Quotes

Franchot Tone. Scan from my collection.

Quotes by Franchot

"I feel more relaxed on the legitimate stage because, after all, on the legitimate stage the actor carries all the burden of creation at the time of performance. He need have no fears of what may happen to his performance, because it is right there. It is much easier to relax with the results immediate, than when they are quite a way off, and in the hands of so many other people."
-F.T., 1939.

"I let myself get tabbed as a dilettante, a fellow who was just in pictures for the fun of it. Hollywood takes itself seriously, doesn't understand the light touch in connection with a career. The biggest stars in town never have a frivolous thought, never take time out to enjoy a laugh at themselves."
-F.T., 1942.

"Maybe I was born with a perverse streak, but I like to sit on the sidelines occasionally and get some amusement out of watching my fellow creatures. I work hard enough when I work and I like to loaf on the grand scale when I loaf."
-F.T., 1942.

"I was a leading man making an outrageous salary. But I was jealous of character actors with three-line bit roles. At least, they enjoyed their work. Most actors pay too much attention to the size of a role anyway. One good, biting scene is worth more than hours of drivel. Well, I got older, and eventually I reached a point where I looked ridiculous bounding through a bay window with a tennis raquet in my hands. I went into television at a time when the industry was hungry for movie names. I could be demanding. For instance, when one video producer offered me the romantic lead in a murder mystery, I held out for the role of the killer—a marvelous psychopathic character—and got it."
-F.T., 1962.

"I’ve never had any setbacks. I’ve always lived in the style to which I’m accustomed. I’ve never been out of work. Most important to me, I have never had to take an acting job that I didn’t want to do."-F.T., 1966.

"If I ever had an image, it was the playboy, the white tie and tails, the elegant fellow with the good tailor. That was my image for the mass movie audience. But not for the theater audience. They saw me as an actor. Now my television image is the character actor. And then they see my old movies on the late show and I'm the rich playboy again."
-F.T., 1966.

"I'm a gambler, and gamblers sometimes lose. A man's got to live. I've had a full life, with no regrets. There was so much bad publicity, I couldn't defend it; so I've never had my day in court. I think I'll just pass it up. People all over the country tell me they're on my side. I'll settle for that. Well, you can't kill a guy for falling in love, and I've always let them make an honest man of me."
-F.T., 1952.

"I'm proud that I've still got the best to come. I'm proud of "Strange Interlude" and "Uncle Vanya" and "Bicycle Ride to Nevada," which the critics roasted. I'm proud of some of the movies I was in. I'm proud of a half-hour GE Theater on Charles Steinmetz. I'm proud of my Mark Twain on a Playhouse 90. I'm proud of "The Old Cowboy" on The Virginian. And I'm going to be proud of Ben Casey."
-F.T., 1966.

Quotes about Franchot

"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 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.

"Franchot never ceases to amaze me. He is the most honest person I have ever met and I do admire honesty. He has a wonderful perspective on everything. We are so good for each other because, when I get upset, I think emotionally. Franchot has a reserve that is a godsend. It saves him so much and allows him to handle a situation so much better. His ideas are good and he has such a nice way of carrying them out. He is a highly interesting conversationalist. Besides loving him as a husband, I have great admiration for him as a man."
-wife Joan Crawford, 1936.

"He has a sense of humor as gay and sprightly as a leprechaun's—but that's his secret. On the surface, even he has accepted the Tone legend. Sophisticated, erudite, aloof—all the admirable but chilling synonyms for Tone which have become his tag in Hollywood. But casual? Indifferent, my eye! The man is shy. Honest to goodness shy. Things matter greatly to Franchot but, like the leprechaun's charming approach to reality, his disguise of such caring is complete.Type your paragraph here."
-publicist Helen Ferguson, 1948.

"You can't resent a man just because he looks like a "Man of Distinction" at the breakfast table when you've seen him, with infinite patience, console his son when his favorite toy was broken, or discipline his first-born with firmness, when a toss-off would have been easier by far. As Franchot's wife I've come to respect a lot of things which, when I was a youngster, seemed unimportant. It was inevitable, I suppose, that I first resisted his attraction for me—disliked him, even, because of it. Perhaps in a vague way I realized the enchantment his even-tempered, almost casual way would throw about me. It's no longer enchantment—it's real. I guess through all of this I've been trying to say what is fully said in a simple sentence. Franchot is civilized. That's his burden—and his glory. It's my pride and my cross."
-wife Jean Wallace, 1948.

"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."
-costar Gloria Vanderbilt, 1994.

"...we shared an unspoken bond. We were both romantics—incurable to the last—and our separate upbringings shared the same confusion of identity. He may have seen in me, occasionally, his younger self. I'm not sure and I wouldn't wish it on him; but I saw in him someone I could perhaps aspire to; not the hidden sad, pained man that was part of Franchot but the part he couldn't conceal, no matter how hard he tried, the part that was refined, noble and infinitely kind—the man of golden promise."
-costar Christopher Plummer, 2008.

"His career never reached the height his ex-wife's [Joan Crawford] did, because, I think, he seemed to have had too much given to him. Wealth, for example. His father was the president of the Carborundum Company. Brains. Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell. Talent. A superstar. Problems. Lack of discipline. But he enjoyed life to the end, loving and being loved by an army of fans and friends...Franchot and I remained close friends from that first meeting with his bride until I spoke at his funeral."-friend and costar Burgess Meredith, 1994.

"Franchot became one of my heroes, once I realized that heroes could be human...Normally quiet and reflective, he could be very temperamental. He was a movie star, but to me, above all, he was a Renaissance man. He thought about more than just the theater. He gave me books he loved, like the writings of the Comte de Rochechouart and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and a Marlin .22 lever action rifle, the gift of which startled my parents and endeared Franchot to me even more. He exposed me to a world that I loved and felt at home in, and that my parents knew nothing about. He loved women, smoked two packs of unfiltered Camel cigarettes a day, and drank double vodkas. So did I, but some years later. He was definitely more of what I wanted to be than was my own father, and I often wonder what kind of father he was to his own children. Franchot's humanity touched me deeply. It was due in part to his influence that I learned to define success on my own terms. Above all, he taught me that work is part of one's natural respect and love of human life, but it is not a way to ignore or dominate it."-John Strasberg, 1996.