A Kay Francis Double Feature: "Wavishing"

Most fans of classic movies know film divas of the 1930’s such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo. They are iconic figures who more often than not, appear as caricatures of there original screen image. But among these movie queens, there is a name that hardcore cinephiles also recognize with as much stature in the deco era: Kay Francis.

A sultry brunette who was always dressed to the nines, Francis wrung her hands and suffered long in films at both Paramount and Warner Brothers studios during the Depression. She headlined both light comedies and heavy melodramas, with emphasis on the latter. Two prime examples of a “Kay Francis film” are featured below, the first from her early days at Paramount and the second during her tenure at Warners.

The Virtuous Sin (1930)
Is there such a thing as a virtuous sin? Kay seemed to think so in this very early talkie in which she co-starred with Walter Huston. Set in World War I Russia, it’s actually a bit hokey and kind of dated but since it’s a pre-code, there’s enough risqué hanky panky to make it fun.

Kay plays the wife of a medical researcher (Kenneth McKenna), an eager chap who is taken into the military against his will. His disgust of his current station leads to insubordination and eventually court martial. Sentenced to execution by his superior (Huston), our doctor friend is hopeless. Enter Kay, determined to save him no matter what it takes, even though she has admitted she isn’t deeply in love with him. She frequents a café cum bordello in an attempt to tantalize the general who sentenced her husband to die, hoping to “persuade” him to reverse his decision. So what does she do instead? She falls in love with him!

The Virtuous Sin is the kind of improbable melodrama that ran rampant in pre-code Hollywood. Hand to forehead tales with overacting styles that carried over from silent films. They are a hoot to watch though and rarely boring. As an interesting side note, Kay and costar McKenna carried on a torrid affair during filming which culminated in their marriage in early 1931.

Living on Velvet (1935)
Although not one of Francis’ better known or more notorious vehicles, Living on Velvet is a good example of the genre she starred in while at Warner Brothers. At her zenith, she was among the highest paid stars in Hollywood. At her lowest ebb at the studio, she was among the highest paid stars in Hollywood. You see, hers was an extremely lucrative contract and even when Warners thought her time had passed and gave her sub par scripts in hopes her ego would make her break said contract, she plugged along collecting her paychecks and becoming a very wealthy woman.

Living on Velvet gave her two leading men, George Brent and Warren William (though there was no doubt that Kay was the star). Aviator Brent loses his parents and sister in a plane crash in which he had piloted the plane. Guilty and reckless, he feels he is now ‘living on velvet’. When he meets Kay, it is love at first site for them both, although she is Warren’s girl. Kay marries George only to be plagued by his lackadaisical outlook about making a living and life in general.

Francis had worked with both George Brent and Warren William before and worked with Brent several more times before leaving Warners. Life was not velvet for William during this period. Once a leading man at the studio and on loan-out films like the previous year’s Cleopatra and the original Imitation of Life, Velvet relegated the actor to what was basically supporting status. Far from the suave and virile men he’d played earlier in the decade, he was a mere door mat for best friend Brent and girlfriend Kay to walk across on there way to the alter.

One notable scene from Living on Velvet has Brent’s character giving Francis a diction lesson. The star had a noticeable lisp, where her ‘r’s came out as ‘w’s. So much so that she was often teasingly called the “wavishing Kay Fwancis.” In their shared scene, George gives Kay a verbal exercise where she must repeat “around the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran,” only Francis’ version went: “Awound the wagged wocks the wagged wascal wan.” Audiences found her self deprecation charming.

The actress continued making films after she left Warner Brothers in the late 1930’s, but her glory days were long behind her. A workhorse (she made 15 films in 1930-31 alone) as well as a clotheshorse (her costume changes were legendary), Kay Francis was also a true blue star.
For more information about the colorful Kay Francis, author Scott O’Brien has penned a fascinating biography entitled, Kay Francis: I Can't Wait to be Forgotten - Her Life on Film and Stage (linked below).

In This Our Life (1942): She's Got Bette Davis Eyes

Nobody could chew up some scenery like Bette Davis. Sure, she occasionally played it low key (check out All This and Heaven Too or The Great Lie, where she was virtually obliterated onscreen by the wonderfully raving Mary Astor!), but when it came to hamming it up to full dramatic effect, none of her pre- Baby Jane performances can touch her turn as Stanley Timberlake in In This Our Life (1942). Those infamous eyes, bulging their fullest, voice when soft, at it’s silkiest (especially while using her “southern” accent), voice when upset at it’s shrillest. But all this being said, In This Our Life is a hoot to watch and never disappoints for a melodramatic funfest.

The film is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning 1941 novel by Ellen Glasgow, and it is cast full tilt with some of Warner Brothers top players. Davis plays Stanley Timberlake, Olivia deHavilland, her sister Roy. It’s one of the oddest naming of characters, which puzzles most viewers, and is never explained or addressed in the film. However, names aside, Stanley is a spoiled, loose living mantrap in Richmond, Virginia, who steals Roy’s husband, Peter (Dennis Morgan), and dumps her attorney fiancee, Craig (George Brent). When Stanley and Peter run away and get married (after the final divorce decree of his union with Roy comes through of course), Peter finds that living with this self centered, fun seeking harridan is no slice of Heaven. When he can take the stress of living with her no more, he commits suicide, sending Stanley ~ never one to be very self sufficient ~ back to Richmond and the family home. Meanwhile, Roy and Craig have developed a special if not slow-moving romance of sorts, and you can only imagine how me-me-me Stanley reacts to this current turn of events.



The film also weaves African-Americans into the mix in a dramatic and respectable way, in contrast to so many films of the day, which go to the opposite extreme of stereotype. Black actor Ernest Anderson plays Parry, a young man who wants to become an attorney and is encouraged and mentored by deHavilland’s Roy. A less noble and downright strange angle on the film, presents Stanley and Roy’s wealthy uncle, William Fitzroy (Charles Coburn) as a greedy, conniving old man, who has an obviously incestuous attraction to Stanley, and equally as twisted is Stanley’s apparent realization of this fact and flirting with him to take full material advantage of it! She is a piece of work.

Davis reportedly wanted to play the role of Roy. When cast instead in the meatier part, newbie director John Huston, let her have her way in playing it. Huston had made only one picture prior to In This Our Life ~ The Maltese Falcon . DeHavilland plays Roy in an understated, dignified performance, which makes Bette’s histrionics stand out all the more (it’s as if Olivia is standing back to let Davis make a ninny of herself). Another strike against poor Bette….has anyone ever said “poor Bette”?….was the fact that preview audiences noted a distinct dislike for her uncharacteristic beestung lips and her hairstyle, which included oddly cut bangs. The actress herself never cared much for the movie and moved on from it later the same year to create one of her signature roles, as “Aunt” Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager.



Dennis Morgan plays a darker role as Peter than his usual devil may care good guy on the Warner lot, but George Brent as Craig is George Brent through and through. Solid, stable and non threatening to his female counterparts. The terrific cast includes Billie Burke, also in an uncharacteristic role. As Lavinia Timberlake, the tempestuous Stanley’s mother, Burke frets and worries through the whole film in a dowdy shawl, almost in a shrewish way, a far cry from the featherbrained society ladies she is so accustomed to playing. Hattie McDaniel as the Timberlake’s maid and Parry’s mother, Minerva, gives pathos and dignity to her part and in a showy portrayal, Lee Patrick is fun as Stanley’s gaudy and obnoxious friend Betty. The whole thing is gaudy and obnoxious in a 1940’s Warner Brothers melodrama kind of way, but that’s what makes it so fun. Perhaps Davis’ 1962 film should have been called “Whatever Happened to Stanley and Roy?”

42nd Street: Brother, Can You Spare a Dame!

In 1933, Depression weary audiences were looking for anything that would take their minds off their collective woes. Due to this frantic search for escapism, crowds filed into theaters for glimpses of the extravagant, the luxurious and the glamorous. They wanted to see the exact opposite of the dull, drab and stressful lives being led outside those theaters. Nothing fit the bill like 42nd Street (1933). It was the film that single handedly brought the musical genre back from the dead, and made stars of many affiliated with its production.

The film musical had been developed only a few years earlier with the advent of sound in films. As a matter of fact, the first talkie, The Jazz Singer (1927), included songs by musical stage star Al Jolson. MGM took the reigns with The Broadway Melody in 1929 winning the Best Picture Oscar. These earliest examples of the genre were stagy, stodgy and static. The camera would remain stationary while a crackling version of a popular song would be warbled, in many cases by an actor or actress not even trained to sing (check Joan Crawford). These were more filmed stage shows than anything else and audiences stayed away, bored and uninspired.

In late fall 1932, Warner Brothers began filming its newest installment of musical comedy, 42nd Street. Famed film maker Mervyn LeRoy was slated to direct but illness forced him to withdraw and was replaced with Lloyd Bacon. However, LeRoy's choice for musical director did stay to work on the film. Choreographer Busby Berkley had worked on Broadway throughout the 1920's. He came to Hollywood with the Talkies and worked on musicals starring singer/comedian Eddie Cantor. With 42nd Street, Berkley added a new dimension to the musical film. Instead of the camera merely recording the performer singing a song or doing a standard dance number, the famed choreographer designed elaborate routines based around large numbers of chorus girls shot from directly above the action to produce a kaleidoscope effect of outstretched limbs, tilted heads and spinning stages. The story lines for his films during this era were based around the production of stage shows or "backstage musicals" and the grand dancing arrangements he designed could never be done realistically on a theatrical stage, but that was completely beside the point. Audiences loved it. The songs featured in the film were catchy as well. Written by musical team Harry Warren and Al Dubin, they included the title tune, "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me", and the delightful "Shuffle Off to Buffalo." The latter produced as a charming vignette set on a train with a Pullman car swinging open to show the pajama clad background singers in their berths singing the unforgettable lines, "Matrimony is baloney, She'll be wanting alimony, Still they go and shuffle, shuffle off to Buffalo."

Unlike many of the early musicals which were thin on plot, 42nd Street, though no heavy narrative, did have a substantial enough story to carry the numerous characters involved. It revolved around the production of a Broadway musical show directed by a veteran New York showman, Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and is depending on the success of his latest venture to provide him enough financially to retire and save his sanity. His star is Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels), a Broadway big wig who is dating the shows financial backer (Guy Kibbee) while seeing her longtime lover and ex-vaudeville partner (George Brent) on the sly. Meanwhile, secondary story lines and comic relief involve various chorines and show personnel including Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel as sassy, brassy and not so classy chorus dames, who chew up the wisecracking dialogue as well as their favorite gum (Rogers' character is named Anytime Annie). Dick Powell, as the juvenile lead crooner with the boyish good looks and Ruby Keeler, as Peggy Sawyer, the naive newbie who takes over for ailing Dorothy Brock to become the shows next star, make a fresh and striking pair in what were early roles for both. In fact, 42nd Street was Keeler's first film, and based on her performance and the huge success of the film, she was offered a long term contract at Warners, where she continued in the same type part in musicals for the remainder of the decade.

The film is famous not only as a ground breaker in its genre, but also as the film in which Warner Baxter's character says to Keeler just as the curtain is going up on opening night, "Sawyer, you're going out there a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" Supposedly the financial success of 42nd Street saved Warner Brothers from bankruptcy and it didn't let that success go unexploited, as The Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade, both Berkley supervised musicals, were produced before the end of 1933. The film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, a huge feat for the burgeoning genre, and set the precedent for a new wave of musical films.

Review: The Great Lie

Whenever I want to watch a great old movie but don't have any specific one in mind or can't really decide which one would suit my mood, I can always count on The Great Lie (1941). It has it all. Actually, I take that back. It doesn't have murder, blood, slapstick comedy, interracial love, or even adultery (there's an argument for fornication but the participants were unknowing! You'll understand in a minute). What it does have is classic film soap. A love triangle of the most complicated order. A good girl, a bad girl, a sap in between. A great Max Steiner score. But most of all, it has Bette Davis and Mary Astor.
Opening scene, Madame Sandra Kovak's swank but disheveled New York City apartment. Disheveled due to mass merry-making in honor of its occupant's recent marriage to one Peter Van Allen, bon vivant, aviator and general man-about-town. Miss Kovack is a world renowned concert pianist and an uber diva. The monkey wrench in the works is the fact that due to a mix up in dates (and plenty of liquor), Kovak's divorce from her first husband wasn't yet final when she wed the dashing Van Allen. It doesn't help matters that the couple was completely toasted when the nuptials occurred. Enter Van Allen's previous fiancee, Maggie Patterson, whose ultimatum to her man, that he lay off the bottle or else, fell on deaf ears and caused their split. But a wiser, more sober Peter decides he wants a settled life with Maggie over the jet set lifestyle lived by Sandra, and her sort. Sounds all neat and tidy and leaves one saying "Is that all?" But that's far from all.

After our boy Pete and soft spoken Maggie tie the knot, Sandra, who still wants Pete, declares to Maggie that she has Pete's bun in the oven. Before she is able to spill the beans to the babe's father, he is called away on a government aviation mission and inevitably in a plane crash somewhere in South America (hey, you didn't expect it to be as cut and dry as "I'm pregnant, make your choice" did you, after all this is a Bette Davie picture). Maggie confronts Sandra with the question of whether or not she had been lying about the child. When the distraught grande dame, who only wanted the child as a way of holding on to Pete, confesses that she is indeed with child, Maggie hatches a scheme, where she would keep and raise the child as hers and relieve Sandra of the burden. No need to go further here. If that's not enough to whet your appetite, you're not interested in the first place.

Now if you've never seen The Great Lie and don't know anything about it, after reading the above passage you may strongly assume that the part of Madame Diva Sandra Kovak would be played by Madame Diva Bette Davis. But you would be way off base my friend because Sandra is stunningly brought to life by Mary Astor, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for all her efforts. The first indication that the fun is about to begin is in our first few minutes with Astor's Kovak, when, as a male masseuse is rubbing the musicians ailing shoulder, she, with full force, slaps his face and yells "You hurt! Get out!" Yet her portrayal of the ultra bitch seems completely effortless to Miss Astor. Davis on the other hand is the more calm, even tempered Maggie, a striking contrast to Astor's vinegar and venom viper, but don't be fooled. The screen fairly crackles when she and Astor share it. Even if there were no great dialogue between these two, which there most definitely is ("Run along and catch your little train Maggie"), the characters can read, as can the audience, on one anothers face and mannerisms, everything that needs to be said, and some that needn't.

Always in the wings for this sort of role is George Brent as the much fought over Pete. Also on tap are Hattie McDaniel, Grant Withers and Lucille Watson for support. Max Steiner's fine score integrates a lush musical backdrop with the piano based background of Astor's character, giving the whole thing the grandiose high drama required to match the electrically charged performances of the two leads. As guilty pleasures go, The Great Lie is the real deal. If you've seen it before, go ahead and pop it in the player for another go around, you know you want to, and if you've never seen it, you're in for a real treat.