Kay Francis
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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.
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Early Life
Francis was born Katharine Edwina Gibbs on January 13, 1905, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 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 an only moderately successful actress who used the stage name Katharine Clinton.
Career Discovery
A combination of striking dark beauty (albeit of a kind tied to the period of her greatest success), height (5'9") and a deep, supple voice (although she had a slight lisp that affected her "l's" and "r's") ideally suited to early sound-reproduction technology made Francis one of the top film stars of the early 1930s.
Her success came in spite of a minor but distinct speech impediment that gave rise to the nickname "Wavishing Kay Fwancis." She appeared in many films between 1929 and 1946, when she retired from film acting after years of turbulence, studio mistreatment, and decreasing public favor.
Career Highlights
In the late 1920s when Hollywood discovered that the talking motion picture was not to be a momentary curiosity, many Broadway actors with, of course, their coveted enunciation and stage training, were enticed to travel west. These actors included such luminaries as Ann Harding, Helen Twelvetrees, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Leslie Howard, and Kay Francis, among many, many others.
Signed to a Paramount contract, Francis made an immediate impact and costarred quite often with William Powell. She appeared in as many as six to eight movies a year. In the early thirties, the Warner Brothers raided other studios for an influx of "class," and managed to inveigle not only Powell and Francis, but also Ruth Chatterton, to join their stable.
And in the span of a year or two, Francis was the queen of the Warners Brothers lot (later to be supplanted by Bette Davis in the late 1930s) and demanded prime scripts for her films. However, she feuded quite often with her employers (even threatening a lawsuit against them for inferior treatment), which later resulted in the termination of her contract in the late 30s.
Highlights of her career include the films, The Cocoanuts (with the Marx Brothers in their screen debut), the hugely acclaimed Trouble in Paradise (directed by Ernst Lubitsch), Jewel Robbery (which upon recent viewing undeniably presents Francis at her beguiling best), and One Way Passage.
She frequently played longsuffering heroines (in films with titles such as I Found Stella Parrish, Secrets of an Actress, and Comet over Broadway) who went from rags to riches (or vice versa), displaying to good advantage lavish wardrobes that, in some cases, are more memorable than the characters she played.
She was more versatile than she is sometimes given credit for, playing everything from a physician (in Doctor Monica) to a Russian spy (in British Agent). Many felt she overreached in attempting to portray Florence Nightingale in The White Angel (1936), which marked the end of her greatest popularity.
Career Decline
While she was for a time one of the best-paid people in the United States, her career waned in the late 1930s.
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). Others attribute it to her basic lack of artistic interest in her career.
Even Carole Lombard, who was one of the most popular stars of the late 30s and early 40s and costarred with Francis many years ago, attempted to bolster Francis' career by insisting that she be cast in the very fine film, "In Name Only." Francis had a tertiary role as the "heavy," but wisely recognized that the film offered her an opportunity to engage in some serious acting.
Many note that as long her salary was paid, she was content to report to whatever film successive studios assigned her (even when she co-starred with Elsie, the Borden Cow in a film version of Little Men that bears only passing resemblance to Louisa May Alcott's classic). It is also possible that increasingly heavy drinking played a role.
She moved to character and supporting parts, playing catty professional women (in films such as the abovementioned classic In Name Only with Cary Grant, and, holding her own against Rosalind Russell in The Feminine Touch), and as mother to rising stars such as Deanna Durbin.
World War II Era
With the start of World War II, she 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, and then in a popular 1943 film of the same name (in which a cavalcade of stars appeared, along with Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfair filling out the complement of Jills).
Despite the success of Four Jills, the end of the war found Francis virtually unemployable in Hollywood. She signed a three-film contract with Monogram Pictures that gave her production credit as well as star billing. The results — films called Divorce, Wife Wanted, and Allotment Wives — had limited releases in 1945 and 1946. While more lavish than some Monogram productions, they are still at best pale copies of her earlier work.
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, star Ruth Chatterton. Declining health, aggravated by an accident in which she was badly burned by a radiator, hastened her retirement.
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.
In 1966 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. A mastectomy was performed, but the cancer had spread. She died, aged 63, on August 26, 1968, in New York City and left most of her substantial estate to support the provision of guide dogs for the blind.
Francis married three times, and was involved in numerous well publicized affairs, but rumors of lesbianism followed her both during her life and since; Marjorie Main told author Boze Hadleigh when he interviewed her for his book on Hollywood lesbians: "I always heard she was queer for the ladies."
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. Still, the Kear & Rossman biography documents bisexual flings.
While long overlooked, the advent of outlets such as Turner Classic Movies has caused many to reconsider her films. She is the subject of two biographies to be published in 2006, including Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career by Lynn Kear and John Rossman.
Further reading
External links
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