Month: January 2014

Happy birthday, Kay Fwancis!

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This post is a revised version of one that appeared on January 10, 2012:

For decades, actress Kay Francis, a big star in the 1930s, was all but forgotten by contemporary critics and audiences, but not so today. The good folks at Turner Classic Movies, bless their hearts, have worked hard to place her pictures back into the spotlight.

Francis, born Katherine Edwina Gibbs on January 13, 1905, in Oklahoma City, starred primarily in what are sometimes dismissively dubbed “women’s pictures,” but her work usually rises above even the most trite and sentimental of plots and premises.

On Monday, TCM again honors Francis with what has become an annual birthday tribute, airing ten of her pictures between the hours of 6am and 8pm. Though TCM has omitted some of Francis’s best work from the tribute this time around — she’s wonderful in the Ernst Lubitsch classic Trouble in Paradise, and she excelled when paired with William Powell in several pictures in the early Thirties, especially the romantic comedy Jewel Robbery and the tear-jerker romance One Way Passage, both released in 1932 — you should, if you’ve never been exposed to the glamor and grit that is Kay Francis, be readying your DVR, even as you read this, to capture all fourteen hours of the tribute. (Those who are already Francis fans won’t need the above nudge.)

Here’s the full line-up (all times eastern):

6:00 A.M. — STREET OF WOMEN (1932)
A property developer is torn between his wife and his mistress.
Cast: Kay Francis, Roland Young, Alan Dinehart. Dir: Archie Mayo

7:15 A.M. — ANOTHER DAWN (1937)
An officer’s wife at a British outpost in Africa falls for another man.
Cast: Kay Francis, Errol Flynn, Ian Hunter. Dir: William Dieterle

8:30 A.M. — STOLEN HOLIDAY (1937)
A Paris fashion model marries a fortune hunter to protect him from the law.
Cast: Kay Francis, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter. Dir: Michael Curtiz

10:00 A.M. — SECRETS OF AN ACTRESS (1938)
A leading lady falls for a married architect who’s invested in her play.
Cast: Kay Francis, George Brent, Ian Hunter. Dir: William Keighley

11:15 A.M. — WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT (1938)
Years after their break-up, a couple finds each other all over again.
Cast: Kay Francis, Pat O’Brien, Ralph Forbes. Dir: Stanley Logan

12:45 P.M. — WOMEN IN THE WIND (1939)
Personal conflicts flare between competitors in a women’s air race.
Cast: Kay Francis, William Gargan, Victor Jory. Dir: John Farrow

2:00 P.M. — IT’S A DATE (1940)
Mother-and-daughter singers vie for the same man and the same stage part.
Cast: Deanna Durbin, Kay Francis, Walter Pidgeon. Dir: William A. Seiter

3:45 P.M. — PLAY GIRL (1940)
An aging gold digger takes a young woman under her wing.
Cast: Kay Francis, James Ellison, Mildred Coles. Dir: Frank Woodruff

5:15 P.M. — ALLOTMENT WIVES (1945)
Unscrupulous women marry servicemen for their pay.
Cast: Kay Francis, Paul Kelly, Otto Kruger. Dir: William Nigh

6:45 P.M. — DIVORCE (1945)
A frequently divorced woman sets her sights on a happily married man.
Cast: Kay Francis, Bruce Cabot, Helen Mack. Dir: William Nigh

For more on Kay Francis, check out Scott O’Brien’s well-received biography of the star, Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten–Her Life on Film and Stage, published by BearManor Media and out now in a revised and updated second edition.

P.S. The title of this post refers to the widely known fact that Francis had a rather noticeable speech impediment. Listen carefully when she pronounces her Rs, and you’ll hear it.

365 Nights in Hollywood: A Fiend in Follywood

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Jimmy Starr began his career in Hollywood in the 1920s, writing the intertitles for silent shorts for producers such as Mack Sennett, the Christie Film Company, and Educational Films Corporation, among others. He also toiled as a gossip and film columnist for the Los Angeles Record in the 1920s and from 1930-1962 for the L.A. Herald-Express.
Starr was also a published author. In the 1940s, he penned a trio of mystery novels, the best known of which, The Corpse Came C.O.D., was made into a movie.
In 1926, Starr authored 365 Nights in Hollywood, a collection of short stories about Hollywood. It was published in a limited edition of 1000, each one signed and numbered by the author, by the David Graham Fischer Corporation, which seems to have been a very small (possibly even a vanity) press.
Here’s “A Fiend in Follywood” from that 1926 collection.

A FIEND IN FOLLYWOOD

 

“But why on earth should I tell you of my troubles; past, present or future?”
Renee Southerland, casting director of the Royal-Arts Studio in Hollywood, laid down her gold fountain pen and glared contemptuously. Under a steady gaze from eyes that appeared alive with red hot coals, I began sending apprehensive glances toward the doorway. I had a great desire to dash through it into the open air to relieve the stinging bite of a prickly heat which began at the soles of my feet and rushed upward. I knew that I presented a countenance now as vivid red as the ruffled garter Renee wore on a well-rounded calf when she crossed her legs after the prevailing fashion among young women.
“Well, I—er—you see, Mrs. Southerland,” I managed to stammer, “I understand that Hollywood recognizes no conventions, and my experience knows it doesn’t. But the movie people of the inner circles—that’s what I’m driving at. I want to learn about the conventions within those circles.”
I certainly must have presented an extremely ludicrous appearance, standing there in the office of Royal-Art among a troop of promising young movie aspirants—whose sole hopes were in nothing but promises. I was embarrassment personified.
“Oh, I see,” Renee cooled down a bit, and my morale correspondingly ascended. “You want a ‘true confession,’ don’t you? You’re always prying into other people’s pasts—if not their business!” She smiled tauntingly and revealed something amazingly like a dimple in either cheek—a dimple which gave promising hint of a petulant loveliness that at one time must have been exhibited for male approval. For Renee Southerland was well past her youth—and married!
“But Mrs. Southerland,” I said, “I must have a good story, and if you know of a good one, please tell it to me. Mr. Ray over at Pennant Pictures suggested that I pick out a woman casting director.”
Her eyes softened. I regained my composure. One of the movie aspirants snickered, as though he had just fathomed out my predicament. Renee’s eyes again feigned that demoralizing stare.
“There’s no work for you extras today!” she said, haughtily. “Get out of here—come back tomorrow.”
She herded the disappointed and crest-fallen crowd through the door and with an emphatic thrust she slammed it tight.
“I think we can have a little privacy now,” she said, seating herself spryly in a swivel chair. “And I’ll tell you the story of the most crushing incident in my life, and which also crushed someone else just a little bit more than it did me.”

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