Franchot Tone: Group Theatre and other loves

Franchot Tone's mother Gertrude Franchot was one of the four children of Stanislas Pascal Franchot II and his wife Annie Powers Eells of Richwood, KY. In 1895, Franchot Tone's grandfather moved to Niagara Falls, New York, where he organized The National Electrolytic Company, a producer of industrial chemicals. In 1906 he was elected to the New York state government as a Republican Senator representing Niagara and Orleans Counties. His daughter Gertrude married Frank Jerome Tone: they had two sons, Frank Jerome Tone Jr. and Stanislas Pascal Franchot Tone (Franchot Tone). Franchot was also a distant relative of Wolfe Tone: the "father of Irish Republicanism". Franchot was of French Canadian, Irish, English and Basque ancestry.

Tall, handsome, always well dressed, this affluent young Cornell graduate seemed out of place in a company founded to present radical plays. But Tone had a serious side not evident to those who saw him squiring beautiful women around New York nightclubs. His lively interest in social and economic issues had steered him toward New Playwrights and made him receptive to Clurman’s ardent formulations.

Harold Clurman had spotted Franchot Tone in a New Playwrights production of John Howard Lawson’s The International in January 1928. Morris Carnovsky shared Tone’s intellectual nature, though his background was more akin to Clurman’s and Strasberg’s. After Strasberg’s return, they finally settled on twenty seven actors, including Stella Adler, Margaret Barker, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, Bill Challee, Bobby Lewis, Sandy Meisner, Ruth Nelson, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Patten, Eunice Stoddard, and Franchot Tone.

Franchot and Stella Adler were the actors most openly and agonizingly conflicted about their relationship with the Group. Like her, Tone was not a mixer. The convivial discussions that kept Morris Carnovsky, Joe Bromberg, and Lewis Leverett up late at night in the living room were not for him.

In the years since he’d first worked with Strasberg and Clurman on New Year’s Eve, he’d become a sought-after leading man; conventional Broadway stardom still tempted him. He found fault with Strasberg and the rehearsals, as if looking for flaws in the Group ideal that might justify his abandoning it. He staged minor rebellions against Group discipline. He went out of his way to provoke people, infuriating Carnovsky on the Fourth of July by setting off batches of firecrackers outside the main building and drowning out the tranquil strains of Mozart within.

When Carnovsky protested the noise, Tone shouted, “I can’t stand your noise!” and slammed into his car for a visit to New York and less elevated entertainments. Possibly their new social consciousness encouraged a confrontational manner toward the bourgeois world, and none more so than Franchot Tone. His manner was aloof and his behavior disruptive. After a few sessions he refused to attend Tamiris’ classes, and he took no part in the experimental work. He drove onto the lawn after late-night drinking sessions and destroyed the garden furniture; he went hunting and shot off guns dangerously close to the rehearsal rooms.

Tone left camp for days on end to see his current flame, the film actress Lilyan Tashman, who had not been made welcome by the Group. Strasberg gave an angry speech saying that Tone might be one of the finest actors in America, but he lacked the dedication the Group demanded; several actresses wept as the director said he no longer wanted Tone in the company.

Bud Bohnen read his part in 'Success Story,' and it seemed Tone’s association with the Group was over. It was a painful moment for the Group. Only one other member had ever resigned, and Mary Morris hadn’t been as integral a part of the collective. Tone was one of the earliest Group believers, a participant in the 1928 sessions on Riverside Drive, and their principal leading man. If his difficult temperament made him less than the most popular member of the company, everyone respected his acting ability and was shocked that he’d decided to squander his talents in the movies. Tone’s departure wounded the Group’s confidence. It would heal, but the scar remained.

In Group mythology Tone’s defection became the original sin, the shocking deed that forced them to face the fact that idealism could fade and worldly success mean more than artistic integrity. He stayed with 'Success Story' two months longer than initially planned, raising the hope that he might have a change of heart and rededicate himself to the Group. Finally, he left for the West Coast to fulfill his MGM contract. Tone wept over his farewell drink with Clurman in a 52nd Street speakeasy.

[When] in dire need of funds to commission more plays, Clurman appealed to Franchot Tone, who had written that he missed the Group but intended to stay in Hollywood because he’d fallen in love with Joan Crawford. Tone promptly sent a check to tide them over. Group moral indignation against the actors who had deserted to the movies earlier lapsed, and they had friendly dinners with Joe Bromberg and Alan Baxter. Sundays with Franchot Tone and his wife, Joan Crawford, became a weekly Group get-together.

Sylvia Sidney, who was romantically involved with Luther Adler, had been a stage actress before she came to Hollywood; she was an ardent admirer of the Group’s ensemble acting. Franchot Tone would be rejoining the Group for the 1938–1939 season. In his nearly six years in Hollywood, Tone had made more than thirty pictures, most of them thoroughly undistinguished; he looked east to the achievements of his old friends with nostalgia and an increasing desire to be part of their work.

His marriage to Joan Crawford was on the rocks, his contract with MGM would be up soon, there seemed no reason to stay. Just how strong an attachment the Group could prompt was evident in the words of Franchot Tone shortly after he arrived in New York on December 11, 1939 to begin rehearsals of The Gentle People. “I’d better not get started on the Group Theatre,” he told an audience at a Town Hall Club lunch, “because I know I’ll get too emotional about it and then I won’t be able to talk at all.”

The Gentle People as a play was cause for concern. Tone played the gangster who shakes the people down for protection money, then seduces the lens grinder’s daughter (Sidney) and demands their life’s savings, which he intends to use to take the daughter to Havana. Sidney angrily concluded that the Group cared about her and Tone only as box-office draws, whereas she had come to them sincerely as an artist wanting to grow. Tone himself was disappointed in Clurman’s direction, although he didn’t say so until after the production opened; he wanted very much to believe in the Group.

Reviewers weren’t quite as impressed as the fans. They liked the acting well enough: many thought Sidney gave her best stage performance ever; Tone’s return to the theatre was hailed; It was increasingly obvious that he was disillusioned with the Group and shared Sidney’s suspicion that they were using him for his drawing power as a star. Irwin Shaw warned Clurman that the Group had treated Tone tactlessly; although Tone had invested $22,000 in The Gentle People, he hadn’t been invited to Council meetings during rehearsals to discuss its progress.

Tone might not have been so annoyed by the Group’s ineptitude in business matters had he been more satisfied artistically, but he’d convinced himself that he was miscast as a gangster, that Clurman hadn’t given him enough guidance, that he’d really wanted to act in the Odets play with his old Group friends Carnovsky, Adler, and Smith —in short, that he’d been mistreated and exploited. -"Real life drama: the Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940" (2013) by Wendy Smith

Jean Wallace was a gorgeous, blonde California number -tall, slim, but voluptuous like Veronica Lake and Lauren Bacall. Howard Hughes was one of her many torrid liaisons. Legend has it that when Franchot Tone first saw Jean at the Cocoanut Grove, he asked her over his table, he proposed to her, and tied the knot two days later. One of the shortest courtships in history. It sounds implausible, but Jean could bring out that kind of mating urge in most any man. Jean, unfortunately, started drinking and having produced two lovely sons with Franchot Tone, they divorced. She then married Cornel Wilde and they traveled the world. Jean was a tortured soul who carried herself well.

Barbara Payton had grown with alcoholic parents in Odessa (Texas), where her father's motel failed despite the influx of workers to the oil boom town. Barbara's brief marriage to Franchot Tone was a nightmare. She explained they came from different worlds: "Franchot Tone had more class in his baby finger than anyone I know. I am not a great actress, Franchot was. You had to be 'real' with Franchot." Tom Neal offered a different kind of reality. She returned to Tom because "he made me feel like a real whore." Neal would slap her around while having sex. -"Hollywood Gomorrah" (2014) by Skip E. Lowe

The crime film They All Came Out, lensed in 1939 by the masterful horror and film noir director Jacques Tourneur, cast Tom Neal in a lead role as a tough gang member rehabilitated by both his stay in federal prison and the love of a gun moll (Rita Johnson).

As a result of his fine work in this film, Tom was handed the male lead in another crime drama, Within the Law, co-starring Ruth Hussey. “During this time, Tom was carrying on with both Joan Crawford and a studio executive’s wife,” claims Walter Burr, “and when Crawford learned he was two-timing her, she did her own complaining to Mayer, who wound up blasting Tom.” Angered by both the lackluster film roles being handed to him, as well as Mayer’s lecturing him on behalf of a jilted Joan Crawford, Neal reportedly ranted at the tyrannical executive in front of several studio employees. An irate Mayer immediately retaliated by banishing Tom from the lot and releasing him from his contract after just one year.

One night in mid-1950, Barbara Payton entered a Charleston contest on the Sunset Strip, and not only walked away with first prize, but with Franchot Tone (one of the judges) as a new admirer. An International News Service story reported: "Barbara Payton, the girl in green with the chandelier earrings hanging to her shoulders, had everyone screaming for her to win the Charleston contest at the Mocambo, and she did. Many people did not recognize her except to say that she looks 'like a cross between Jean Harlow and Carol Channing'." Franchot apparently was impressed that night with a lot more than Barbara’s dancing. It was later said that their eyes locked across the nightclub’s dance floor, and that with one glance at the flaxen-haired temptress, the stylish sophisticate, and inveterate connoisseur of female beauty, was instantly hooked. Lisa Burks: "Franchot had the desire to help young Hollywood hopefuls with his experience and his flair for mentoring, and Barbara was an ambitious and willing student. He encouraged her, as he encouraged all the women in his life."

Also in 1956, Franchot married his fourth wife, former Warner Bros. starlet Dolores Dorn (Phantom of the Rue Morgue), a beautiful, 22-year-old woman whose blonde and blue-eyed countenance was, not surprisingly, highly reminiscent of both Barbara Payton and Jean Wallace.

"Although Dolores Dorn-Heft is blonde, lissome and worthy of all this attention, she is no mere posturing pea-hen. She makes real her confession that her marriage to her aged spouse was well-meant at first but is now a boring mockery. Miss Dorn-Heft (Mrs. Tone in private life) is guilty of some lapses but her delivery is, in most cases, genuine and forceful.

Franchot Tone in Chekhov Drama 'Uncle Vanya' (1958): Mr. Tone, as the middle-aged country doctor torn by the discovery of his love for the beauteous young wife of the garrulous and pompous aged professor and his hate of the wastefulness of his compatriots, contributes a thoughtful, sensitive and wholly striking portrayal. Although he knows it is the fate of intelligent men to be called 'odd,' he is lucid and straight about his approach to truth. It is a subdued but shining performance that registers just as clearly as Chekhov's words. Franchot Tone and his fellow players and associates have contributed a solid and genuine legacy to the arts and devotees of theatre everywhere." Source: www.nytimes.com

A lifelong smoker, Franchot was living at the time in a magnificent townhouse on Manhattan’s East 62nd Street, where his ex-wife, Joan Crawford, frequently visited him during his illness. “They had remained close friends after their divorce,” reveals Lisa Burks. “Franchot and Joan Crawford enjoyed an affectionate friendship until the day he died, and the same can be said for his relationships with Jean Wallace and Dolores Dorn.”

After a torturous three-year battle with cancer, Franchot finally succumbed to the illness on September 18, 1968, at the age of 63.  Lisa Burks reports that all three of his surviving ex-wives attended his funeral. “Franchot left his family well provided for,” she says, “in light of the fact that this was money he had earned over his lifetime and not reflective of any family wealth he had inherited.” -"Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story" (2013) by John O'Dowd