Here are 10 things you should know about Helen Vinson, born 113 years ago today. Her Hollywood career was relatively brief—she appeared in just over three dozen movies—but memorable.
Tag: Kay Francis
In Pwaise of Kay Fwancis
We’ve sung the praises of actress Kay Francis in this space many times, but if you’ve never taken the hint and checked out her work, now’s the time. Beginning at 6 a.m. ET tomorrow, TCM is airing 10 of her pictures in a row. (Look for the the full line-up at the end of this post.)
Francis was the queen of women’s pictures—romances and melodramas, with the occasional comedy thrown in for good measure—and a more fashionable star the world has rarely, if ever, seen. She wore glam garb as well as any actress in Hollywood and far better than most.
Francis is also remembered for a charming vocal quirk: She pwonounced R’s like W’s, Elmer Fudd-style. Her struggle with R’s was more understated than was Mr. Fudd’s but you get the idea. So we find it utterly charming that in 1935’s Living on Velvet (not airing tomorrow, but worth watching out for), she and George Brent had some fun at the expense of that vocal quirk. Nice to note that our Ms. Francis didn’t take herself too seriously.
Here, as promised, is the line-up for tomorrow’s Francis Fest; set those DVR’s now! All times are Eastern.
6:00 a.m. | I LOVED A WOMAN (1933)
A Chicago meat-packer tries to keep a rein on his social-climbing wife. Dir: Alfred E. Green; cast: Edward G. Robinson, Kay Francis, Genevieve Tobin
8:00 a.m. | I FOUND STELLA PARISH (1935)
An actress stops at nothing to protect her daughter from her shady past. Dir: Mervyn LeRoy; cast: Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Paul Lukas
9:30 a.m. | SECRETS OF AN ACTRESS (1938)
A leading lady falls for a married architect who’s invested in her play. Dir: William Keighley; cast: Kay Francis, George Brent, Ian Hunter
11:00 a.m. | DIVORCE (1945)
A frequently divorced woman sets her sights on a happily married man. Dir: William Nigh; cast: Kay Francis, Bruce Cabot, Helen Mack
12:15 p.m. | GUILTY HANDS (1931)
A district attorney tries to frame an innocent girl for the murder he committed. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke; cast: Lionel Barrymore, Kay Francis, Madge Evans
1:30 p.m. | MANDALAY (1934)
A woman with a past tries to get rid of a former lover. Dir: Michael Curtiz; cast: Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Warner Oland .
2:45 p.m. | THE HOUSE ON 56TH STREET (1933)
A woman loses her family after being falsely convicted of a crime. Dir: Robert Florey; cast: Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Gene Raymond
4:00 p.m. | CONFESSION (1937)
A glamorous singer commits murder to protect her daughter’s virtue. Dir: Joe May; cast: Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Basil Rathbone
5:30 p.m. | JEWEL ROBBERY (1932)
A jewel thief falls for a tycoon’s wife in Vienna. Dir: William Dieterle; cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Helen Vinson
6:45 p.m. | ONE WAY PASSAGE (1932)
An ocean voyage leads to romance for a dying heiress and a condemned criminal. Dir: Tay Garnett; cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Aline MacMahon
Precode Movies 101: TCM Offers a Primer for Beginners
We’ve acknowledged that the precode era is one of our favorite era in movie history. For those that might not know, precode movies are those made after the ascent of sound but before the Hayes code, which greatly restricted the plot, language, and attitudes that Hollywood pictures were allowed to portray, began to be strictly enforced by the Breen office in 1934.
That quaint, wholesome quality you may associate with old movies? The pictures of the 1930s and ’40s that might convince you, if you don’t already know better, that life was simple, pure and uncomplicated back in the good old days? Those came after the code kicked in. Precode movies are another thing altogether.
Some pictures that typify the precode era are playfully bawdy; others are downright gritty, sometimes even a bit shocking today (though rarely very graphic, by our standards). Tomorrow (Tuesday, July 31st), TCM is giving precode neophytes the chance to do some serious catching up, as they’ll be airing precode favorites all day long, from 6am till 8pm. If you’ve ever wondered what the fuss was all about, here’s your chance to educate yourself.
If it’s gritty you’re looking for, we’d recommend Safe in Hell (1931) and Three on a Match (1932); if you’re just looking for a little salty fun, give Jewel Robbery (1932) and Blonde Crazy (1931) a look. But honestly, we recommend loading up your DVR with every one of these entertaining pictures; they all have something to recommend them.
Here’s the line-up (all times Eastern):
6:00 am — Downstairs (1932)
7:30 am — Loose Ankles (1930)
8:45 am — She Had to Say Yes (1933)
10:00 am — Faithless (1932)
11:30 am — Hell’s Highway (1932)
12:45 pm — Safe in Hell (1931)
2:00 pm — Jewel Robbery (1932)
3:15 pm — Three on a Match (1932)
4:30 pm — Footlight Parade (1933)
6:30 pm — Blonde Crazy (1931)
Happy 112th Birthday, Kay Francis!
Fashion plate and Queen of the Women’s Pictures Kay Francis was born Katherine Edwina Gibbs 112 years ago today in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Here are 10 KF Did-You-Knows:
- Though Francis was born in Oklahoma City, she didn’t live there long. Much of her childhood was spent on the road with her mother, Katherine Clinton, who was an actress. At age 17, Francis, who was then attending Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City, married the first of her five husbands—one James Dwight Francis, member of a prominent (and well-to-do) Pittsfield, Massachusetts, family. That marriage, like the four other matrimonial knots Francis would eventually tie, unraveled in relatively short order.
- Shortly after her 1925 divorce, Francis decided to follow her mother’s example and pursue a life on the stage. In November of that year, she made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
- After a handful more Broadway roles, Walter Huston, her costar in the 1928 production of Elmer the Great, encouraged her to take a screen test for Paramount Pictures. She did, and was given roles in Gentlemen of the Press (1929) and the Marx Brothers‘ first picture, The Cocoanuts (1929), both of which were filmed at Paramount’s Astoria Studios in Queens, NY.
- Soon thereafter, Francis moved to Hollywood where her striking looks and model’s figure (she stood 5’9″, very tall for an actress at the time) helped her career to ascend. From 1929 to 1931, she appeared in more than twenty films.
- Warner Brothers wooed Francis away from Paramount in 1932, and it was there that she experienced her greatest success. By the mid-’30s, Francis was the queen of the Warner Brothers lot and one of the highest-paid people in the United States. From 1930-37, Francis appeared on the cover of more than 38 movie magazines, second only to Shirley Temple (who racked an astonishing 138 covers over that span).
- At Warner Brothers, Kay became known as a clotheshorse. Her ability to wear stylish clothes well was highly valued by the studio and admired by fans; in fact, she eventually came to feel that Warner Brothers put more more of a focus on her on-screen wardrobe than her film’s scripts, as she came to be unalterably associated with the sort of weepy melodramas that were then known as “women’s pictures.” We fully understand the frustration she felt at the time, but we’ll admit that we love those pictures and adore Francis’ performances in them.
- Francis’ great success came in spite of a noticable speech impediment: She pronounced R’s as W’s (ala Elmer Fudd). As such, our favorite line of Kay Francis dialogue appears in Mandalay (1934), which was directed by Michael Curtiz and in which Kay starred with Ricardo Cortez, Lyle Talbot, and Warner Oland. It’s great fun to hear her intone, “Gwegowy, we awwive at Mandalay tomowwow.”
- Francis’ personal life was something of a mess. An exceedingly liberated person, sexually, she slept with both men and with women—and plenty of them, and none of her five marriages lasted very long.
- Francis’s career fell as quickly as it had risen. She was through with the movies (or perhaps vice versa) by 1946, when she appeared in her final picture, Wife Wanted, a budget quickie made for the infamous Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures. Aside from some stage work in the late ’40s and a couple of TV appearences in the early ’50s, she avoided the spotlight thereafter and was largely forgotten by the public (until Turner Classic Movies began to feature her pictures prominently in its programming and her star again rose among old-movie buffs).
- When she died in 1968 of breast cancer, Kay Francis left more than one million dollars to The Seeing Eye, Inc., an organization that trains guide dogs for the blind.
Happy birthday, Kay Francis, wherever you may be!
Happy 112th Birthday, Constance Bennett!
Actress Constance Bennett was born 112 years ago today in New York City. Here are 10 CB Did-You-Knows:
- Bennett was born into a theatrical family. Both her parents, Richard Bennett and Adrienne Morrison, were actors, as was her maternal grandparents, Rose Wood and Lewis Morrison.
- Bennett’s two sisters, Joan and Barbara, were also actresses (though Barbara’s career was brief), but it was Constance who was the first to enter motion pictures, appearing in silent pictures filmed in and around NYC and making her Hollywood debut in Cytherea (1924).
- After giving up films upon marrying Philip Plant in 1925, Bennett, after divorcing Plant, returned to her film career just as talking pictures were taking off.
- Bennett was, for a brief time in the early 1930s, the highest paid actress in Hollywood.
- Like Kay Francis, Bennett’s ability to wear fine clothes well played a big role in her success.
- Bennett Was cast in the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night but withdrew when Columbia Pictures declined to allow her to serve as producer of the film. Claudette Colbert, who took over the role, won the Best Actress Oscar for her work in the picture.
- Bennett starred in the Janet Gaynor/Judy Garland/Barbra Streisand role in What Price Hollywood (1932), which was a clear inspiration for the A Star Is Born pictures.
- Less in demand in pictures by the 1940s, Bennett began working in radio and in the theatre. Her stage debut came in 1940 in Noël Coward‘s Easy Virtue.
- Bennett Was married five times; the final marriage, to US Air Force Colonel (later Brigadier General) John Theron Coulter, lasted by far the longest—from June 1946 until Bennett’s death in July 1965.
- Because of her marriage to Coulter and in recognition of her efforts in providing relief entertainment to US troops stationed in Europe during and after World War II, Bennett was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Happy birthday, Constance Bennett, wherever you may be!