NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Kay Francis

Kay Francis (January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American actress who, after a brief beginning on Broadway in the 1920s, moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... is the 13th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see 1905 (disambiguation). ... OKC redirects here. ... is the 238th day of the year (239th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the state of New York and the entire United States. ... is the 13th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see 1905 (disambiguation). ... is the 238th day of the year (239th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses of Broadway, see Broadway. ...

Early life

Kay Francis was born as Katharine Edwina Gibbs on January 13, 1905, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her parents Joseph Sprague Gibbs and his actress wife, Katharine Clinton Franks were married in New York City in 1903, then moved to Oklahoma City the following year. By the time young Katharine was four (1909) her father had left. Joseph Gibbs, who stood 6’4”, left his daughter the gift of height, being Hollywood's tallest leading lady (5’9”) in the 1930s. is the 13th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see 1905 (disambiguation). ... OKC redirects here. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Year 1903 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ...

While she never discouraged rumors that her mother, Katharine ("Kay") Gibbs, was a pioneering businesswoman who established the "Katharine Gibbs" chain of vocational schools, Francis was actually raised in the hardscrabble theatrical circuit of the period. Her mother was actually only a moderately successful actress who used the stage name Katharine Clinton. In later years, confusion over her origins and upbringing, in tandem with her relatively dark complexion, led to the emergence of rumors that some of her ancestors were African American. Her mother's maiden name (Franks) sparked rumors that she was of Jewish descent. A vocational school, providing vocational education and also as referred to as a trade school or career college, and school is operated for the express purpose of giving its students the skills needed to perform a certain job or jobs. ... An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black) is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. ...

Kay was out on the road with her mother and attended Catholic schools when it was affordable. After attending Miss Fuller’s School for Young Ladies in Ossining (1919) and Cathedral School (1920), Kay enrolled at the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School (no relation) in New York City. At age 17, Kay was engaged to well-to-do Pittsfield, Massachusetts man, James Dwight Francis. Their December 1922 marriage at New York’s St. Thomas Church was not to last. Pittsfield redirects here. ...

In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce. While there, she was courted by an ex-Harvard athlete and member of the Boston Bar Association, Bill Gaston. Kay and Bill only saw each other on occasion, as he was in Boston and Kay had decided to follow her mother’s footsteps and go on stage. She made her debut in a modern dress version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in November 1925. She claimed she got the part by “lying a lot, to the right people”. One of the “right” people was producer Stuart Walker, who hired Kay to join his Portmanteau Theatre Company and she soon found herself commuting between Dayton, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, playing wise-cracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies. By February 1927, Francis returned to Broadway in the play Crime. Sylvia Sidney, although a teenager, had the lead in Crime but would later say that Kay stole the show. Year 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ... Dayton, a surname and place name, may refer to: // Elias Dayton (1737-1807), Colonel and father of Jonathan and builder of Fort Dayton Jonathan Dayton (1760-1824), son of Elias, signer of the United States Constitution, and Speaker of the House Dayton Clarence Miller (1866-1941), an American physicist and... The Indianapolis skyline Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana. ... Cincinnati, Ohio viewed from the SW, across the Ohio River from Kentucky. ... Year 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Sylvia Sidney (August 8, 1910 - July 1, 1999) was an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actress. ...

After Kay’s divorce from Gaston, she became engaged to society playboy, Alan Ryan Jr. She promised Alan's family that she would not return to the stage. However, her promise only lasted a few months and she was back on Broadway as an aviatrix in the Rachel Crothers play, Venus. Rachel Crothers (December 12, 1878, Bloomington, Illinois, USAâ€”July 5, 1958, Danbury, Connecticut) was a prolific and successful American playwright and theater director, known for her well crafted plays. ...

Career

Early career

Between 1925 and 1929, Francis made a limited number of stage appearances in New York before moving into film. In the late 1920s, when Hollywood realized that the talking motion picture was not a passing curiosity, many Broadway actors were enticed to travel west. These included Ann Harding, Aline MacMahon, Helen Twelvetrees, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Leslie Howard, and Francis herself, among many others. ... For other uses of Broadway, see Broadway. ... Ann Harding Ann Harding (August 7, 1901 â€“ September 1, 1981) was an American actress. ... Aline MacMahon was a Jewish-American actress, who was born Aline Laveen MacMahon in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on May 3, 1899, but raised in New York City. ... Helen Twelvetrees (25 December 1908 - 13 February 1958) was an American stage and screen performer, considered a top female star in the early days of sound. ... Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 â€“ January 20, 1990) was an American actress of film, stage, and screen . ... Bogart redirects here. ... Leslie Howard (April 3, 1893 - June 1, 1943) was an English stage and Academy Award nominated film actor. ...

A combination of striking dark beauty, stature, and a deep, supple voice ideally suited to early sound-reproduction technology made Francis one of the top film stars of the early 1930s. So striking were her looks and screen presence that Francis was widely publicized as the epitome of the "American glamour girl" throughout the 1930s. Her success came in spite of a minor, but distinct speech impediment that gave rise to the nickname "Wavishing Kay Fwancis."

Signed to a Paramount contract, Francis made an immediate impact and frequently costarred with William Powell. She appeared in as many as six to eight movies a year, making a total of 21 films between 1929 and 1931. William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 - March 5, 1984) was an American actor, noted for his sophisticated, cynical roles. ...

Discovered by Walter Huston

Her biggest early success came in George M. Cohan’s Elmer the Great starring Walter Huston. Huston was so impressed with Kay that he encouraged her to take a screen test for the Paramount Pictures film Gentlemen of the Press (1929). Francis made this film and the Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts (1929) at Paramount's Astoria Studios. George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 â€“ November 5, 1942) was a United States entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, director, and producer of Irish descent. ... Walter Huston (April 6, 1884 â€“ April 7, 1950) was a Canadian-born American actor. ... Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and distribution company, based in Hollywood, California. ... This article is about the comedian siblings. ... Cover of sheet music for When My dreams Come True The Cocoanuts (1929) is the first released Marx Brothers film. ... The Kaufman Astoria Studios are in Queens, New York, and home to productions like Sesame Street. ...

Kay had hastily married writer-director John Meehan in New York. Soon after her arrival in Hollywood, Kay consummated an affair with actor and producer Kenneth MacKenna, whom she married in January 1931. When MacKenna's Hollywood career foundered, he found himself spending more time in New York, and they divorced in 1934. A former student of the University of Southern California, art director John Meehan was nominated three times for an Academy Award and won each time. ... Year 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display full 1934 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Kay Francis' career at Paramount changed gears when Warner Brothers promised her star status at a better salary. Nonetheless she did some fine portrayals in such films as George Cukor’s rollicking Girls About Town (1931) and the dark melodrama Twenty-Four Hours (1931). After Kay’s career skyrocketed at Warners, she would return to Paramount for Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932). Warner Bros. ... George Dewey Cukor (July 7, 1899 â€“ January 24, 1983) was an American film director. ... Ernst Lubitsch (January 28, 1892 â€“ November 30, 1947), was a German-born Jewish film director. ... Trouble in Paradise is a 1932 romantic comedy film which tells the story of a master thief who meets up with a beautiful pickpocket. ...

In 1932, Warner Brothers persuaded both Francis and Powell to join the ranks of Warners stars, along with Ruth Chatterton. In exchange, Francis was given roles that allowed her a more sympathetic screen persona than had hitherto been the case - in her first three featured roles she had played a villainess. For example, in The False Madonna (1932), she played a jaded society woman nursing a terminally ill child who learns to appreciate the importance of hearth and home. Ruth Chatterton Ruth Chatterton (December 24, 1893 - November 24, 1961) was an American actress. ...

Career highlights

From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen of the Warners lot and increasingly her films were developed as star vehicles. By the mid-thirties, Francis was one of the highest-paid people in the United States.

In the period of her greatest popularity she frequently played long-suffering heroines, in films such as I Found Stella Parrish, Secrets of an Actress, and Comet over Broadway, displaying to good advantage lavish wardrobes that, in some cases, were more memorable than the characters she played -- a fact often emphasized by contemporary film reviewers. Too frequently, however, Francis' clotheshorse reputation led Warners to concentrate resources on lavish sets and costumes, designed to appeal to Depression-era female audiences and capitalize on her reputation as the epitome of chic, rather than on scripts. A clothes horse A clotheshorse (often written as two words, ie clothes horse) refers to a frame (usually wooden, metal or plastic) upon which clothes are hung after washing to enable them to dry. ... For other uses, see The Great Depression (disambiguation). ...

Eventually, Francis herself became dissatisfied with these vehicles and began openly to feud with her employers, even threatening a lawsuit against them for inferior treatment. This in turn led to her demotion to programmers such as 1939's Women in the Wind and, in the same year, to the termination of her contract. The term B-movie originally referred to a film designed to be distributed as the lower half of a double feature, often a genre film featuring cowboys, gangsters or vampires. ...

Career decline

Some writers have posited that her decline was due to her carelessness about scripts, having become known for accepting projects rejected by Bette Davis and other stars.^{[citation needed]} Others attribute it to her basic lack of artistic interest in her career. Many note that, as long her salary was paid, she was content to report to whatever film successive studios assigned her. For the singer, see Betty Davis, for the meteorologist, see Betty Davis (meteorologist). ...

After her release from Warners, Francis was unable to secure another studio contract. Carole Lombard, one of the most popular stars of the late 30s and early 1940s (and who had previously been a supporting player in Francis' 1931 film, Ladies' Man) tried to bolster Francis' career by insisting Francis be cast in In Name Only (1939). Carole Lombard (October 6, 1908 â€“ January 16, 1942) was an American actress. ... Year 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... In Name Only (1939) is a movie starring Cary Grant, Carole Lombard and Kay Francis. ...

In this latter film, Francis had a supporting role to Lombard and Cary Grant, but wisely recognized that the film offered her an opportunity to engage in some serious acting. After this, she moved to character and supporting parts, playing catty professional women - holding her own against Rosalind Russell in The Feminine Touch, for example - and as mother to rising young stars such as Deanna Durbin. For the vocal coach, see Carrie Grant. ... Rosalind Russell (June 4, 1907 â€“ November 28, 1976) was a four-time Academy Award nominated and Tony Award winning American film and stage actress, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday. ... Deanna Durbin (born Edna Mae Durbin on December 4, 1921, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to English immigrant parents) was a popular young singer and actress in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s. ...

World War II era

With the start of World War II, Francis plunged into volunteer work, including extensive war-zone touring, which was first chronicled in a book attributed to fellow volunteer Carole Landis, Four Jills in a Jeep. The book became a popular 1943 film of the same name, with a cavalcade of stars and Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfair joining Landis and Francis to fill out the complement of Jills. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... USO is a TLA that may stand for: Unidentified submarine object Udaipur Solar Observatory Ultra stable oscillator Unidentified submarine object or Unidentified swimming object or Unidentified submersible object Union der SchÃ¼lerorganisationen (uso. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Carole Landis (January 1, 1919 â€“ July 5, 1948) was an American film actress. ... Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link will display full 1943 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Martha Raye (August 27, 1916 â€“ October 19, 1994) was an American comic actress and singer who performed in movies, and later on television. ...

Despite the success of Four Jills, the end of the war found Francis virtually unemployable in Hollywood. She signed a three-film contract with Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures that gave her production credit as well as star billing. The results — the films Divorce, Wife Wanted, and Allotment Wives — had limited releases in 1945 and 1946. While more lavish than some Monogram productions, they were but pale copies of her earlier work. Poverty Row is a slang term used in Hollywood from the late silent period through the mid-fifties to refer to a variety of mostly short-lived small studios, many clustered in the area of Los Angeles, USA known as Gower Gulch, near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower... For other uses, see Monogram (disambiguation). ...

Francis spent the balance of the 1940s on the stage, appearing with some success on Broadway in State of the Union and touring in various productions of plays old and new, including one, Windy Hill, backed by former Warners colleague Ruth Chatterton. Declining health, aggravated by an accident in 1948 in which she was badly burned by a radiator, hastened Francis' retirement. State of the Union is a 1946 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay, which was adapted into a 1948 film directed by Frank Capra. ... Ruth Chatterton Ruth Chatterton (December 24, 1893 - November 24, 1961) was an American actress. ...

Personal life

Francis married five times and had numerous well-publicized affairs. Her diaries, preserved in an academic collection at Wesleyan University, paint an affecting picture of a woman whose personal life was often in disarray and, at least in published excerpts, emphasize a strong attraction to men, actors Lee Tracy and Bob Stevens among them. Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. ... Lee Tracy (born William Lee Tracy on April 14, 1898 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA; died October 18, 1968 in Santa Monica, California) is an American actor. ...

Later life

While some acquaintances paint a lurid picture of a reclusive, hopelessly alcoholic decline in the 1960s, others describe Francis as content with a quiet life in her comfortable Manhattan flat, enjoying the company of a small group of old friends.^{[citation needed]}

In 1966 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, but the cancer had spread and proved fatal. Breast cancer is cancer of breast tissue. ... In medicine, mastectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of one or both breasts, partially or completely. ...

Having no immediate survivors, Francis left over $1,000,000 to a company, Seeing Eye, Inc., which trained guide dogs for the blind. A blind man is led by his guide dog in BrasÃlia, Brazil. ...

Selected filmography

Cover of sheet music for When My dreams Come True The Cocoanuts (1929) is the first released Marx Brothers film. ... See also: 1928 in film 1929 1930 in film 1920s in film 1930s in film years in film film // Events The days of the silent film were numbered. ... See also: 1929 in film 1930 1931 in film 1930s in film 1920s in film years in film film // Events Top grossing films The Indians Are Coming Madam Satan Der Blaue Engel Academy Awards Best Picture: All Quiet on the Western Front - Universal Studios Best Actress: Norma Shearer - The Divorcee... Street of Chance is a 1930 film directed by John Cromwell and starring William Powell, Jean Arthur, Kay Francis and Regis Toomey. ... Raffles is a 1930 film starring Ronald Colman as the popular title character, a gentleman who is also secretly a notorious jewel thief. ... One Way Passage is a 1932 romantic film starring William Powell and Kay Francis as star-crossed lovers. ... See also: 1931 in film 1932 1933 in film 1930s in film years in film film // Events Shirley Temples film career begins Disney released Flowers and Trees their first cartoon in three-strip Technicolor film. ... Trouble in Paradise is a 1932 romantic comedy film which tells the story of a master thief who meets up with a beautiful pickpocket. ... See also: 1931 in film 1932 1933 in film 1930s in film years in film film // Events Shirley Temples film career begins Disney released Flowers and Trees their first cartoon in three-strip Technicolor film. ... Confession is a 1937 drama film starring Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Basil Rathbone and Jane Bryan. ... See also: 1936 in film 1937 category:1937 films 1938 in film 1930s in film years in film film // Events April 16 - Way Out West premieres in the US. May 7 - Shall We Dance premieres in the US. Top grossing films Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Conquest Damaged Lives... In Name Only (1939) is a movie starring Cary Grant, Carole Lombard and Kay Francis. ... The year 1939 in film involved some significant events. ... The year 1943 in film involved some significant events. ...

References

Works referenced

Bright Lights Film Journal is a pre-eminent online quasi-academic film journal, with a left-wing critical orientation, based in Portland, Oregon. ...

External links

Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since September 2007 | American film actors | American stage actors | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Breast cancer deaths | People from Manhattan | People from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | 1905 births | 1968 deaths Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a cable television channel featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros. ... Internet Broadway Database The Internet Broadway Database (IBDb) is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. ... is the 13th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see 1905 (disambiguation). ... OKC redirects here. ... is the 238th day of the year (239th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the state of New York and the entire United States. ...

Contents

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