Franchot Tone: Group Theatre & other romances

Franchot Tone was a witty, debonair man who might have played in light comedies but chose to associate himself with theaters where his intellectual, economic, and political concerns were engaged. His first New York appearances were in productions of the New Playwrights’ Theatre, organized in 1927 by John Dos Passos, John Howard Lawson, and Mike Gold to stage radical, innovative plays about modern industrial life. In Lawson’s International, the young Tone  played the American hero, described as a kind of “adult Rover Boy,” who sides with the downtrodden workers in a revolt against the world of his father. Seeing him in this part, Harold Clurman invited him to participate in their early projects.

Clurman sometimes wondered why the Group attracted so many odd ducks: ambitious, talented people who felt homeless, who were seeking their identity. He suggested that the Group’s idealistic objectives tended to attract “people under pressure of some kind, troubled, not quite adjusted people, yearners, dreamers, secretly ambitious.” From the point of view of show business, or dominant American culture, or some of Franchot Tone’s upper-class friends, what they were doing may have seemed un-American. The members of the Group, however, thought of themselves as uniquely American.

Cheryl Crawford had located what she called “a country enclave” on Hawleyville Road that had enough space to house them all. Overlooking a deep valley, it had five houses, one of which had a kitchen and a dining room, and a large barn perfect for rehearsals with a newly installed floor, electric lights, and benches. Here the company played classical records, drank illegal applejack, took long walks in the woods, and swam nude by moonlight. As they were settling in, Franchot Tone, ever a kind of left-wing Boy Scout, organized a baseball game between the “Hard Sluggers” and the “Cagey Bunters” on the soggy lawn. This was a good way, he believed, to help them “overcome the natural self-consciousness.” Beany Barker was housed in the same cottage as Franchot Tone, who had been her friend and protector during the run of 'The Age of Innocence.'

In reminiscing about their communal life, she laughed; “I don’t know how important it was that my room was here and Franchot’s was there. He never paid any attention to me.” That first week at Brookfield, Barker recalled, they were all austere in their dedication, no smoking or drinking. But before long, despite prohibition, they found a farmer nearby who sold them applejack. The drinkers gathered regularly to carouse in Tone and Barker’s cottage. Franchot Tone remained their leading man and also their playboy prankster and hell-raiser.

Franchot Tone as Curly and June Walker as Laurey, in the Theatre Guild production of 'Green Grow the Lilacs' (1931).

The protagonist of 'Success Story' (1932) becomes a desperately destructive man because he sees no way his unusual energy, imagination, and sense of truth can operate in harmony with the society that confronts him. Luther Adler seemed perfect for the role of the aggressive but sensitive ghetto boy who destroys himself in the fight to become an all-American success. Franchot Tone was the obvious choice to play Raymond Hewitt, the handsome WASP executive who is defeated by Luther Adler’s ambitious young Jew. The only trouble was that Tone kept taking off from Dover Furnace and rehearsals. Finally, at a meeting of the company on July 30, Clurman and Strasberg announced to the shocked members that Tone was leaving the Group for Hollywood.

'Night Over Taos' was paid for by Maxwell Anderson, Franchot Tone, and Dorothy Patten’s father. The actors’ salaries for one week of regular pay ran from $150 for Franchot Tone and $125 for Carnovsky, a substantial reduction from the original $300 a week they were to receive to replace their Theatre Guild salary, to as low as $15. Crawford did not take any payment; she recalled that she managed to live on her savings from her well-paid Guild job.

By the time the news that Awake and Sing! would be the next Group Theatre production was made public on January 13, 1935, Clifford Odets was no longer just a bit actor and unproduced playwright. He had been hailed as “a dramatist to be reckoned with” by Henry Senber, the second-string reviewer of the Morning Telegraph, who happened to be the only Broadway critic present at the New Theatre Night on January 6 when Waiting for Lefty exploded onto the stage of the Civic Repertory Theatre before 1,400 wildly cheering theatergoers (Morning Telegraph, January 7, 1935).

That the Group was able to produce this show at all after the box-office failure of both 1931– and of the short tour of 'The House of Connelly' was something of a triumph. Despite the acclaim 'Waiting for Lefty' gained for the young Odets, neither he nor Clurman had been able to raise the modest budget of $7,200 for the full-length 'Awake and Sing!' Franchot Tone came to the rescue, answering Clurman’s call for help without even reading the Odets script. A generous albeit sometimes ambivalent supporter of his old friends, Tone brought money from Hollywood stardom as well as from his independent wealth to the Group.

Although he did not contribute the money as a financial investment, Tone did later wonder why, despite its success, he never earned anything from Awake and Sing!, which ran for 209 performances. Apart from the Odets plays, Franchot Tone picked up the tab for 'The Gentle People,' which did not recoup its production costs. Tone also sustained losses from a scandal at the Belasco’s box-office, which robbed the company of some of the advance sale money. Clurman identified the Group’s true audience as the small complement of intellectual enthusiasts who came to all of their shows. These devotees were “college students, people who read the New Masses and Nation, young radicals, school teachers, some lower middle-class and proletariat.”

But no such communion materialized with the Group’s Broadway audience, which had to be lured by the glamor and entertainment of stars. To ensure that 'Golden Boy' would be a hit, Odets wanted the “best cast money could buy.” Clurman brought the beautiful, talented Frances Farmer, featuring her along with Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky, who were gaining movie recognition. The spotlighting of stars—Frances Farmer in 'Golden Boy,' Charles Bickford in 'Casey Jones,' Franchot Tone, Sylvia Sidney and Sam Jaffee in 'The Gentle People,' even young Eleanor Lynn in 'Rocket to the Moon' — was seen in some quarters as conspicuous evidence of the Group’s increasing commercialism. -"The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era" (2013) by Helen Krich Chinoy

Lee J. Cobb and Franchot Tone in "The Fifth Column" (1940) at the Alvin Theatre, New York.

"Basically Franchot was an idealist, and he still idealized Lee Strasberg and me. Though in the long run there is more peril than pleasure in being idealized, I was at the moment the beneficiary of Franchot's warmest hospitality. I warned Franchot he could encounter disappointment in the Group. There is no one so bitter as a disappointed idealist. I suspected Franchot looked toward the Group with the fondness of youthful memory." -Harold Clurman —"The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties" (1983) by Harold Clurman & Stella Adler

When 'Dancing Lady' was completed, Franchot whisked Joan away to New York, to see the Group Theatre’s production of Sidney Kingsley’s play 'Men in White.' After the final curtain, Franchot whispered to her: “Here’s where we’ll be someday—you and I, Joan—in the theatre, where you belong.” She was flattered and excited by his confidence and respect. Perhaps she should also have sensed a certain danger.

“His dignity, culture and charm were entrancing,” she continued. With Douglas Fairbanks Jr., as Joan said, she had tried too hard to make the marriage work. With Franchot Tone and Phillip Terry, on the other hand, she admitted that she had not tried hard enough. “I needn’t have let my career dominate me as much as I did. I was an established star and I needn’t have spent so much time on the image thing.” -"Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford" (2011) by Donald Spoto

"I've been with some good ones, but maybe the best was Franchot Tone. I made two pictures with him and he stole both of them. Something went wrong with how he was handled; or who knows, maybe it was Joan Crawford. But he had everything - great at comedy and also at serious stuff if given the chance. Now 'The Lives of a Bengal Lancer' (1935) is one hell of a picture, but you could take me right out of it and it would still be one. But it couldn't be much without Tone." -Gary Cooper on Franchot Tone

"Franchot was an extremely loving, intelligent, considerate man, but he was also very haunted. He was one hell of a fine actor, but he loved the theatre and despised Hollywood. He very seldom got the parts he deserved, and I think this bugged him a lot. I wasn’t as nice to him, as considerate, as I should have been. I was extremely busy during those years, and I didn’t realize that his insecurities and dissatisfactions ran so deeply. I missed him a lot, for a long, long time. He was so mature and stimulating. I think I can safely say that the break-up was another career casualty. If I’d tried a little harder — who knows.” -Joan Crawford

Carole Landis’s second failure in marriage was followed by another romantic disappointment. Carole met Franchot Tone in late October 1940, scarcely a month after the Hunt divorce hearing — and about eighteen months after Tone’s own painful divorce from Joan Crawford. During the month of November they seemed inseparable, dining together at Ciro’s night after night and apparently engaged in a passionate love affair — although this did not prevent Carole from appearing in public with other men, including attorney Bentley Ryan as well as Cedric Gibbons and Gene Markey.

Carole had explained to Skolsky in the cited column “why she loves Franchot...‘Franchot is so polite. He lights my cigarettes for me.’” It seems unlikely that Tone actually proposed marriage, but Carole appears to have said as much to her friends, despite denying it to Walter Winchell. Rumor had it that the couple had plans to elope on New Year’s Day—which would have made Carole a bigamist. Louella Parsons, however, claimed on January 3 that Tone was “the least serious interest in her life” and that Markey and, above all, Gibbons were the real contenders. But Louella seems to have underestimated Carole’s attachment to Franchot. As late as February 18, 1941, Sidney Skolsky reported, “Carole Landis tells friends that when her divorce is final she and Franchot Tone will get married,” only to announce a mere six days later that “the Franchot Tone–Carole Landis romance is no more.”

The October 1941 Screenland article “What Carole Landis Demands of Men!” noted that what Carole admired in Tone was his restraint and sense of humor, his lack of the “ear-marks of the Actor.” In this article, based on an interview that probably took place no later than April, Carole goes so far as to say that “it would be very pleasant indeed to be married to Franchot.” Of all the men Carole was connected with between her divorce from Willis Hunt in 1940 and her love-at-first-sight meeting with Tommy Wallace in November 1942, only the relationship with Tone ever achieved anything like the intensity she describes: “This went on for months. We were constantly together every possible moment. I felt this, at last, was it. I saw no one else, didn’t want to see anyone else.” Apparently, Tone liked Carole very much but considered her immature and a fling rather than a serious romance.

[So] the man Carole cared for dropped her, she tells us, for “a nonprofessional, not pretty really,” referring unflatteringly [and very erroneously] to Jean Wallace, whose earliest uncredited bit parts in Hollywood date from 1941. Ironically, Wallace’s first fairly substantial film role would be opposite Carole in her last Fox film, the 1946 'It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog.' -"Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl" (2008) by Eric Gans

Barbara Payton, publicity still for "Only the Valiant" (1951)

Franchot Tone with Barbara Payton and her son John Lee Payton.

Incisive Hollywood observer Nick Bougas bemoans the waste of a talent that he believes was greater than most are willing to concede: “For whatever reason Barbara chose to toss off the stellar opportunities that abounded in her life, her greatest sin, I believe, was betraying a quite sizable acting gift. I think she was genuinely effective as a player and, had her work ethic been as strong as her libido, perhaps she would have enjoyed the kind of sedate, fulfilled existence and career that actresses like Virginia Mayo and Marie Windsor had. Unfortunately, Barbara had that rebellious, living on the edge, rock-star attitude long before it was fashionable. It’s kind of ironic, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if she were alive today, her behavior would probably raise very few eyebrows.”

Barbara’s son, John Lee, has his own theories… “To tell you the truth, I don’t think my mother understood the concept of love, really, especially when it came to a man and a woman. I don’t think she knew how to recognize it or to accept it, to appreciate it or to give it. I think she confused love with sex and power. I think it was a confusion so profound that it wholly altered her perception of reality.”

Career-wise, Franchot starred in numerous stage plays in the years following his time with Barbara, including Edward Chodorov’s 'Oh Men! Oh Women!' and William Saroyan’s 'The Time of Your Life,' as well as in a highly-touted, off-Broadway production of 'Uncle Vanya' in 1956. A film version of the latter was produced the following year. “Franchot not only starred in both the film and the stage production of Uncle Vanya,” says Lisa Burks, “he directed them, too. It was a project that was his focus and passion for several years.” While the play was successful, the film (which he co-directed) apparently received limited distribution and remains one of his more obscure efforts. -"Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story" (2013) by John O'Dowd

LOVE ON THE RUN (1936): Rival newsmen get mixed up with a runaway heiress and a ring of spies. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke Cast: Joan Crawford , Clark Gable , Franchot Tone. 27 Friday 6:00 AM BW-80 mins

THREE COMRADES (1938): Three life-long friends share their love for a dying woman against the turbulent backdrop of Germany between the wars. Dir: Frank Borzage Cast: Robert Taylor , Margaret Sullavan , Franchot Tone. 27 Friday 9:00 AM BW-99 mins Source: www.tcm.com

"Mr. Borzage has been fortunate in his cast. Miss Sullavan, of course, is the perfect Patricia. Franchot Tone has turned in a beautifully shaded portrait of Otto Koster, the loyal and devoted friend, and Robert Young is almost equally effective as the gay idealist, Gottfried. As the third of the comrades, Mr. Taylor has his moments of sincerity. It is a superlatively fine picture, obviously one of 1938's best ten, and not one to be missed." Source: www.nytimes.com