Kay Francis

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Kay Francis (left) with Mitzi Mayfair on a tour for the USO

Kay Francis , née Katherine Edwina Gibbs (born January 13, 1905 in Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , † August 26, 1968 in New York City ) was an American actress . She was one of the biggest and highest paid female stars in Hollywood of the 1930s . Kay Francis often appeared in “woman's pictures”, film productions that were specifically designed to meet the needs and viewing habits of female viewers.

life and career

Early life and breakthrough at Paramount

Kay Francis was born the daughter of a singer and actress, but initially trained as a secretary. After a failed marriage, she played a few supporting roles on Broadway under the name "Katherine Francis" since 1925 , without celebrating any particular success. Despite a language mistake - she pronounced the 'r' rather than 'w', she got a studio contract with Paramount thanks to the advocacy of Walter Huston , with whom she performed in Elmer, the Great in 1928 . She made her screen debut in 1929 under the name "Katherine Francis" in Gentlemen of the Press alongside Walter Huston. The film was shot in New York's Astoria Studios, and it wasn't until mid-1929 that the actress, who now officially called herself “Kay Francis”, moved her center of life to Hollywood. The actress made her breakthrough as Leading Lady in 1930 alongside William Powell in Street of Chance . As a screen couple, Powell and Francis made five other films, including A Thief With Class and Journey Of No Return .

Even in her earliest films, Kay Francis became famous for her talent for wearing unusual and opulent film costumes by costume designers like Travis Banton and Orry-Kelly with the greatest possible ease. Increasingly, her popularity grew among the female viewers, who valued less the dramatic talent of the actress, but her appearances in constantly changing spectacular outfits. In 1936, Francis was voted the best-dressed Hollywood actress. The film magazines, along with Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich, counted her among the most important female trendsetters when it comes to fashion. Film historian Janine Basinger summed up Francis' talents.

“It's obvious that Kay Francis can't act. But playing a role is not what it does on screen either. She rules every scene and she's an Olympic champion at that. It is presence, not talent. "

Move to Warner Bros. and career highlight

Paramount did not use the talent of the actress to the extent hoped for. Despite leading roles in Girls About Town and alongside Miriam Hopkins in Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Trouble in Paradise , most of Francis' appearances were limited to supporting roles. Francis acted in 21 films by the end of 1931 without making the breakthrough to star. She therefore decided in early 1932 to follow her colleagues William Powell and Ruth Chatterton and switched from Paramount to the competition Warner Brothers at significantly improved conditions . Here, too, things did not go as planned and at the end of 1933 Francis found himself reduced to the status of a leading lady alongside Edward G. Robinson in I Loved a Woman . In Wonder Bar from the following year, the film adaptation of the Broadway show of the same name by Al Jolson , the appearance of Francis lasted only seven minutes, although she was announced as a female star alongside Jolson above the title. It wasn't until Ruth Chatterton left in late 1934 that Francis got better roles. By the middle of the decade, Kay Francis was at the height of her career and the studio's highest-paid female star in 1936, with an annual earnings of $ 227,100. At that time, the high income was offset by a corresponding popularity at the box office. Variety , the industry's leading journal, ranked Francis sixth of the ten most popular female movie stars, ahead of Joan Crawford and Jeanette MacDonald . The actress recently had a huge box office hit with I Found Stella Parrish , whereupon the studio adjusted their existing contract and paid Francis a weekly fee of $ 5,250.

In their film roles, the Studio always used Francis as a self-confident woman who pursues her goals against all odds and strokes of fate. In Mary Stevens, MD and Dr. Monica was shown to Francis as a successful doctor, Street of Women presented her as a fashion designer and in Man Wanted , Francis fell in love with her male secretary as an extremely successful businesswoman. Even as a prostitute in Mandalay , Francis always remains self-determined and courageous. The actress covered up the sometimes implausible storylines and illogical breaks in the narrative structure with her own serenity. Here too, Jeanine Basinger found a handy formula to explain Francis' special charisma:

“It is a conspiracy in which she and the audience are aware that the plot is complete nonsense. [..] She glides through the plot as if she were on her way to the Ritz and knows exactly how to do it sacrifices and suffers without the viewer feeling the irrepressible urge to kill her for it. "

Increasing failure

Kay Francis, 1930s, photographer: Elmer Fryer (1898–1944)

While the films by Kay Francis lost traction and suffered from poor scripts, at the same time, Bette Davis rose to star in the middle . Roles that were believed to be safe, such as Three Sisters from Montana , Juarez and Victims of a Great Love , went to Bette Davis. In 1936 the studio tried to establish Kay Francis as a dramatic actress, but The White Angel , a biography about Florence Nightingale , fell short of expectations. Further financial failures like First Lady , Stolen Holiday and Another Dawn eventually earned the actress a reputation for being box office poison as her films cost more than they grossed in the end. The studio finally tried to buy the actress, who was still making $ 209,000 in 1937, out of her current contract after another failure with Confession .

At the beginning of September 1937, the conflict with the studio, which had been smoldering for a while, finally escalated in a court case. The official trigger was the studio's refusal to give Francis the lead role in the film adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood's Broadway hit Tovarich , contrary to previous oral agreements , and instead to engage Claudette Colbert . However, Kay Francis had been unsatisfied with the quality of the scripts she was given for some time. She took the breach of commitments as an opportunity to sue the studio for early termination of the contract. Like James Cagney and Bette Davis before her , who had failed with a comparable lawsuit in an English court the previous year, Francis complained about the exploitative methods of management and the lack of artistic development opportunities. After a turbulent preliminary hearing with mutual allegations, however, Kay Francis unexpectedly withdrew the lawsuit on September 15, 1937 on the grounds that there had been an out-of-court settlement. In it, Francis committed to make six more films over the next twelve months at her previous fee.

Bette Davis, who, as mentioned, had made her own experiences with the studio, later explained the unexpected turn with alleged lesbian scandals in Francis' private life.

“All of a sudden it was announced that she would only appear in B-films for the remaining term of her contract. It was absolutely unprecedented and a reason was never given. [...] In the end everything boiled down to another woman in her bedroom. "

Two recent biographies of Francis are, however, skeptical of the statement, especially since Francis, who kept extremely intimate diaries for decades, described an endless number of heterosexual affairs there. There are no explicit references to lesbian tendencies in their records.

The studio exposed the actress to a series of uninterrupted humiliations over the next several months in order to get her out of her contract early. Her studio wardrobe, a bungalow with five rooms and a fireplace, was passed on to Bette Davis practically overnight and Francis had to change clothes with the extras. She was forced to be available for camera tests with newbies. At one point she was even supposed to take on the third supporting role in a B-film directed by Boris Karloff . Her films were no longer produced by Hal B. Wallis . Instead of directors like Michael Curtiz and William Dieterle , Bryan Foy was now available to her. The budget of her films has been cut drastically. Francis endured all attempts to force her to break the agreement without complaint, but at the cost that her career was ruined in the end.

Later career and further life

The actress was so frustrated by the arguments that in March 1939, in an interview entitled I Can't Wait to be Forgotten for the magazine Photoplay, she announced that she would retire into private life and hope to be forgotten as soon as possible. Francis dropped the plan, however, and made a highly acclaimed comeback later that year due to her portrayal of the cold, manipulative wife of Cary Grant trying to prevent his luck with Carole Lombard in Just In Name . She continued to appear in films until 1946. The appearances included the role as mother of Deanna Durbin in Nice Girl from 1940 and as the second leading female role alongside Rosalind Russell and Don Ameche in the comedy The Feminine Touch from the following year.

During the Second World War , as a member of the USO , she was intensively involved in troop support. At the end of 1943, Kay Francis toured North Africa and Europe for several months with Carole Landis , Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfield. The experiences of the actresses provided the very rough framework for the film Four Jills in a Jeep in 1944 , in which the four play themselves. Francis produced her last three films in 1945/46 for the Poverty Row film company Monogram Pictures . The most famous film today is Allotment Wives , a film noir , which has parallels in the plot to Solange a Heart Beats . At the same time, Francis began to resume her career as a stage actress. In 1945 she toured across the United States with the comedy Windy Hill , a play by Patsy Ruth Miller , directed by Ruth Chatterton. After further tours and stock theater appearances, the actress returned to Broadway in 1946 as a replacement for Ruth Hussey in State of the Union and then went on tour with the play for twelve months. In 1948 Francis suffered a serious accident. During a tour, she passed out at night in a hotel room in a drunk state directly above a heater and suffered severe burns on her thighs. She suffered the rest of her life as a result of the injuries.

Until early 1954, Francis worked regularly in touring theater, interrupted by occasional appearances on television. Then the actress withdrew completely from the public. Producer Ross Hunter tried to get her to come back as the mother-in-law of Lana Turner in the remake of Madame X in 1965 , but Kay Francis turned down the offer. After her death in 1968, she left most of her fortune to a charitable organization that trains guide dogs .

The actress was married four times, five times according to other sources, including actor Kenneth MacKenna. She also had numerous short-term relationships with colleagues and filmmakers, including Maurice Chevalier , Delmer Daves , Otto Preminger and Fritz Lang . In 1937 she hit the headlines through her affair with the German raven Erik Freiherr von Barnekow, a passionate aviator who had served in Jagdgeschwader 1 in 1917 under squadron leader Kurt-Bertram von Döring.

A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6766 Hollywood Boulevard commemorates the actress.

Filmography (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : Kay Francis  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There is no really suitable German translation for the expression "woman's picture". Neither are they not to be equated with the German expression women's film . The term film melodrama is still applicable, as it only covers one genre. Woman's pictures are expressly not genre-bound, but rather define themselves through their uniform narrative style. Compare the following explanations as well as the basic Jeanine Basinger A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women
  2. ↑ Obviously, Kay Francis can't act. Acting is not what she is doing on-screen. Being there is what she is doing, at that she is an Olympic champion. She is presence, not talent. Basinger, p. 153
  3. ↑ u. a. Kear and Rossmann, p. 98, and footnote 39; also O'Brien, p. 176, who even calls Francis the highest paid star in the studio.
  4. ↑ O'Brien, S. 176f; Kear and Rossmann, p. 98, and further footnote 39.
  5. ↑ O'Brien, pp. 153 f; Kear and Rossmann, p. 98.
  6. ↑ It's a conspiracy that suggests, she knows, and the viewer knows, that what is going on is sheer nonsense [...] She inhabits the plots as if she were at the Ritz, and she knows how so scarifce herself and suffer without making you want to kill her. Basinger, p. 152 f
  7. ^ O'Brien, p. 196.
  8. ↑ See Kear, Rossmann, p. 209. Footnote 39.
  9. ↑ O'Brien, pp. 168 and 170 on the studio's loss of confidence in Francis' "bankability" and pp. 189–195 for a detailed discussion of the legal dispute. See also in detail, with a partially different focus on the events during the legal dispute at Kear and Rossmann, pp. 101–110.
  10. ↑ Out of the blue, it was announced she would complete her contract by starring in B-Pictures. It was simply unprecedented, and no reason was ever given. [...] It all boiled down to another woman - in her boudoir. See Scott O'Brien, p. 190
  11. ↑ cf. Scott O'Brien, p. 213 f. A copy of the interview with the heading "I Can't Wait to Be Forgotten" can be found here [1]
  12. ↑ See Scott O'Brien, p. 309
  13. ↑ see Scott O'Brien, p. 313
  14. ↑ detailed information on Barnekov's military career here: [2] and here: [3]
  15. ↑ cf. in detail Scott O'Brien, p. 204 ff
  16. ↑ Kay Francis , Hollywood Walk of Fame, official website; accessed on November 24, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Francis, Kay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gibbs, Katherine Edwina (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , United States
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1968
Place of death New York City , New York , United States