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.

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)