The many facets of Kay Francis (a Scott O'Brien interview)

[Jenny P]

From the Culpeper (Virginia) Star-Exponent

http://www.starexponent.com/cse/enterta ... cis/21722/

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: September 25, 2008

They don’t make movie stars like Kay Francis anymore.

An adaptable actress, a stunning beauty and an independent women who relied on herself at a time when men especially ruled the world, she was self-made and selfless, one of the first performers to entertain troops overseas during World War II.

Francis (1905-1968) was the glamour girl of the 1930s and she had the lipstick to prove it.

She was also a prolific lover with a killer wardrobe who married four times and had many well-publicized affairs.

But there was much more to Francis than her steamy love life, says biographer Scott O’Brien, a Sonoma County, Calif. writer who penned the first biography of her in 2006, “Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten.”

Her so-called juicy personal life was more human, he said in a phone interview last week.

“She was passionate — a lousy wife, but a happy lover. She had a lot of lovers,” said O’Brien, who holds a masters degree in library science. “She was also focused on being independent; salary was important to her.”

In fact, by 1937, Kay Francis was considered the undisputed queen of Warner Bros. and was the highest paid woman of the time, he said.

Tonight, modern audiences can see why in the Mount Pony Theater when Francis comes to life on the big screen as the perfume baroness in “Trouble in Paradise” — German director Max Lubitsch’s elegant yet comedic tale of burning love and sweet little pickpockets.

O’Brien, who just happened to be in the area visiting family in Fredericksburg, introduces the film and an actress who epitomizes old Hollywood.

Incidentally, Francis was Turner Movie Classic’s Star of the Month for September. The TCM schedule featured 42 of her 68 films, the most of any other actor aired in a single month on the cable TV station.

Francis shines as Jo March in 1940’s retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Men” and is tragically beautiful — and dying — in 1932’s “One Way Passage” with the dashing William Powell.

Francis first caught her biographer’s eye though in 1937’s “Confession” in which she plays a woman on trial for murder.

“Soon after that, I saw her in ‘Trouble in Paradise’ and she was pretty intoxicating,” said O’Brien, who recently published a biography on Virginia Bruce, another actress from the ’30s.

“Kay brought acting down to earth. She had a natural style and didn’t overact like a lot of the so-called greats.”

Francis was interested in the craft of acting, O’Brien said, and got her start on stage.

Though she went on to achieve success in the business, Francis came from an untraditional home some would say was broken.

Born 1905 in Oklahoma City, her father left when she was just a toddler; he died in the influenza epidemic of 1919, O’Brien said. Kay’s mother, Katherine Clinton, was a vaudeville actress who brought her daughter along on tours.

By 1910, the U.S. Census showed, Francis was 5 and living in a Catholic school in N.J., her biographer confirmed.

At age 17, she married Dwight Francis, a wealthy man from Massachusetts — the first of several short-lived marriages to come. In those days, wealthy people got divorced in Paris and since the Francis family loved Kay so much, her trip was paid for, O’Brien said.

By 1931, she was still in her 20s, but already had three marriages under her belt, including brief unions with the son of a governor and a screenwriter.

That year, Francis married actor Kenneth McKenna and the two stayed together for two years. From then on, she kept the Francis name from her first husband.

“And then Kay gave up on marriage,” O’Brien said, realizing. “I’m no good at this.”

Next came a steamy affair with French actor Maurice Chevalier and a failed engagement to a German baron, who O’Brien said committed suicide after joining the German Army and learning later of the Nazi concentration camps.

“The men she was involved with were usually older than she was,” he said of a possible result of her not having her father around. “But she was pretty strong-willed. She knew how to take care of herself because she grew up with a single mother.”

Francis also had quite the penchant for diary keeping — a biographer’s dream! In the course of his research, O’Brien spent four, 10-hour days with the Francis diaries, housed in the cinema archives at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

The diaries were actually jottings left on “engagement calendars,” he said, which she started keeping at the age of 17 and continued into her 40s. The entries very seldom talked about her career, O’Brien said, focusing instead on her social life, including her love life.

“It was emotional stuff, when she was disappointed or upset or ecstatic about something.”

One “tantalizing” entry included musings on Chevalier and his desire for a ménage a trois with Francis and another woman, O’Brien said.

“She said she thought it would be too impractical.”

Francis certainly seemed to live an exciting life, but was she happy? O’Brien supposed so.

“I think she lived a full life and I think she was grateful for what she had,” he said. “For someone who laughed as much as she did, I would say she was a happy person.”

A major source of unhappiness later in her career, however, was when Francis left Hollywood after Warner Bros. “replaced” her with actress Bette Davis.

“Bette took over three films that were intended for Kay,” O’Brien said. “When Davis moved into ‘Kay Francis turf’ it completely redefined her career. Did Davis ever acknowledge Kay for this ‘windfall’?

“I always say, ‘Out of the ashes of Kay Francis’ career at Warner’s rose Bette Davis.’”

But Francis never got over losing her dressing room to Davis or her downgrade to the B-lot at Warner Bros. She refused to talk about her Hollywood career later in life even with her closest friends, O’Brien said.

The fact that she was TCM’s Star of the Month for September would have made her really pleased, he said, confident that Kay would have gotten over her bitterness by now.

As for “Trouble in Paradise,” that too met an unfortunate fate.

Soon after it came out in 1932, new regulations in the Production Code of America made the G-rated movie ethically unsuitable for American audiences because the movie’s jewel thief went unpunished, O’Brien said.

“So this poor little wonderful film colleted dust for 40 years before it was rescued by TCM,” he said, noting such regulations petered out in the 1960s.

The movie is a delicious cinematic cocktail, O’Brien said, mentioning the director’s ability to use the camera as a voyeur.

“The camera is like another actor — the ticking of a clock, a phone unanswered, a cork leaving the champagne bottle. The whole effect is smooth sailing.”

And Kay Francis, well, she’s just smooth.

And compassionate.

In her will, Francis left most of her $1 million estate to train dogs for the blind through Seeing Eye Inc.

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or [email protected]