Wendy Smith on Franchot Tone

Wendy Smith, the author of Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940, writes that director Harold Clurman first saw Franchot in the 1928 production of "The International". Smith writes,

"Tall, handsome, always well dressed, this affluent young Cornell graduate seemed out of place in a company founded the previous year to present radical plays-which may have accounted for the stiffness Clurman observed in his performance. But Tone had a serious side not evident to those who saw him squiring beautiful women around New York nightclubs; his lively interest in social and economic issues had steered him toward New Playwrights and made him receptive to Clurman's ardent formulations."

Source: Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940; New York: Knopf, 1990. 21. Print.