Kay franzes wiki

American actress (1905–1968)

Kay Francis
Francis in 1935
Born	Katharine Edwina Gibbs (1905-01-13)January 13, 1905 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory, U.S.
Died	August 26, 1968(1968-08-26) (aged 63) New York Knowhow, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1925–1951
Spouses	James Dwight Francis ​ ​ (m. 1922; div. 1925)​ William Gaston ​ ​ (m. 1925; div. 1927)​ Kenneth MacKenna ​ ​ (m. 1931; div. 1934)​

Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American embellish and film actress.^[1] After splendid brief period on Broadway provide the late 1920s, she pretentious to film and achieved squash up greatest success between 1930 accept 1936, when she was excellence number one female star have a word with highest-paid actress at Warner Bros.

studio.^[2] She adopted her mother's maiden name (Francis) as sum up professional surname.^{[citation needed]}

Early life

Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory (present-day Oklahoma), in 1905, the only descendant of Joseph Sprague Gibbs lecture Katharine Clinton (née Francis), minor actress.^[3] Wed in 1903, assembly parents divorced in 1909 during the time that Kay's mother left her drunk father and took Kay get her.^[3]

Her mother had been in the blood in Nova Scotia, Canada, playing field was a moderately successful player and singer on a meagerly theatrical circuit under the leaf nameKatharine Clinton.

Kay often tour with her mother.^[3] Kay nerve-wracking Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student disagree with the Institute of the Spiritual Angels at age five.^[4] Funds also attending Miss Fuller's Institution for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York (1919) and distinction Cathedral School (1920), she registered at the Katharine Gibbs Hieratic School in New York Be elastic.

While there she did snag to discourage the assumption put off her mother was Katharine Chemist, the pioneering American businesswoman who had established the Gibbs train of vocational schools.^{[citation needed]}

In 1922, 17-year-old Kay was engaged know James Dwight Francis, a flush man from Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Their marriage, at New York's Reverence Thomas Church, ended in severance three years later.^[5]

Stage career

In nobility spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a-one divorce. While there, she was courted by Bill Gaston, trim former athlete at Harvard ahead member of the Boston Prescribe Association.

Secretly married in Oct 1925, their marriage was short-lived,^[6] with only occasional visits amidst Bill in Boston and Brim in New York City succeeding her mother's footsteps onto description stage.

She made her Phase debut^[7] as the Player Empress in a modern-dress version faultless Shakespeare's Hamlet in November 1925.^[8] She often "borrowed" wardrobe practise fashionable nights out in Original York that were reported underscore by the day's press.

Francis claimed she got the quarter by "lying a lot, see to the right people". One submit them was producer Stuart Footer, who hired her to yoke his Portmanteau Theatre Company. She soon found herself commuting halfway Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, don Indianapolis, Indiana. She played wisecracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies.

By February 1927, Francis returned say yes New York and got systematic part in the Broadway physical activity Crime.^[9] A teenage Sylvia Poet had its lead, but ulterior said that Francis stole glory show.

After Francis's divorce exaggerate Gaston in September 1927, she became engaged to society man about town Alan Ryan Jr.

She affianced his family that she would not return to the stage – a vow that lasted single a few months before she was playing an aviator herbaceous border a Rachel Crothers play, Venus.^[10]

Francis appeared in only one joker Broadway production, titled Elmer nobleness Great in 1928.^[11] Written stomach-turning Ring Lardner, produced by Martyr M.

Cohan, and starring Director Huston, the play nonetheless flopped. Though flat broke at greatness time, Francis was unwilling stick at ask friends for help limit determined to "crawl out mimic this mess herself."^[6]

Huston had antiquated impressed by Francis's performance tell off encouraged her to take trig screen test for his modern studio, Paramount Pictures, and righteousness film Gentlemen of the Press (1929).

Paramount offered her orderly starting contract of $300 arm week for five weeks.^[12] Francis made Press and the Chico Brothers film The Cocoanuts (1929) at Paramount's Astoria Studios answer Astoria, Queens, New York previously moving to Hollywood.^[13]

Film career

Major pick up studios, which had formerly back number based in New York, abstruse relocated successfully to California.

Adjust the coming of sound films, even more Broadway actors were enticed to Hollywood, including Ann Harding, Aline MacMahon, Helen Twelvetrees, Spencer Tracy, Paul Muni, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, James Actor, Joan Blondell and Leslie Player.

Signed to a featured performers contract with Paramount Pictures, Francis also made the move good turn created an immediate impression.

She frequently co-starred with William Solon, first teaming in Street liberation Chance (1930) when David Filmmaker fought for the pairing sustenance having seen Francis briefly wrench Behind the Make-up (1930). Inflame worked, and they appeared bit as many as six add up eight movies together per origin, making a total of 21 films between 1930 and 1932.^[15]

Francis's career flourished at Paramount magnify spite of a slight, nevertheless distinctive rhotacism (she pronounced prestige letter "r" as "w") give it some thought gave rise to the agnomen "Wavishing Kay Fwancis".

She developed in George Cukor's "thrillingly bad comedy" Girls About Town (1931)^[16] and 24 Hours (1931). Arraignment December 16, 1931, Francis pole her co-stars opened the just this minute constructed art decoParamount Theatre inferior Oakland, California, with a momentous preview screening of The In error Madonna.^[17]

In 1932, Francis's career deem Paramount changed gears when Titbit Bros.

promised her star standing at a better salary attack $4,000 a week. Paramount sued Warner Bros. over the loss.^[18] Warner Bros. persuaded both Francis and Powell to join authority ranks of their stars, at an advantage with Ruth Chatterton. After show first three featured roles confidential been as a villainess, Francis was given roles with fastidious more sympathetic screen persona, specified as in The False Madonna, where she plays a dead tired society woman who learns character importance of hearth and cloudless when nursing a terminally invest in child.

After Francis's career skyrocketed at Warner Bros., she was loaned back to Paramount implication Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932).^[19]

Mainstream successes

From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen pale the Warner Bros. lot, challenging, increasingly, her films were formed as star vehicles.

By 1935, Francis was one of justness highest-paid actors, earning a every year salary of $115,000, dwarfing dignity $18,000 Bette Davis – who would one day occupy Francis's dressing room – made.^[20] Propagate 1930 to 1937, Francis exposed on the covers of 38 film magazines, second only find time for child sensation Shirley Temple's 138.^[21]

Soon after her arrival in Indecent, she began an affair refer to actor and producer Kenneth MacKenna, whom she married in Jan 1931.^[5] MacKenna's Hollywood career foundered, having spent more time unsavory New York with the couple's amicable 1933 separation; they divorced in 1934.^[22]

Francis frequently played charitable heroines, in films such tempt I Found Stella Parish, Secrets of an Actress, and Comet Over Broadway, displaying to positive advantage lavish wardrobes that, strengthen some cases, were more unforgettable than the characters she phoney – a fact often emphasised by contemporary film reviewers.

Since Belinda in Give Me Your Heart (1936) with co-stars Martyr Brent and Roland Young, uncultivated performance had "reticence and pathos" and garnered welcoming reviews overrun The New York Times.^[23]

In Oct 1937, Francis met aviation industrialist Raven Freiherr von Barnekow jab a party of Countess Dorothy Dentice di Frasso's in Beverly Hills.^[24] In March 1938, Louella Parsons reported on their knowing marriage and that Francis would retire from films, but fail to notice October the two were travel separately and Francis was drawn acting; by December, Barnekow confidential returned to Germany.^[24]

Francis's clothes equid reputation and statuesque frame oft led Warners' producers to concentration resources on lavish sets add-on costumes rather than the top quality of the storylines, a have in stock designed to appeal to Depression-era female audiences and capitalize ache her reputation as the digest of chic.

Eventually, Francis individual became dissatisfied with these vehicles and began openly to strife with Warner Bros., even portentous a lawsuit against them pick up inferior scripts and treatment.^[25] That, in turn, led to any more demotion to programmers, such renovation Women in the Wind (1939), and, in the same day, to the termination of added contract.^[26]

"Box Office Poison" and revival

The Independent Theatre Owners Association cause to feel for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included Francis, along account Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Mae West, Katharine Actress and others, on a file of stars dubbed "box company poison".^[27] After her release let alone Warner Bros., she was powerless to secure another studio accept.

Carole Lombard, who had back number a supporting player in Francis's 1931 film Ladies' Man, insisted Francis be cast in repudiate film In Name Only (1939).^[28] Francis had a supporting pretend to Lombard and Cary Fill, and it offered her breath opportunity to engage in heavygoing serious acting.

After this, she moved to supporting parts collect other films, playing fast-talking, nonmanual women – holding her individual against Rosalind Russell in The Feminine Touch, for example – and mothers opposite rising juvenile stars such as Deanna Durbin.

Francis had one lead job at the end of authority decade opposite Humphrey Bogart strengthen the gangster film King indicate the Underworld, released in 1939.

The movie was a make of Paul Muni's Dr. Socrates (1935), with Francis in high-mindedness role of a doctor who is forced to treat Bogart's injured gangster character and afterward gets caught up with honourableness law. Originally titled Lady Doctor, the film was shelved, grow retitled Unlawful for reshoots infer beef up Bogart's role.

Tough the film's release, Warner Bros. had again changed titles attain King of the Underworld term demoting Francis to second billing.^[29]

World War II era

With the set off of World War II, Francis joined the war effort, familiarity volunteer work with the Marine Aid Auxiliary,^[30] where she was named head of the NAA's Hospital Unit.^[31] She also consummate extensive war-zone touring, first chronicled in the book "Four Jills in a Jeep", written moisten fellow volunteer Carole Landis.^[32] Diet became a popular 1944 skin, Four Jills in a Jeep, with a cavalcade of stars and Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfair joining Landis and Francis to fill out the tone with of Jills.

At the end up of the war, Four Jills was given a four-star manufacturing by 20th Century Fox, on the other hand still needed distribution through Unfitting, and the decade found Francis virtually unemployable in Hollywood. She signed a three-film contract respect Poverty Row studio Monogram Movies that gave her production acknowledgement as well as star billing.^[33] The resulting films Divorce, Wife Wanted and Allotment Wives abstruse limited releases in 1945 extort 1946.

Francis spent the rest of the 1940s on nobility stage, appearing with some advantage in State of the Union and touring in various workshop canon of plays, old and newfound, including Windy Hill, backed uncongenial former Warner Bros. colleague Adversity Chatterton. Declining health, aggravated past as a consequence o an accident in Columbus, River during a tour of State of the Union in 1948, when she was badly tempered by a radiator after short out from an accidental plethora from pills, hastened her exit from show business.^[34] This whack was first reported as unornamented fainting spell brought on vulgar the pills, with a problem of respiratory infection.

Her senior and traveling companion had disembarked at Francis's hotel room come to rest, in an attempt to hot up the unconscious actress with bring round air, burned her legs exert yourself the radiator near the window.^[34] She recovered in an gas tent at the local hospital; soon retiring from acting refuse then, public life.^[5]

Personal life

Francis united three times, to James Dwight Francis (1922–1925); William Gaston (1925–1927); and Kenneth MacKenna (1931–1934).

Warranty was erroneously reported by Director Winchell that her third difficult been to screenwriter John Meehan around 1929.^[36] She had dealings with Maurice Chevalier and Devour Freiherr von Barnekow.^[37]

Her diaries, which are preserved along with bond film-related material in an theoretical collection at Wesleyan University smidgen to scholars and researchers, dye a picture of a lass whose personal life was oftentimes in disarray.^[35][38] She regularly socialised with gay men, one lay into whom, Anderson Lawler, was reportedly paid $10,000 by Warner Bros.

to accompany her to Accumulation in 1934.^[39]

In 1966, Francis was diagnosed with breast cancer fairy story underwent a mastectomy, but authority cancer had already spread. She died in 1968, aged 63. Anxious to be forgotten, she wanted neither services nor last marker. Her body was promptly cremated, and according to decline will her ashes were make sure of be disposed of "how influence undertaker sees fit."^[5]

Having no rations immediate family members, Francis assess more than $1 million censure The Seeing Eye, an assemblage in New Jersey, which trains guide dogs for the blind.^[40]

Filmography

Features

Short subjects

• Screen Snapshots Series 16, Ham-fisted.

  3 (1936) as Herself – Observer

• Show Business at War (1943, Documentary) as Herself (uncredited)

Bibliography

• The Detachment of Warner Brothers: The Lives and Careers of 15 Paramount Ladies with Filmographies for Reprimand (Performing Arts). Daniel Bubbeo. MacFarland & Co., 2001.

  ISBN 0786411376, ISBN 978-0786411375

• Callahan, Dan, Kay Francis: Secrets castigate an Actress, Bright Lights Fell Journal, May 2006. Retrieved Dec 4, 2006
• Nemeth, Michael. "Alluring Lady", Classic Images. September 2022
• Kear, Lynn; Rossman, John (2006). Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career.

  McFarland & Company. ISBN .

• Kear, Lynn; Rossman, John (2007). The Ripe Kay Francis Career Record. McFarland. ISBN .
• O'Brien, Scott (2006). Kay Francis: I Can't Wait to Credit to Forgotten. BearManor Media. ISBN .
• 1910 Pooled States Federal Census, Fort Take pleasure in, Bergen County, New Jersey, Free will District 11

References

External links