Gloria Vanderbilt on Franchot Tone

Recently, I watched the HBO documentary Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper. Although I think there are actually several things unsaid, Gloria's reflections on her life and conversations with son Anderson were fascinating. Gloria does not discuss Franchot at all in the documentary, but I knew that Gloria and Franchot worked together in a Colgate Comedy Hour special and in the Saroyan Pulitzer-winning play The Time of Your Life.

Knowing that they both indulged in many romances, I assumed that Franchot and Gloria probably had one of their own at this time so I picked up Vanderbilt's romance memoir It Seemed Important at the Time at my library. My hunch paid off. The memoir includes a brief 2-page chapter dedicated to Mr. Tone.

Franchot & Gloria. Source: http://www.cinemarx.ro/

Franchot & Gloria. Source: http://www.cinemarx.ro/

The Pulitzer-winning play The Time of Your Life starring Franchot and Gloria was produced by the New York City Theatre Company. During the play's run in January 1955, Franchot and Gloria engaged in an affair that Gloria says they both knew was "transient."

Gloria talks about how she idolized the handsome, charming Franchot of the screen during her youth. When Gloria joined the cast of The Time of Your Life, she and Franchot began a romance. According to Gloria, Franchot told her that he was "King Arthur searching for Lady Guinevere." She elaborates on her romance with Franchot:

We spent a lot of time at Birdland and other hot spots, and he sent flowers with notes saying things like, 'I love you in the many mirrors of the real, but really too.'...There was a gentleness about him, a fineness, but by the end of an evening he would descend fuzzily into a passive melancholy that reminded me of the Clifford Odets play Golden Boy. 'I have a lump inside and I drink to dissolve it.' But it was too late for that and I wasn't the drink he was looking for. Soon after, Sinatra winged along and we parted without even saying good-bye.

Gloria is not the first person to comment on the inherent pain within the fineness of Franchot. I'm working on a future post about this characteristic of Franchot's personality and his peers' observations about his use of alcohol to dull that pain.


Sources:
Vanderbilt, Gloria. It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.