I can't wait to be forgotten, Kay Francis once said, and as it inches closer to the 50th anniversary of her death, she is about as forgotten as another great star who also died the same year: Judy Garland. Only three years later, Liza Minnelli exclaimed in "Cabaret", "I feel just like Kay Francis!" It took decades for her re- discovery, but she has gained a true cult following as her glamorous image was captured by two books and constant showings of her movies on TCM. During the VHS era, only a handful of her films were available. Now through the TCM and Universal archives, they are slowly all coming out, and this soap opera is one of her best.
As the Tallulah Bankhead of the fictional London stage, Stella Parrish is an American actress who is highly in demand, winning the love of her manager, Paul Lukas, and gaining the admiration from afar of journalist Ian Hunter. When she is visited by a mysterious man on opening night of what could be her greatest hit, Stella vanishes with her young daughter and companion, hiding in disguise and eventually befriending the suspicious Hunter. When the truth comes out, she becomes a temporary headline freak and makes a drastic decision to protect the young moppet, Sybil Jason.
Francis shares the acting honors with vinegary Jessie Ralph, delightful as her tough but loving companion. Lukas and Hunter are decent, and while Jason can be cloying at times, something tells me that she had the women's audiences in tears. In fact, the film opens with Jason singing a cute little ditty imitating animal sounds that either had the audiences in hysterics, cooing over how adorable she was, or cringing over how cute they assumed she thought that she was.
The play within the movie is set in Caligula's Rome and was almost concurrent with the unfinished "I Claudius". Unbilled Barton MacLane's voice is heard as the unseen mysterious man but instantly recognized. Certainly, there are some plot defects, but that doesn't seem to matter under Kay's emotional performance and the direction of Mervyn LeRoy. This was a huge smash for Kay, only surpassed just two years later by the emotional brilliance of " Confession". While some audiences might find it hard to believe that Kay could be considered a great star of the stage, that's exactly where she got her training and exactly where she returned to when her film career began to dry up. The conclusion has the emotional power of Vicki Lester's final line in "A Star is Born".
As the Tallulah Bankhead of the fictional London stage, Stella Parrish is an American actress who is highly in demand, winning the love of her manager, Paul Lukas, and gaining the admiration from afar of journalist Ian Hunter. When she is visited by a mysterious man on opening night of what could be her greatest hit, Stella vanishes with her young daughter and companion, hiding in disguise and eventually befriending the suspicious Hunter. When the truth comes out, she becomes a temporary headline freak and makes a drastic decision to protect the young moppet, Sybil Jason.
Francis shares the acting honors with vinegary Jessie Ralph, delightful as her tough but loving companion. Lukas and Hunter are decent, and while Jason can be cloying at times, something tells me that she had the women's audiences in tears. In fact, the film opens with Jason singing a cute little ditty imitating animal sounds that either had the audiences in hysterics, cooing over how adorable she was, or cringing over how cute they assumed she thought that she was.
The play within the movie is set in Caligula's Rome and was almost concurrent with the unfinished "I Claudius". Unbilled Barton MacLane's voice is heard as the unseen mysterious man but instantly recognized. Certainly, there are some plot defects, but that doesn't seem to matter under Kay's emotional performance and the direction of Mervyn LeRoy. This was a huge smash for Kay, only surpassed just two years later by the emotional brilliance of " Confession". While some audiences might find it hard to believe that Kay could be considered a great star of the stage, that's exactly where she got her training and exactly where she returned to when her film career began to dry up. The conclusion has the emotional power of Vicki Lester's final line in "A Star is Born".