from the police station, he has gone on a bender. She ignores his stupid actions, and realizes that Terry is the one she really loves, and, against her Aunt’s wishes, she and Terry marry in a small ceremony with Gibraltar as the best man. After the wedding, the three of them sit on the steps of the chapel and wonder what to do next. Since Amy insists on not taking any money from her Aunt, the rely on Gibraltar’s present of a house out on long island that he owns.

Terry and Amy move out there, and have a real rough start with things by Terry’s inability to focus on getting on their feet. He doesn’t find a job or do anything responsible, and if it wasn’t for the money that Gibraltar sent them, they wouldn’t have anything. Amy can’t take anymore when Terry goes out and buys a plane for them. Though she still loves him, she’s come to realize that marrying him wasn’t the best decision.

“I’m leaving you, Terry,” she tells him with tears in her eyes. “But before I go, there’s something I want to say to you. I’ll try to be simple and straightforward. Terry, this attitude of yours towards life, this contempt that you have for people in the world, all the flying about, the happiness, the unrest, mean just one thing. There’s a void in your life, Terry. A distinct and terrible void.”

He words go almost unnoticed by him, though he does tell her that he doesn’t see her as a failure for not being able to succeed in changing his way of life. When he tries to get her back, she tearfully tells him that there is no way of a reconcile until he agrees to move on from what happened in the past.

It is at a party at Aunt Martha’s where Gibraltar receives a call that Terry has been in a Terrible car accident. He and Amy rush to his side, and she tells Terry that he can’t die because she loves him, and he promises that he’s not going to.

The final scene is of Terry and Amy sitting on a bench in Central Park with the snow gently falling around them. They agree to start over together, and Amy tells him that she’ll try to cope with his irrational decisions.

“Amy,” he confidently tells her, “if you love me, you’ll stop talking about a Terry Parker which doesn’t even exist anymore.”

On the official website for Warner Brothers, I was reading a biography on George Brent they had posted for George Brent. In it they went on about his film with their classiest star, Kay Francis, and mentioned their work in Living on Velvet, among other titles. I can’t think of a better term to describe the Kay Francis in the Living on Velvet, Goose and the Gander films she made at Warner Brothers at the height of her popularity. She really defines the whole Park Ave sophistication with her clever hairstyles and outfits which border from the smart to the absurd.

This might not be her best acting, but these are still the types of movies I do enjoy seeing her in. Living on Velvet is a good vehicle for her, which allows her to display her strengths in comedy and drama in a seventy-five minute film which seems to come to a close just as it begins.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I have favored stars and films like Kay Francis and Living on Velvet over ones like Joan Crawford and I Live My Life. Francis’ films at Warner Brothers have everything Crawford’s or Loy’s did at MGM, only they are fitted into shorter timeframes by cutting out all the excess fluff and unimportant asides. This is not to take shots at Crawford or Loy, or to say that Francis is or was better than them. I’m only trying to write that I favor the way Warner Brothers made and produced their films, getting straight to the point rather than going on and on like the Metro Goldwyn Mayer output seemed to do.

George Brent does get a little old in this one. I would have rather seen the role played by Fredric March or Gary Cooper, someone who could have brought more star power to the film than Brent did. Warren William, however, is perfectly cast in a role that’s a departure for him. True, he is a doormat, but he looks incredible in those suits and top hats, giving Kay Francis a run for fashion favor in this one.

The cottage Terry and Amy live in that belongs to Gibraltar is breathtaking, so much so that it makes one wonder why Amy is so persistent on getting it redecorated. Just as I felt when I was watching The Goose and the Gander, I took a look around my own place and realized what a dump I live in. You won’t see any Bette Davis movies at Warner Brothers looking this good. It’s clear how expensive, modestly so, the production was.

Perhaps the funniest part of the film, since it also provided comic relief from Amy’s depression after hearing that Terry spent Gibraltar’s money on a plane, is when George has Kay christen the plane with a bottle of ketchup, since they have no champagne in the house.

Today most would write off Living on Velvet as unimportant Kay Francis fluff, the type of film which made the audiences of the 1930s grow bored with her. Some of that is true, but it’s not a bad picture at all, just a small piece of entertainment made for audiences to enjoy without having to be overwhelmed by million-dollar sets and long running durations.

It is the perfect type of box office formula which becomes addictive to the average moviegoer, and why Francis reached the height of her popularity playing parts like Amy Prentiss.

Movie Posters:

Stranded (1935)

2009-03-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

Cast:

Kay Francis ... Lynn Palmer
George Brent ... Mack Hale
Patricia Ellis ... Velma Tuthill
Donald Woods ... John Wesley
Robert Barrat ... Stanislaus Janauschek
Barton MacLane ... Sharkey
Joseph Crehan ... Johnny Quinn
William Harrigan ... Updyke
Henry O'Neill ... Mr. Tuthill
Frankie Darro ... James 'Jimmy' Rivers
John Wray ... Mike Gibbons
Edward McWade ... Tim Powers
June Travis ... Mary Rand
Ann Shoemaker ... Mrs. Tuthill
Gavin Gordon ... Jack
Spencer Charters ... Boatman
Joan Gay ... Diane Nichols

Directed by Frank Borzage.
A Frank Borzage Production.
Based on a story by Frank Wead.
Screenplay by Delmer Daves.
Cinematography by Sidney Hickox.
Film Editing by William Holmes.
Art Direction by Anton Grot, Hugh Reticker & Arthur Gruenberger.
Costume Design by Orry-Kelly.

A Warner Bros. Picture.
Released June 20, 1935.

Background:

Every Hollywood star has a select number of films which can really be written off as almost completely unmentionable. Stranded is one of those movies in the career of Kay Francis. It neither hurt nor advanced her stardom, had little in its story and production to distinguish it, and was just and obvious attempt to cash in on the Kay Francis/George Brent chemistry by producing a cheaply made programmer with a major star.

By the time Stranded went into production, Kay Francis had emerged as the most popular female at Warner Brothers, despite Bette Davis’ Oscar-winning performance in Dangerous (1935). Kay’s box office hold was some-what represented in Stranded’s production value, with a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge---then under construction in San Francisco---as the center of it all. A lot of interesting footage of the construction of the real bridge was used in the film, which adds more energy to a film with virtually no other action.

Stranded was based on Frank Wead’s “Lady with a Badge,” and directed by the excellent Frank Borzage, though even a master of his craft like Borzage couldn’t pump life into Stranded’s script (Delmer Daves, Kay‘s then boyfriend, wrote the screenplay). Aside from the construction scenes, the only other notable aspect about Stranded is the beautiful musical score by Bernhard Kaun and Heinz Roemheld.

Production began March 6, 1935, and concluded on April 15.

Released June 20, 1935, critics and audiences shrugged their shoulders with Kay Francis’ latest film. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It was just something to make a boring day go by a little quicker; mindless entertainment which doesn’t require much attention from the viewer. The film just simply asks its audiences to relax and enjoy Kay in beautiful gowns, surrounded by lush settings while looking absolutely gorgeous.

Variety’s review pegged the film and Kay excellently: “Miss Francis gives a smooth and sensitive performance but she is wasted in an uninteresting role as a girl who takes her job too seriously.”

Decades later, Stranded simply asks us to do the same: sit back, relax, and enjoy the beautiful Kay Francis in all her alluring glory.

Below: Kay takes care of a young, unmarried mother in Stranded.

Webmaster's Review:

Stranded opens beautifully with quick-moving credits and a memorable score by Bernhard Kaun and Leo F. Forbstein. This makes one anticipate another charming bit of fluff from Kay Francis and George Brent such as Living on Velvet (1935). In some ways, the film delivers.

In other ways, it doesn’t.

The film starts with an old man confiding in a stranger that “I was born in this town…probably die here. I don’t know where to go.” A beautiful backdrop of the San Francisco waterfront at night makes one wonder why he would want to go anywhere else, but, still, he is advised to “ask the lady with a badge.” When he arrives at the desk of Lynn Palmer, a Traveler’s Aid worker of six years, she suggests that he stay in their guest house, since he is hard on cash. He replies, “Guest house…another word for charity. No thanks…I’ve had my fill of charity.”

She continues getting ready to leave when she is stifled by gunshot. She turns around to find him lying on the ground of the railroad station, and calls and ambulance to pick him up.

Grace, a higher-up in the Traveler’s Aid organization, asks that Lynn let Velma Tuthill share an apartment with her since she has become their most recent employee. Velma’s mother donates a pretty check each year or so to the Traveler’s Aid, which is why they are being so generous. Lynn agrees, but replies that “you can’t make me like it!.”

As it turns out, Velma has no serious intentions of work. She just wants to be able to spend more time with a boyfriend her mother doesn’t approve of.

The next day, a rude contractor named Mack Hale arrives at the Travelers Aid desk to look for one of his workers. He insults both Lynn and Velma, before realizing that he and Lynn had something going on while they were children. When she was fifteen, he was the first boy to kiss her.

Though she’s got a date with John Wesley, she cancels it to go out with Mack, much to the enragement of Velma, who’s got the hots for Hale.

When Mack and Lynn arrive at the restaurant for their date, he turns to her with a smile on his face and realizes that “People look at you like a Goddess or something…that makes me a God.” Judging by the way she’s dressed, it becomes apparent to us that Lynn isn’t working for the money, but for the work itself and fulfillment of helping others.

Still, Mack sees her work as unimportant, and insists she leave it if she wants to be with him. “I like my job,” she says. “It’s part of me.”

Since the two can’t seem to find a reasonable explanation for what they should do, they decide to not see each other again.

Considering his own career, it becomes a little apparent why he has such strong feelings about the lack of seriousness in Lynn’s job. Mack is supervising the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, and runs his job with a tight fist. He doesn’t tolerate nonsense from anyone on such a serious undertaking. When a man named Sharkey tries to cause conflict on Mack’s bridge, a serious hell is raised.

Sharkey hires men to give Mack’s workers alcohol, get them drunk and get them fired. When a worker falls to his death, an uproar is heard all over the job site. They gather together, at Sharkey’s intentions, and have a meeting about over-throwing Mack as supervisor.

When Lynn finds out about Sharkey, and that Mack will not attend the meeting which determines his future as a contractor, she attends it herself and brings the men to their senses. Sharkey’s identity is exposed, and Mack leaves the men to deal with him, saying that everyone one but the men who supplied the alcohol can return to work.

And the picture ends with Lynn and Mack deciding that they can both continue on with their careers together.

It took me a few tries to watch this movie in its entirety. I kept getting bored and turning the DVD player off with intentions of going back and watching it again. For some reason, there’s just a lack of interest in the story, but it does have some good moments.

Kay’s part doesn’t give her much acting opportunity at all. The only time she acts is when she and Mack can’t agree on a lifestyle and break up, and when she attends the walk-out meeting at the end of the picture. The latter is the most memorable of the film, with Kay---gowned smartly---pushing through a wild crowd of enraged, uncontrollable construction workers. She gets pushed around, her hat ripped off, her hair pulled, and finally making it to the stage shouting and screaming (one of the few times you’ll see Kay raise her voice so high on screen).

She does good with the anger in this scene, and her ambition to save Mack is touching, considering the guy is such an asswhole. But other than that all Kay has to do is wear more smart clothing and flash her charming smile.

This is a real departure for George Brent. I have not had the opportunity to see a lot of his work, but I don’t ever remember seeing him as bold, masculine, and pushy as he is here. As Mack he is completely stubborn, but in most of his scenes with Kay he’s back to the same old George. One wonders if this film was an attempt from Warner Brothers to broaden his appeal with the male audiences, and try to make him into a more Gable-kind of screen lover.

Rounding out the cast is Patricia Ellis as Velma, Barton MacLane as Sharkey, and William Harrigan as Updyke, a European construction worker who remains loyal to Mack even after he is fired by him.

Hard to believe that this one was produced and directed by Frank Borzage. The film looks really good, but the story is dead.

But as I wrote above, sometimes its nice to sit back and enjoy some mindless entertainment. Stranded is the type of film to watch after a hard-day’s work on an early-summer evening.

Lobby Cards:

Movie Posters:

Jewel Robbery (1932)

2009-03-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

I found the above photo online. If anyone knows the artist who colorized the photograph, please email me.

Cast:
William Powell ... The Robber
Kay Francis ... Baroness Teri von Horhenfels
Helen Vinson ... Marianne Horne
Hardie Albright ... Paul, Undersecretary of State
Alan Mowbray ... Fritz
André Luguet ... Count Andre (as Andre Luguet)
Henry Kolker ... Baron Franz von Horhenfels
Spencer Charters ... Johann Christian Lenz, Nightwatchman
Lee Kohlmar ... Hollander the Jeweler
Clarence Wilson ... Prefect of Police

Directed by William Dieterle.
Based on the play "Ekszerrablas a Vaci-uccaban" by Ladislaus Fodor.
Screnplay by Erwin Gelsey.
Cinematography by Robert Kurrle.
Editing by Ralph Dawson.
Musical Direction by Leo F. Forbstein.
Art Direction by Robert Haas.

A Warner Bros. Picture.
Released July 21, 1932.

Box Office Numbers:
Cost of Production: $291,039
Domestic Gross: ---
Forgein Gross: ---
Total Gross: ---
Profit (Loss): ---

William Powell's salary: $100,000
Kay Francis' salary: $27,000

Background:

Private Lives (1931, with Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery), The Rich Are Always With Us (1932, Ruth Chatterton and George Brent), Red-Headed Woman (1932, Jean Harlow and Chester Morris)…some of Hollywood’s best sex comedies were made in the early 1930s. These polished, sophisticatedly racy films were among the most popular of the time, and Jewel Robbery was no exception.

Man Wanted (1932), Kay’s first film for Warner Brothers, had broadcast Kay Francis in a new light. Suddenly she had a more modern, urban appeal to audiences that rivaled Ruth Chatterton’s. At Paramount, she had either vamped out her leading men, or suffered dim-wittedly for them. With her more complicated screen image perfected by her second film for Warner Brothers, Street of Women (1932), the studio paired her with her old Paramount costar, William Powell, of whom she appeared in four films with previously.

The film almost seems to serve as a pre-test for Kay before her marvelous work in Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble In Paradise (1932), but to associate Jewel Robbery with any other film takes away from its distinction. Jewel Robbery was conceived and produced first, and it’s one of the best movies of the early 1930s, with Kay adapting a more slinky-sort-of Norma Shearer kind-of sex appeal.

Based on Ladislaus Fodor’s “Ekzerrabalas a Vaci-uccaban,” Jewel Robbery was directed by William Dieterle (The White Angel, 1936, was one of five movies Kay and Dieterle made together), and began filming March 2, 1932, concluding in early April. Released July 21, 1932, “William Powell is ideally cast,” thought Variety. “The same may be said for Kay Francis as the beautiful but bored and eccentric wife of an elderly banker.”

Jewel Robbery was a tremendous hit with critics and audiences in the summer of 1932. Today, it has lost none of its spark, and is one of the best films to use for introducing friends to classic Hollywood. The film is straight and to the point, running only sixty some minutes which seem to blissfully end almost as quickly as they begin. Remade in 1943 with Anne Crawford and Donald Stewart, The Peterville Diamond failed by a long shot to meet the critical and public acclaim as its predecessor.

Perfection like this can never be remade or replaced. Jewel Robbery was made at the right time, with the right people, and by the right people. They should have left it at that.

Below: Kay Francis and Helen Vinson played off of each other almost as well as Kay did with William Powell.

Webmaster's Review:

Technology is vastly improving the modern world in Vienna. In a polished jewelry shop, a new state-of-the-art burglary system has just been installed. Invisible lasers bounce off of mirrors strategically placed around the shop. If trespassed, an alarm will trigger, notifying the police immediately.

Unfortunately for this shop, the installation has occurred a little to late. While the system is being installed, the shop is robbed.

Baroness Teri is the wife of Baron Franz von Hohenfels, worth about eight-million. She’s bored with all that money can get her, including her stuffy, old husband with “chronic gout.” She is an openly-admitted shallow soul, who cares only about furs and jewelry, and her luck has just been tapped again. Franz is brining her to a jewelry shop to purchased her the Excelsior Diamond, which the owner of the shop plans on selling for $50,000.

Franz is not impressed enough to shell out enough money for that, and drives the price down to $30,000. Teri and her best friend, Marianne, go crazy over it. Marianne tells everyone in the shop how lucky Teri is that her own husband is buying her the ring “in the most respectable way!”

Unfortunately for these shallow snobs, a “fashionable, debonair young-man” walks into the shop, followed by about ten others, and they proceed to rob the shop blind. But this is anything but your standard jewel robbery. The robber passes out marijuana to the unsuspecting victims, plays music, and is very polite and frank about the situation, all of which arouse Teri.

He takes off, locking Franz and Count Andre (whom Teri is having an affair with), alone in the safe, and being persuaded by Teri’s charm to leave her alone in the shop, though this might connect her with the robbery.

The police show up, as does Marianne, who had left just prior to the robber’s entering of the store. Teri is smitten, much to her husband’s dismay. Her and Marianne are all excited about what has just happened, but when Marianne presses Teri to find out more about the robber, Teri purposely gives her inaccurate descriptions.

Teri and Marianne return to Teri’s mansion. In Teri’s bedroom they find a massive bouquet of roses, and when Teri asks the maid when they were delivered, she insists they never were. Teri, frenzy over the fact that the robber has returned to her home, soon panics that he might have taken her jewelry, but finds everything in the safe, including her excelsior diamond, which he had stolen from her in the robbery.

Suspicious noises around the room have Marianne leaving in fear, and Teri all alone. She soon hears a record go on, and the robber steps out from behind the curtains. They flirt and come close to a kiss, but Teri pulls herself together and insists that he must take the Excelsior Diamond back. He refuses, and there’s a loud knock at the door from a detective.

The robber hides in another room, and Teri opens the door. The investigation leads to the fact that Teri is a valuable suspect, and he plans to arrest her, though the robber steps out in the neck of time, gun in hand. Unfortunately, two police officers jump out and grab him.

All get into a car and go back to a dark location, and when the lights go on, Teri is inside of the robber’s luxurious apartment. She realizes the whole thing was a gag in order to kidnap her, and, as usual, she is smitten by his charm.

Unfortunately, the real detectives arrive at his door. They set the scene up to make it appear that Teri was kidnapped, and she and the robber plan to meet again in Nice. He gets away after a lengthy chase on the rooftops of the city, and everyone is in a panic over Teri’s situation.

She tells everyone that she assumes a vacation is in need to relax herself. Her location, well, she’ll go to Nice on the next possible train.

She moves into the camera, asking us for our silence.

After good, but typical material in such films as Man Wanted (1932) and Street of Women (1932), this was the exact type of refreshing role Kay Francis’ career needed. There’s no melodrama here. No tears. No harshly dramatic circumstances. In Jewel Robbery she plays a woman who has decided to take the risk of great sex and thrills over money and boredom.

As a comedian, Kay was adept when put in the right part in a good movie. This is the definitive example of that. She gets to wear furs and show off her flair for fashion, and the character is suited to her screen strengths, but her lines and performance really make the audience take notice of her. Here she has once again split the honors with William Powell, and what a team they make together.

Though they are most remembered for One-Way Passage, there is something about this movie which makes one stand up and say, “Wait a minute, yes, Powell did have a great run opposite Myrna Loy, but he was just as good with Kay Francis in these snappy little movies that are full of action in their short running times.”

Like their previous efforts, Jewel Robbery moves quickly, ending just as soon as it begins. And while Kay photographs lovely as usual, William Powell has some of his best cinematography. He’s a little slimmer, and even more clean cut then one remembers him. This could be contributed to his character’s brisk personality, but it’s still worth mention.

In the beginning, just after the first robbery, we’re introduced to Kay as she is taking a bath, and getting ready to start her day well into the afternoon. It’s great to watch in scenes like these, ones such as her waking up at 5:00 PM with Lilyan Tashman in Girls About Town (1931). Her characters in these films always seemed to have to much fun with the simple things in life.

Helen Vinson, in her film debut, plays the role of Marianne opposite Kay’s Teri with a skill of any screen veteran. She’s a perfect giddy match for Kay’s bored baroness, slightly envying everything Teri is fed up with.

As usual, Henry Kolker plays the rich, stuffy husband.

William Dieterle was one of Kay’s best and most frequent directors, and with Jewel Robbery they scored their greatest triumph. Every scene has gives us an authentic feel of rich life in 1930s Europe, which is also a new location to have set such a film. Most of these movies made in the earl 1930s took place in New York, and finally there’s something different about Jewel Robbery which makes one take notice of it even more.

Vintage Reviews:

What they have tried to accomplish in transplanting Laszlo Fodor's Viennese comedy, "Jewel Robbery," to the cinema pastures is probably more praiseworthy than the way they have accomplished it. The new resident at the Strand has most of the staples of excellent warm-weather comedy. The situation is as capricious, the dialogue as sprightly and the settings as sinfully luxurious as they ought to be. William Powell as the gentlemanly thief can kiss a woman's hand—while relieving it of a diamond bracelet—or pay a compliment or mock the constabulary as prettily as an amusing scoundrel should in an amusing romantic comedy. Kay Francis, who can be a good actress, is a definitely bad actress opposite Mr. Powell, and that may be part of the reason why "Jewel Robbery" with its several endowments is only mild.

The robber, who has learned his trade in Paris, is none of your sub-machine gun dullards. He loots Hollander's jewel shop with the delicate touch of a surgeon. There are four ravishing blondes on as many corners to take care of the police, drugged cigarettes for his victims, and epigrams. The Baroness Teri, who is as weary of her lovers as of her husband, has a first-hand description of the notorious thief but cannot help the police.

That night, while the city is being scoured for the daring burglar, the baroness finds her boudoir invaded, successively, by a box of flowers, her stolen jewels and the faultlessly attired bandit himself. The rest is impetuous love and impetuous flight, midnight alarums, more epigrams and a piquant rendezvous in the robber's apartment.

All this is nervous, brittle comedy of a sort that is sufficiently novel in the films to be stimulating. Miss Francis interprets the countess as if she were giving an imitation of an imitation, and her performance is one in which her usual intelligence and sincerity are strangely absent. An excellent subsidiary cast has been assembled, and William Dieterle's direction has the proper daintiness and wit.
Originally published in the New York Times, July 23, 1932.

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