Lady in the Dark - MOMA Exhibition

Crime films were a staple at Columbia Pictures during the studio’s first decades as a budget-conscious, high-volume producer of mass entertainment. This exhibition traces the evolution of the genre at Columbia, from the atmospheric whodunits that dominated the early 1930s (By Whose Hand?, The Ninth Guest) through the moody, despairing films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s.

The series includes both celebrated, A-level productions like Gilda (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1948)—both centered on Columbia’s biggest star, Rita Hayworth—and outstanding examples of the B-pictures that were the studio’s real specialty, among them rediscoveries like Blind Spot (1947) and Chinatown at Midnight (1950). A selection of episodes from the haunting Whistler series, each starring Richard Dix as a different figure marked by fate, offers a taste of the many B franchises that kept the studio’s tiny lot humming. Source: www.moma.org

I Love Trouble, 1947. USA. Directed by S. Sylvan Simon. Screenplay by Roy Huggins. With Franchot Tone, Janet Blair, Janis Carter. This is a newly restored print of this seldom-seen gem, an early example of genre self-consciousness written by the prolific Roy Huggins.

Franchot Tone stars as the hapless private detective Stuart Bailey (a character revived by Huggins for his 77 Sunset Strip television series), who spends much of the movie being knocked out, literally or figuratively, by a stunning series of late 1940s bombshells: Janet Blair, Janis Carter and Adele Jergens. Introduced by Eddie Muller, The Film Noir Foundation Source: www.moma.org

"Midnight Mary" (Loretta Young & Franchot Tone), ‘Queen of the ‘B’s Lynn Bari, B Movie Play

In "Midnight Mary" (1933) directed by William A. Wellman, Loretta Young alternates between controlling her lust for the Ricardo Cortez character and falling in love with Franchot Tone's. Her body needs Cortez, but her heart craves Tone weaving together a pretty complicated woman on screen for 1933. Midnight Mary is all at once a sex story and a love story elevated by one of Young's finest performances. Source: immortalephemera.com

Midnight Mary is Mary Martin, she's played by Loretta Young, and as our film starts she's up for murder and not likely to get away with it either. While waiting for the verdict, we're treated to the back story that brought her to such a state of affairs, which is as sordid as you'd expect for a William Wellman precode.

Luckily Mary has caught the eye of millionaire playboy Tom Mannering, Jr, played with relish by Franchot Tone having a ball with his part, and he gives her a way out, not just of the urgent situation at hand but out of her situation in general by giving her a job. As you'd expect, he falls head over heels for her in the process and also as you'd expect, complications ensue and Mary doesn't stay with him for long, jumping back on that downward slide.

Franchot Tone is superb, though he doesn't have anywhere near the size or scope of part that Loretta Young does. As always, Una Merkel gets nowhere near the screen time she deserves and Andy Devine has only a tiny role also. There's also a small but memorable part from Halliwell Hobbes. A good deal of the credit here though should go to screenwriter Anita Loos, best known for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and to director William A Wellman, who I'm discovering was a prolific worker in the precode era with a whole slew of decent titles to his credit. The volume and scope of them says plenty on its own, beyond their individual merits. Source: www.apocalypselaterfilm.com

Mary catches the eye of upper-crust attorney Tom Mannering (Franchot Tone). The smitten lawyer helps her escape when the robbery goes awry, and hides her from the cops at his home. Moved by Mary's desire to go straight, Tom sets her up with stenography lessons and a secretarial position at his firm. Unfortunately, the truth about her past ultimately comes to light; hoping to spare Tom's feelings and let him move on with his life, Mary gives him a brusque brush-off on her way back to prison. Leo's all too happy to have her back in the fold once she gets out, but he's much less pleased when he discovers her lingering affections for Tom.

'Midnight Mary' is also notable as it represents one of the very rare bad-girl assignments on the famously strait-laced Young's career resume. "In one scene she couldn't understand why [the Cortez character] slaps her," Morella and Epstein recounted. "'Because you're his girl,' Wellman explained. 'He doesn't have to slap me.' 'Yes, he does.' Wellman never came right out and said, 'Because you're sleeping with him,' and Young said years later that even if she had known what Wellman was talking about she would have put it out of her mind." The film's scenario was adapted from an Anita Loos story by the team of Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola, a duo who provided plenty of pertinent pre-code proto-feminist sagas during the era, such as 'Baby Face' (1933) and 'Female' (1933) Source: www.tcm.com

The retrospective narrative structure of “Midnight Mary” throws light on Mary (Loretta Young)’s descent into crime and prostitution. Told by Wellman’s sympathetic camera, her main crime seems to be, in Dickensian terms, “want and poverty.” Her body is drawn by the magnetic pull of Leo the hoodlum. She gets mixed up in a heist during which a policeman is shot down. She meets her Sir Galahad in the shape of Tom Mannering (Fanchot Tone), a “blue-blood lawyer” who tries to put her back on the straight and narrow. Mary's mind dreams of Madame Récamier and of being Mrs Mannering.

A spate of “vice films,” as Thomas Doherty calls them, was released during the pre-Code years. Myra (Mae Clarke), streetwalking on Waterloo Bridge, Blonde Venus (Marlene Dietrich) on the game for a meal ticket, or Midnight Mary (Loretta Young), teenage hooker soliciting gentlemen in their cars, may be cultural icons of fallen women. But this is only a rite of passage, not a constant pattern. Most soon settle into the category of the hard-boiled women of the thirties. They become tinsel women, gangsters’ molls or call-girls, sleeping their way into luxury. A few others, like Baby Face (Barbara Stanwyck) or the Red-Headed Woman (Jean Harlow) make cynical use of their bodies to get to the top of the greasy pole, wrecking the lives of naïve lovers who are not rich enough or old enough to be suitable sugar daddies.

After the vamp or the flapper of the silver screen, fancy-free women with little social or political consciousness, the pre-Code harlot rises against the lingering Hester Prynne guilt and redefines on-screen womanhood. Pre-Code female sinners prefigure the femme fatale of Film Noir in their cold manipulation of men’s desire and in their controlled sensuality. Two major books have dealt at length with the representation of the fallen woman in film. Lea Jacobs investigates the political and artistic forces controlling and shaping a social taboo whereas Russell Campbell offers a taxonomy of sinning woman types realized by a set of meta-narratives at work in cinema. The approach here is somewhat different and strives to remain within a “figural” theory: it holds that pre-code prostitutes are audio-visual tropes converting an idea into cinematic images. -"Outcast Lilies: Prostitutes in Pre-Code Movies (1929-1934)" by Jean-Marie Lecomte (2010)

Between 1934 and 1937, Lynn Bari was featured as an extra, showgirl and/or bit player in approximately twenty Fox films per year. Some of them were: (MGM) 1933 'Dancing Lady.' Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Fred Astaire, Nelson Eddy, Eve Arden. (MGM) 1934 'The World Moves On.' Director: John Ford. Cast: Madeleine Carroll, Franchot Tone. (20th Century Fox) 1937 'This Is My Affair.' Director: William A. Seiter. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor

Of all the broadcast shows in which Lynn Bari would appear, none would be more prestigious than Cecil B. DeMille’s Lux Radio Theatre, which aired Monday nights on CBS — to an audience of thirty-million listeners. Generally, Lux’s hour-long format pared down film scripts by eliminating and/or coalescing supporting characters (and their corresponding storylines). The hearts of the original plots would suffer little damage in these radio translations. A March 1943 Lux Radio Theatre airing found Bari costarring with George Raft and Franchot Tone in the show’s version of 'Each Dawn I Die' (Warners, 1939). The crime drama cast her as Joyce, a role that had been created on screen by Jane Bryan. -"Foxy Lady: The Authorized Biography of Lynn Bari" (2010) by Jeff Gordon

Barbara Payton: I’m the “Queen of the Clubs”. Franchot Tone: Good for you. So, who are you here with tonight? Barbara: Steve Cochran. Franchot: Is he taking you home? Barbara: Not if I get a better offer. Franchot: How about champagne and caviar at my place? Barbara: Don’t you have a wife? Franchot: Jean? That’s all over but the bloodletting. -She giggles at his remark. Music segues from the Rumba to a softer, more romantic tune, as Franchot offers Barbara his arm. He leans over and they kiss, long, passionately.- Franchot (to audience): I knew she was no Virgin Mary when I met her. There was George Raft... Errol Flynn... some Mob guys... I even knew about her relationship with Bob Hope. It cost Bob a pretty penny to get rid of her.

Franchot (to Tom Neal): Barbara may have been a star... briefly... But, you weren’t even “the other man”. You were the other man’s best friend’s buddy who usually got killed in the first two reels. -Tom Neal clenches his fists; forces himself to smile.- Tom: What about Detour? They call that “a classic.” Franchot: It’s an anomaly... Hell, Annie Savage, your co-star, thought you were an asshole. Tom: Why? Because I walked up to her one day and stuck my tongue into her ear? Franchot: That only confirmed it. Tom: She had no sense of humor. Franchot: Tom, be honest. You were never really “an actor”. You were “beefcake”and you wore lifts. -Tom (cocks fist at Franchot): You’re pushing it again. Franchot: What imbecile calls Louis B. Mayer a son-of-a-bitch in the middle of the MGM commissary?... That sure as hell ended any real career you might have had.

-Barbara, now dressed in a sheer black negligee. Her back is to the audience and the lighting delineates her nude figure.- Franchot (watches Barbara and reminisces): There was a huge mirror on the ceiling above Barbara’s bed. -Lights dim as Franchot crosses up to Barbara. He takes her in his arms. They sit on the chaise lounge and he kisses her passionately.- Franchot: You look so captivating tonight, my dear... Your hair is like a field of daisies... I’d like to run barefoot through your hair. Barbara: What the hell kind of line is that? Franchot: I don’t know. I said it to Jean Harlow in Bombshell. Barbara: Yeah? Did it work? Franchot: Actually, no. She wound up in that picture with Lee Tracy. -They share a laugh together.- Franchot (to audience): My friends... even Joan [Crawford], my exwife... said I should drop her... that she was not for me... She would ruin my reputation in Hollywood... I didn’t listen. She was like a narcotic... and I was hooked. -"B MOVIE: A Play in Two Acts" (2014) by Michael B. Druxman

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

Franchot Tone: From Pre-Code Romance to Noir

On June 13, 1934 (80 years ago), an amendment to the Motion Picture Production Code was adopted which established the Production Code Administration (PCA) and required all films released after July 1, 1934, to obtain a certificate of approval. The PCA had two offices —one in Hollywood and the other in New York City. The first film to receive an MPPDA seal of approval (endorsed by studio executives) was The World Moves On (1934), an historic drama directed by John Ford, starring Madeleine Carroll and Franchot Tone.

Franchot Tone (1905–1968) is particularly significative as an actor who would make a very interesting progression from his early roles as a debonair playboy during his stay at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios to obscure and impenetrable characters on the wrong side of the tracks. His tristfully mischievous smile and penetrating dark eyes would serve him to accentuate this metamorphosis. Although Tone’s first big screen appearance was for Paramount Pictures in The Wiser Sex (1932) opposite Claudette Colbert, MGM saw potential in his refined image and offered him a long term contract. Tone’s privileged upbringing and high-profile education -Rennes University in France, President of the Dramatic Club at Cornell University (graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors)- had led him to play the aristocratic variations he was routinely assigned in the popular romantic dramas and comedies of the 1930s.

In seven of those films, he’d costar with MGM’s Queen Joan Crawford (his first wife); he also did four movies with the Platinum Blonde Jean Harlow. Louis B. Mayer didn’t think Franchot had enough “star appeal” to be a leading man so frequently he accepted supporting roles in the part of the leading lady’s wealthiest suitor.

After playing in 29 motion pictures in six years, Franchot left MGM after completing Busby Berkeley's Fast and Furious (1939), a light detective story (starring Ann Sothern) which would anticipate his next cynical investigators on-screen such as Stuart Bailey in I Love Trouble (1948) and Howard Malloy in Jigsaw (1949). “Even angels can get their wings clipped!”, says District Attorney Howard Malloy to party girl Barbara Whitfield (Jean Wallace, Tone’s second wife in real life). Wallace’s Barbara retorts: “You got the scissors?” Tangential to his conflicted sleuth characters, he would display dangerous psychopathic tendencies in Phantom Lady (1944), and The Man on the Eiffel Tower (produced by Franchot’s company A&T Film in 1949). This astonishing transition into the noir ‘underworld’ could seem almost inexplicable, but in the case of Tone is singularly valid due to the connection between two genres that have usually been marginalized and even persecuted by the official censorship systems: Pre-Code and Noir.

“I’m the intellectual type. Sometimes, my baser nature gets the better of me,” Tone’s character Tom confesses to Loretta Young’s Mary in Midnight Mary (1933). “Your hair is like a field of silver daisies. I’d like to run barefoot through your hair” (Tone wooing Harlow in Bombshell, 1933), “You did a pretty good job of outgrowing a lot of things,” or “You jump at the same cheap conclusions that all cheap people do,” to Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee (1934) are other examples of tantalizing dialogues whose style would not survive once Joseph Breen’s Code was implanted after 1934′s second midyear.

In Bombshell and The Girl from Missouri (both included in the Jean Harlow’s 100th Anniversary Collection) we can appreciate the subtle divergences between two outwardly similar scions, differentiated by Tone’s highly perceptive acting. While in Bombshell his character Gifford Middleton is a fake aristocrat (played with a straight face) hired to placate Lola’s longing to escape her oppresive career demands, in The Girl from Missouri the insolent T.R. Paige Jr. feels so disconcerted by Harlow’s refusal (“You can make me cheap and common like a million others but, gee, I wish you wouldn’t”), that we see literally Paige’s cynicism dismantled for good when Eadie (Harlow’s ‘hotsy totsy’ chorus girl) disarms Tone’s character using only her sincere tears.

No doubt, the final (tender and arousing) scene when Paige forces Eadie into the bath stall never ceases to touch me seeing how Tone’s spoiled heir transmogrifies into a devoted Romeo under the purifying shower rain. It was really a watershed moment from his Pre-Code period, one of his most emotive performances as romantic saviour.

Maybe the duality inherent to a stage-trained actor which Tone reckoned so well: “Actors suffer from being half narcissistic and half self-critical”, confered him a special complexity which he would never shy away from. Franchot Tone was one of the original members of the Group Theater (1931-1940), the first acting company to bring Stanislavski’s revolutionary technique to America. Tone was also the first to leave the Group for Hollywood, shortly followed by John Garfield. Stanislavski’s concept of Emotional Memory proved to be decisive in a number of Tone’s dialethic portraits that made him stand out from the Hollywood’s histrionic style typical of his era.

One master example appears in Borzage’s Three Comrades, scripted by F. Scott Fitzgerald, where Tone’s character Otto Koster shows us his internal dialogue surreptitiously but without leaving room for doubt about his love for Patricia (Margaret Sullavan) or his Comrades (Robert Taylor and Robert Young). In 1957 Tone recorded a reading of Fitzgerald’s classics in The Jazz Age of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Readings by Franchot Tone The Great Gatsby, This side Of Paradise, The Crack-up, their mythical quality heightened by his suggestive voice. That same year Tone received praising reviews for his thespian talents in the Broadway play A Moon For The Misbegotten. During this time he was married to actress Dolores Dorn. It was his last marriage (1956-1959) which would repeat the same tumultuous pattern than his previous marital unions.

The most lacerating of his four complicated marriages was to the maligned actress Barbara Payton (1951-1952). The romantic trio Payton-Tone-Neal made gruesome headlines when Tone suffered a cerebral concussion and facial injuries caused by a fistfight with B-actor Tom Neal. Irony is not lost on those noir stalwarts, because the most noirish film (Detour, starring Tom Neal) would pale in comparison with the real thing. Plastic surgery was needed to restore Tone’s broken nose and cheek, and Tone would divorce Payton after a string of unsavory arguments. “I was engaged to the actor with the most class in Hollywood-Franchot Tone,” remembered Barbara in her memoirs I Am Not Ashamed (1963), “my biggest moment was 1950 on St. Valentine’s Day. I went with Franchot Tone to the opera. It was heaven.”

Franchot, like the jaded and cryptic protagonists from the gritty pulps, felt irresistibly attracted to provocative beauties. In I Love Trouble (based on Roy Huggins’s novel The Double Take), the flaxen-haired temptress (Adele Jergens) who lies on his bed amuses him to no end. However, Stuart Bailey is love struck over Janet Blair’s character, who rectifies his deductions and guides him on the right track. Franchot actually becomes Bailey by virtue of a prodigious performance, rendering the insouciant detective persona (clearly inspired by the iconic Philip Marlowe) in an enigmatically acerbic fashion. “I’d like to play it like the bored detective who knows everything before it happens,” Bailey jokes. The incisive way Franchot submerges into the laconic wisecracks and hard-boiled gestures puts him in the same league than Bogart in The Big Sleep or Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet. In fact, Huggins’ novel is very reminiscent of Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake, centering around the deceitful identity of a fallen woman (in this case, Janie Joy, “luscious as a pomegranate, and twice as acid”).

This is my favorite performance of Tone in the 1940s decade, superseding the old gumshoe’s cockiness by enacting an almost inert representation of masculinity, notwithstanding charged with prolonged sexual desire. Norma Shannon (Janet Blair) ponders: “You’re a highly improbable character, Mr. Bailey. Did someone just dream you up?,” while Bailey adumbrates her image inside his mind: “Her cobalt eyes had widened. Then her eyebrows raised and she took on a look of earnest sympathy. Acute cynicism. I suppose it’s an occupational disease, isn’t it?”

Franchot Tone was paradoxically a feminist, and “he encouraged all the women in his life”, as Lisa Burks (who is planning a biography on Tone) affirms. In Uncle Vanya (1958) “Mr. Tone 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”, The New York Times acclaimed, “a subdued but shining performance that registers just as clearly as Chekhov’s words.” Franchot continued performing throughout the 1950′s combining his Hollywood career with his devotion for Broadway’s theatre.

Franchot Tone pushed the limits and constraints of Hollywood displaying an entire spectrum of psychologically inescapable reactions, opposite to the good guy/bad guy dichotomy prevalent in the Golden Age. Mysterious, suave and mentally keen, Franchot Tone managed to create contradictory heroes and charming villains empathising with their human flaws, unafraid of the benighted human condition which through those diverse (yet akin) portrayals presented itself. The means whereby Franchot Tone approached to these characters was beyond an acting System or Method, he just relied on his journey as he’d say: ‘through this jungle of illusion each and every one of us are living in.’ Article first published as Franchot Tone: From Pre-Code Romance to Film Noir on Blogcritics.