Franchot Tone

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frachot Tone around 1942
Franchot Tones star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Stanislas Pascal Franchot Tone (born February 27, 1905 in Niagara Falls , New York , † September 18, 1968 in New York City ) was an American film, theater and television actor, who was particularly popular in the 1930s and 1940s Years of popularity. He received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his appearance in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) .

Life

Franchot Tone was born into a wealthy, high society family in the New York area, his father serving as President of the Carborundum Company. On his mother's side, Tones's great-grandfather was House of Representatives Richard Franchot , and he was widely related to the Irish independence fighter Theobald Wolfe Tone . He took an early interest in acting and was president of the Cornell University Theater Club during his student days . Originally, Tone was supposed to take over the family business, but he decided to pursue a show career. He moved to Greenwich Village , New York, and played on Broadway during the late 1920s , including in Katharine Cornell's 1929 production The Age of Innocence . He later also became a member of the famous Group Theater .

After a few years on Broadway, he received a permanent studio contract with MGM in Hollywood in 1932 . His first film was The Wiser Sex by Berthold Viertel , where he played a supporting role alongside Claudette Colbert . In the following year, 1933, he made his breakthrough as a film actor with films like Today We Live and Ich tanze nur für Dich , so that in the following years he mostly got leading roles or major supporting roles. One of his most famous performances was the appearance as sailor Byam in the adventure classic Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), for which he received an Oscar nomination for best actor. In the same year he appeared in the also highly successful adventure film Bengali by Henry Hathaway . In his films, Tone was often entrusted with the portrayal of second leading roles, for example as a wealthy playboy or lover of the main female character, who in the end does not get the leading actress.

His film career continued successfully in the 1940s. A departure from his usual role scheme was the lead in Billy Wilder's war film Five Graves to Cairo , in which he is the only survivor of a unit of US soldiers stranded in a lonely Sahara hotel. In Robert Siodmak's dark film noir witness wanted , however, Tones figure turns out to be a murderer at the end of the film. When Tone got on one of the infamous black lists during the McCarthy era in the 1950s , he left Hollywood and returned to his roots in New York. There he played again on Broadway and in numerous television programs, including as a choleric juror No. 3 in the original television version of The Twelve Jurors , on which the classic film of the same name with Henry Fonda was based. He also had guest appearances in series such as Bonanza and Twilight Zone . Tone also produced his own version for Anton Chekhov's uncle Vanya .

Tone made a late return to Hollywood in 1962 as a character actor in Otto Preminger's star-studded political drama Storm over Washington , in which he plays the charismatic but terminally ill US president.

Private life

In 1935 Tone married the film star Joan Crawford , with whom he made a total of seven films. Before the two actors were divorced in 1938, Crawford had suffered several miscarriages. In 1941 he married the actress Jean Wallace (1923–1990), who also appeared in two films with her husband. In 1948 this marriage also ended in divorce. In 1951 Tone married the young actress Barbara Payton (1927-1967), who suffered from alcohol and drug addiction. A love rival in the fight for Payton was for Tone the actor Tom Neal , who was known as brutal and murdered his third wife in 1965. It came to a fight between Tone and Neal, in which Tone suffered numerous injuries and fell into a coma for 18 hours. Tone survived and married Payton in 1951, but they divorced a year later. Tone's fourth marriage to actress Dolores Dorn between 1955 and 1959 also ended in divorce. He had two children.

In 1968, Franchot Tone died of lung cancer at the age of 63. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his film work .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tone, Franchot
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tone, Stanislas Pascal Franchot (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Niagara Falls (New York) , USA
DATE OF DEATH 18th September 1968
Place of death New York City , USA