Franchot Tone's theatrical origins, with Joan Crawford in Hollywood

"In 1935, when I was twelve, I saw Franchot Tone in the earliest version of the film 'Mutiny on the Bounty.' I sat in a dark movie house, my knees pressed up against the unoccupied seat in front of me. Tone played one of the officers who mutinied against the cruel Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton) whom they put overboard into a small lifeboat and abandoned to the open sea. The crew and officers returned to Tahiti. It was an exuberant story. The great ship moved through the waves, the masts creaked, the sails billowed as crew members shouted across the decks to one another amid ocean spray.

Then they were in Tahiti, and Franchot Tone, wearing a sarong, a wreath of large, white-petaled blossoms hanging from around his neck, stood close to a beautiful, young Tahitian woman.

Another fleshy fellow in the cast was the star of the movie, Clark Gable, a large man whose acting I found severely limited. I paid him no attention. My knees slipped down from seatback to floor.

I leaned forward, enraptured by Tone, his delicate features, his narrow-lipped mouth, the irony I thought implicit in his remote smile that assured me “I’m superior to all this play-acting...” and above all, by what I perceived as his nature, quixotic and spiritual. I had been struck a great blow by the force of movie love.

Later, in 1939, on spring vacation from a Montreal boarding school, I saw Tone in a Group Theatre production of 'The Gentle People.' My father, a screenwriter at the time, knew the business manager of the Group, Walter Fried, whom he called “Cousin Wally.” Fried arranged for me to see the play. On the evening I attended the play, Cousin Wally told me through the box office grill that he had arranged for the cast to meet for drinks in a small frowzy bar across the street from the theatre. Would I like to join them there? After the final curtain fell, I walked over to the bar, uneasy yet exalted. But Tone didn’t turn up, although the rest of the cast were there.

A few days later, I bought a book, Trivia, by an English writer, Logan Pearsall Smith, and along with a letter, sent it via Cousin Wally to Tone. As I think back now, it seems to me that Fried was highly amused by the entire incident. I hardly recall my letter. It was probably an effort to differentiate myself from his other admirers, and to praise the book for qualities that would attest to my own sensibilities. Cousin Wally told me later that Franchot had assembled the cast and read my letter aloud to them. Yet he answered it. Joy leapt into me when I saw the envelope. His reply was cordial, intimate, I judged. But I was faintly distressed by what I sensed was a distancing sardonic note it had. I kept his reply in a file cabinet in the cellar. One morning a local water main burst. A flood resulted and it took many hours for firemen to pump out the six feet of water. Tone’s letter was ruined along with other correspondence and some book contracts.

One rainy afternoon in Hollywood, where we lived, I drove in the rain to a local drugstore to get a prescription. As I hastened back to where I had parked, on tiptoe to avoid the deeper puddles of water, a voice from a parked car inquired, “Where are your ballet slippers?” It was Franchot Tone. My heart raced as I smiled in his direction but I hurried to my car through the rain which had gotten suddenly heavier.

A few years later, back in New York city, I went to see a movie of his, 'Five Graves to Cairo,' at the Paramount Theatre in the Broadway district. The sidewalk was crawling with adolescent girls, agitated, some crying, others laughing, as they left their places in the line to dance a few steps on the street. The girls had all come to see and hear Frank Sinatra. The name meant nothing to me. The last time I saw Tone was in a small shop on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The optician who owned it was an old friend, and I had joined him for a brown-bag lunch. We were sitting at the rear of the narrow store, eating sandwiches when Tone, wearing a beret, opened the door and leaned in. In that first moment of my recognition of him, though like me he had grown much older —I lost my breath.

He smiled at me and it was such a lovely smile! All his old charm for me was in it. He asked Lou, my friend, when his eyeglasses would be ready. What I felt at that moment was beyond words. My hearing returned in time to hear Tone’s thanks and goodbye to Lou. Upon first seeing him years earlier, I had been astonished by the emotions his screen presence had brought to life in me. I had loved him, in a make-believe way —the way most emotion begins— for years. That intensity of feeling prepared me, in some fashion, for love itself, its contrarieties, its defeats, its beauty." -“Franchot Tone at the Paramount” from "News from the World: Stories and Essays" (2012) by Paula Fox

MGM's "Sadie McKee" (1934) -part of the Joan Crawford DVD collection vol. 2- marked the beginning of a serious relationship to her co-star, Franchot Tone. It is a superb example of how the "committee" system of moviemaking in the 1930s could sometimes yield unexpected delights. Sadie's former boss Michael (Franchot Tone), the one true love of her life, waits and waits and waits to see what's really on the girl's mind! And as a bonus, this is the film that introduced the peppy ditty "All I Do Is Dream of You". The labyrinth plotline of Sadie McKee is proof enough that more than one screenwriter had a hand in its creation: but instead of chaos, the film is irresistibly watchable, full of unexpected plot twists and marvelous little surprises. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sadie is 'adopted' by a streetwise woman – Opal (Jean Dixon) – that works in a nightclub (where Akim Tamiroff is the headwaiter). When one of the club’s patrons gets fresh with now cigarette girl hostess Sadie, a kindly drunken multimillionaire named Jack Brennan 'rescues' her. Sadie is surprised to learn that Michael is Jack’s lawyer, and is so upset when he tries to protect his client from her – as if she’s a gold-digger – that she decides to become one. A short time after marrying Jack, Sadie learns that her husband is dying; this comes right after she’d gone to see Dolly’s show to see Tommy, who’d sung his signature song "All I Do Is Dream Of You", which stirred up past emotions for both of them.

But it’s Michael, feeling guilty for his prior meddling in their lives, that finds Tommy first and puts him in a sanitarium where he might recover, but he doesn’t. After Jack’s deathbed scene with Sadie, she returns to New York to live in an apartment with her mother and Opal. They are visited by Michael, who celebrates his birthday with Sadie. As they blow out the candles, it appears all has been forgiven and that her mother’s wish of them being together is in their future. Source: www.classicfilmguide.com

-Franchot Tone? “Everybody asks me that,” Joan says with cryptic amusement. “I give them an answer they can’t print. Here it is for you, too. ‘I really don’t know whether Mr. Tone will make an honest woman of me.’” -Los Angeles Times (1933)

Franchot Tone can always fall back on the Carborundum Company in a pinch. The Carborundum Company is really Frank J. Tone, Sr. (Franchot calls him) — and carborundum is really an artificial compound of carbon and silicon.

Franchot is an entity in his own right, a player of stage and screen who is distinguished from other players by a decisive speaking voice and a smile that hovers somewhat between cynicism and what Heywood Broun once described as "wist." It is the masculine counterpart, that smile, of the Mona Lisa's -and quite as provoking.

Cast as 'Gentleman': Because he is stiffly erect, well mannered and usually unruffled, Hollywood is wont to cast him as a "gentleman” (slightly caddish). He doesn't mind this role especially, although he would prefer to be given parts in which he would be allowed to work with his hands, as he expresses it. He never wore a dress suit in all his seasons with the New Playwrights' Theater in Greenwich Village, the Theater Guild or the Group Theater, which last he helped organize—financially and otherwise.

He found working alongside Charles Laughton inspiring, in "Mutiny on the Bounty;" it enabled him to give what many will assay as his finest performance, although he himself singles out his lead in “Lives of a Bengal Lancer."

He most enjoyed playing with Joan in such films as "Today We Live," "Dancing Lady" and "Sadie McKee"—even though, he adds with a twinkle, he generally lost her to some luckier fellow. Tone objects to Hollywood on the grounds that it is either "all social or all work” with no happy medium. He is fond of music, and collects books on acting, some dating back to 1850. He smiled his quizzical smile at the mention, in his studio biography, that "he loves to study philosophy" and is partial to golf and riding. "I don't believe I've played golf or read a book in ten years. As for riding, they should have seen me falling off horses in ‘Bengal Lancers,’" he remarked facetiously.

"The House of Connelly" by Paul Green. Martin Beck Theater, September 28, 1931. It was the first production of the Group Theater, directed by Lee Strasberg. Cast: Morris Carnovsky, Mary Morris, Eunice Stoddard, Stella Adler and Franchot Tone.

Tone's eyes gleamed with enthusiasm as he spoke of "the Stanislavsky system.” It is to this system, which he calls "a substitute for genius,” that he owes all practical knowledge of his profession, he declared—barring an apprenticeship as president of the Cornell Dramatic Club and a period of stock in Buffalo. “I came upon it in 1928," he explained, "in New York. We used it in the Group Theater. Its leading exponents were Ouspenskaya and Boleslawski. Boley is directing here at M.-G.-M. "We were taught to 'act' mentally working inside rather than out. It was not merely enough, of course to be 'filled up' inside; one needed the will to make one's feeling known. As a method it was opposed to the Comedie Françoise school, which advocates imitativeness—the “put the sob in it, boys!” sort of thing. As Boley said last week, “the ideal lies somewhere between the two.”

More than any single factor, one suspects, the Stanislavsky system has imprinted itself on Franchot Tone's nature, personally as well as professionally; he stepped into a technique ready made to his measure. He is of Irish descent, the French-sounding Franchot (Fran-sho) having been inherited from his mother's line. It's the Irish part that may furnish a key to the wist in his smile. -"Franchot Tone, Distinguished by Decisive Voice and 'Mona Lisa' Smile" (1935) by Philip K. Scheuer for Los Angeles Times

On Hollywood: “Certain types of artists can’t handle it. In some ways, it killed Odets. It certainly killed Franchot Tone. He couldn’t live with that divided spirit. He couldn’t live with that — or Joan Crawford.” -Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights (2013) Source: www.nytimes.com

Franchot Tone: "Joan has had problems of her own in the past few months. Not only did she suffer from an unhappy marriage, but she was tortured by untrue gossip and unfair reports in the public prints. You would think that she had enough on her mind with her own problems... But, no! She has to fret about the problems of a dozen or so other people. She is," he added, very solemnly, "a great woman. And that is not an adjective that I use often or carelessly. I think that about Joan." -"Joan Crawford: The Most Remarkable Girl in Hollywood" (1934) by Helen Louise Walker (Silver Screen magazine)

At college Franchot was preeminent in dramatics and scholarship, being president of the dramatic club and a Phi Beta Kappa. To his staid parents' astonishment he accepted a job as the juvenile in a Buffalo stock company as soon as he had graduated. "I made forty a week -- while it lasted!" he recounts. "I headed for Broadway and fame when that 'tryout' was over. Only -- fame kept at a respectful distance from me. For weeks I pounded the pavements! At last I persuaded a little theatre organization in Greenwich Village to allow me to illustrate how well I could enact the lead in the first production. I read the part with profound confidence. They rewarded me with a supporting role. It was a hectic but stimulating existence from then on. Good plays and bad ones, strong parts and poor ones. Finally I got into Katharine Cornell's 'The Age of Innocence.'" That brought the Hollywood bid.

"I felt that posing for portraits and autographing books for fans was a form of exhibitionism. At premieres I used to blush violently when noticed and I'd scribble my name in the fans' books so fast I scarcely knew what I was doing. Joan showed me how wrong I was. She convinced me that a picture player is not making a fool of himself when he acknowledges the public's curiosity. She believes one should be very grateful to the fans for their approval. I agree now that I've reasoned it out."

The lessons in showmanship have modulated his reserve. He still lacks the spectacular quality which big stars have, but it can be developed since he is no longer inhibited by self-consciousness. He is endeavoring to discover just what kind of publicity is best. "When I see how writers have badgered Joan, particularly when she announced her separation from Doug, I shudder at the dangers one can encounter by being too kind to the press!"

There are many details of the actual camera work which he has had to master, and on which Joan helped him. "My gestures were quicker than they should be for the screen and Joan slowed me down. Then the speed with which scenes are taken confused me. It is difficult to rise to a climax with no preliminaries, as we have on the stage." "From all appearances Franchot is the most indifferent person in the world," Joan began as we sat in her portable dressing room on the "Dancing Lady" set. "Then you begin your scene with him and are astounded to find you are working with the keenest of actors. Technically, he is perfect. He knows how to express every kind of feeling instantly!"

"I have no technique at all for myself. I'm all emotion and when I cry, for instance, I keep on until I'm cried out. I'd give anything to be as skilled in acting as he is. But he learned his technique on the stage and you can't develop any in films." And speaking of analyzing reminded Joan that Franchot is the most logical man she has ever known.

"He has taught me to curb relying upon my intuition. If someone hurts him he doesn't lose his temper. He sits in a corner quietly and reasons out why. When people have said sarcastic things to or about me I've cried. But he has shown me that they must have had a motive for being mean. And when you search for it you recognize their purpose and aren't hurt." Doug Jr. thrilled her when she was impressed with superficial glory. Franchot stands for maturity, conservative achievement. "I have learned peace of mind from Franchot," Joan concluded. "He has taught me to have faith in my own judgement. And, oh yes -he reads aloud to me! All the grandest plays and 'Alice in Wonderland.' I'd never read it!" -"Joan Unmasks Hollywood for Franchot Tone" (Screenland magazine, December 1933)