Kay Francis: Leading Lady Who Became Box Office Poison

Have you ever heard of movie star Kay Francis? Although I was a big fan of old movies, Kay Francis was completely new to me when I started taking film classes. It came as a surprise that she'd been one of Hollywood's top leading ladies in the 1930s, with roles in movies like Ernst Lubitsch's fabulous "Trouble in Paradise," the five-hankie women's picture "One Way Passage," and "Another Dawn," now infamous for including every cliche known to movie-makers.

Francis and her films are being highlighted today on Turner Classic Movies, with all kinds of gems hardly ever shown on TV anymore. "One Way Passage," where she's a terminally ill woman with a last-chance romance on an ocean liner, was first thing this morning, but there's plenty of good stuff still coming up. Tonight, starting at 7, you can see "Guilty Hands," a murder mystery with Lionel Barrymore, where TCM notes say she plays "a vampy beauty with intelligence and soul to burn; "The House on 56th Street," where she's a chorus girl turned society wife turned criminal and then back to being a glamorous fashion maven; and the steamy "Mandalay," with Francis as a bad girl with three names and some pretty dicey choices in men, careers and criminal enterprises.

Kay Francis was a role model for women of the 30s, mostly because of her wardrobe and strength, showcasing what it meant to suffer and rise above, to stand there like a graceful goddess no matter what her movies threw at her.

But then there was the "Box Office Poison" problem. In 1938, a group called the Independent Theatre Owners Association decided that Edward Arnold, Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn and Mae West were -- all by themselves -- killing movie profits. The movie theater owners lambasted the stars as overpaid and underachieving, begging the studios to rethink making movies with those stars. Ouch.

Crawford never really stopped doing what she was doing, and Hepburn and Garbo came back after awhile, but Kay Francis never really recovered. Bette Davis became the new #1 star at Warner Brothers, and Francis was relegated to lesser roles and lesser pictures.

And that's probably why you've never heard of Kay Francis, and why you should take a look at this elegant, gracious actress who managed to elevate a lot of pretty awful plots with her style as well as a contemplative gaze into the distance that always seemed to make her characters seem deeper than they really were.

Check out the complete Kay Francis schedule at Turner Classic Movies.