Franchot's Association with the Group Theatre, Part 1

Theater director Harold Clurman invited Franchot to join the Group Theatre after seeing him in the 1928 play The International.

Although Franchot and actor Morris Carnovsky were already both on contract with the guild, they were allowed to participate in the Group Theatre's intensive project to create a community of actors that tackled social justice and the world within its plays. In his book The Fervent Years, Clurman explained the group's goal:

...to go away to some country place with twenty-eight actors and rehearse two plays till they were ready for production in New York. We would pay no salaries, but we would provide meals, living quarters, laundry expense.

We had chosen our actors before we knew what play we would do. They were our actors, and they would have to suit our plays. That is what we directors were there for. Nor did we have any money to finance our ambitious plan. We only had the will to carry it out. When the Guild agreed to let us have The House of Connelly and a thousand dollars, they were our only concrete assets.

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.
"Margaret Barker and Franchot Tone in the stage production The House of Connelly."
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1931.
 http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6adb3a10-2408-0133-8625-58d385a7b928

On the morning of June 8, 1931, a group of over 30 people (including actors, spouses, children, directors, friends) traveled to Connecticut to begin working. On moving in day, Franchot started a baseball game “to overcome the natural self-consciousness of the occasion.” Clurman also noticed that Stella Adler looked sadly on her fellow actors, as it looked more like a “camp for overgrown high-school kids.”

The actors rehearsed morning, noon, and night, and in between rehearsals played piano, cards, and debated. During the card games, Franchot led the others in pranking a young member of the group. They would deal him unbeatable hands until he gained confidence in betting and then deal him terrible hands. Lee and Harold observed this one night and found it “very funny, particularly since the hoax was executed with consummate sangfroid and deftness by Franchot Tone.”

Although Franchot was a respected man and actor within the group and had helped to make the group feel comfortable, there came a time when "some of the actors began to be troubled by Franchot Tone’s attitude." Clurman went on:

He was, of course, one of the original 1928 group. Since then he had had the opportunity to feel his oats. He had played leading parts on Broadway, he was in demand, and the other actors sensed in him a general resistance that at times manifested itself toward the directors and at other times toward the influences prevailing among the group. Actually he was suffering from a variety of growing-pains, but our work as such was not in question.

He was lonely. Though he had been raised in easy circumstances, and had been popular at college, he was not a good mixer. He was shy, with a tendency toward suspiciousness when ill at ease. He particularly suspected that he was not liked because, being more privileged than others, he was regarded as somewhat inferior in character. There was perhaps a mite of truth in his suspicions, but, for my part, I believed they lay chiefly in his distrust of himself. The tension that gripped him made him rude, almost insolent. He was unconsciously revenging himself on us, testing both himself and us. Thus he demonstrated little courtesy to Strasberg, although he had real admiration for him.

Franchot, intelligent and sometimes psychologically keen, said to me, 'In the old days we talked only when we didn’t work. Now we work only when we don’t talk!' I was somewhat taken aback by the remark and repeated it to Strasberg. He agreed at once: Yes, we talk a lot because we are not simply rehearsing a play; we are laying the foundation for a theatre. Our theatre is more than just a matter of getting one or two plays produced.

The actors, I repeat, watched Franchot with increasing misgivings. Why was he allowed to get away with little breaches of politeness and discipline? He rarely came to the afternoon talks. He lumbered into rehearsals, sat aloof, whittled away at the side of the barn as he rehearsed. No one reprimanded him. Was he a favored child among the directors? Was he to be treated as a star? Was Lee afraid of him? These disturbing questions were never openly put because the actors had an abiding confidence in the directors’ good sense in handling the problem⁠—if it was a problem.

Despite Franchot's turn to loneliness and rebelliousness, Clurman refers to him at this time as "the finest young actor of recent arrival." Franchot continuously contributed his own money to help fund the group's endeavors, often giving $1,000 or more for each play. With the Group, Franchot starred in 1931, House of Connelly, Night over Taos, Red Rust, and Success Story.

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.
"Rose McClendon, Fanny de Knight, Franchot Tone, and Margaret Barker
 in the stage production The House of Connelly." The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
1931. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/d100e900-2405-0133-b1f9-58d385a7b928

Beginning in 1932, Clurman noticed that the group began "turning in on itself." Actors became more confrontational and suspicious of one another's motives. The bubble started to burst. Clurman recalled the changes in Franchot at this time:

In Franchot’s case the matter was special. The girl Franchot was attached to at the time, the one who worked with us in the old Riverside Drive days, visited him one weekend. Somehow we didn’t think she was Group material. Franchot’s life with the Group would have been much easier if she had spent more time with us, but Franchot was too proud to say so, and we were too one-tracked in our thinking to notice it. The girl felt separated from Franchot by us and would have been pleased if we had asked her to remain and work with us, even as an apprentice. We disregarded her very existence, and Franchot was irritated by our tactlessness.

Franchot was very emotionally attached to the Group and, in spite of or perhaps witnessed in his rebellious nature, was desperate for the Group's leaders to care about him, to show him that he was needed, that he mattered. The more I read about Franchot from those who knew him personally, the more I see that he had this dichotomy about his personality. On one hand, he was a confident, private individual who seemed to live and love easily. On the other hand, he felt a great deal of melancholy, of not fitting in, and wishing for more approval and assurance from those in his circle and the public at large. In his book, Clurman devoted a lot of time to the complicated personality of Franchot. Clurman said:

Franchot’s problem, however, was deeper than this. In Boston, when I finally got around to talking to him about his refractoriness, he asked me questions relating to my estimate of him as an actor. By my lights, how good would he become? In answering him I dwelt on his need to stick by what was strongest and most alive in himself. Tears came to his eyes. He confessed later that when I left he had actually sobbed, but he added with a sly grin: 'It didn’t do much good. The feeling didn’t last.'

Franchot loved us out of a great need, a feeling that we were good people who were bringing him just that supply of his sound work and clear faith that despite the advantages of his background, he had missed all his life. But he was very much part of the world that had provided him with these advantages, and he could not, would not, turn his back on it; it was the big world, the substantial world, in which all of us, willy-nilly, were living.

Of course, even in his attachment to the big world there was a contradiction. Franchot’s father, though associated with business, was basically a scientist; and Franchot’s mother was as much of an aristocrat as we ever get in America. Both of them were glad that Franchot preferred the Group to the ordinary commercial thatre. But the entertainment channels of the big world lie in the commercial theatre. We have no national theatre for our “best people.” We have Broadway, and Broadway has Hollywood. The cradle of opinion with theatre folk was not some Mermaid Tavern of intellectuals or artists, but the speakeasies of Fifty-second Street.

There they laughed at Franchot’s devotion to the Group. Franchot probably thought Lilyan Tashman and her crowd who came to see him in Taos lacked taste, but he did not, for all that, feel particularly comfortable at their seeing him in a flop that had been preceded by another, whose most enthusiastic audience sat in the balcony uttering strange cries of approval. Franchot was torn between the Group of tactless people, led chiefly by two exasperated hotheads who offered a way of life that was personally real and perhaps part of the mainstream of the time, and a Broadway plus Hollywood which, though he knew it to be shoddy, actually possessed the only power and glory the world could offer today.

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.
"Luther Adler, Stella Adler, Franchot Tone, and Dorothy Patten in the stage production Success Story"
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1932.
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/281640c0-2409-0133-1322-58d385a7b928

Franchot seemed to behave more strangely during the final summer with the Group. (In all fairness, if you read Wendy Smith's book Real Life Drama, it seems a lot of the members were acting strangely during this time.) Clurman remembered:

Franchot behaved more peculiarly this summer than the last. He was remarkably fine at rehearsals of Success Story, but he was rather antisocial in other ways. He drank stiffly, and carried off some other pretty good bottlemen to drink with him almost every night after rehearsals. When he came back he sometimes took delight in driving his car over the main lawn and crashing all the garden furniture left there during the day. He grew a beard, walked about in a loincloth, went shooting fairly close to the rehearsal grounds. He shied away from most of us, alternating between a distant courtesy that implied an insult, and the manner of a cagey maniac.

With all this, Franchot was always shrewd and observant. He saw what was going on. What was going on was a subtle transformation with the Group as a whole. The very air was fermenting with something that blew from we know not where, but which roused everyone to doubts, questions, wonder, eagerness, dispute. ….

The day came when Strasberg was no longer able to tolerate the disruptive ambiguity of Franchot’s behavior. He decided to have the showdown I had recommended the year before, and both us now confronted Franchot with ultimatum written on our faces. Franchot admitted at once that he had decided to quit the Group, that he was going into pictures. I do not know whether he had already made arrangements or whether our severity at this meeting finally decided him. I am inclined to believe that some of his mischievous conduct arose from an anger with himself, and some was designed to provoke us to such a discussion as we were having. Perhaps, however, he expected a gentler approach, for people like Franchot, always want evidence that they are loved. Strasberg, hurt himself, lashed forth a white-hot 'We don’t care' when Franchot disclosed his intentions. 'I know you don’t care,' Franchot answered quietly but painfully, as if to say: 'That is exactly why I wish to go.'

That day the bad news of Franchot’s resignation was announced to the Group at a special meeting addressed by Strasberg. It was the first resignation of any importance from our organization. The actors were shocked, for they appreciated Franchot’s value. Strasberg’s talk was calculated to affirm the strength and integrity of the Group, which could ill afford to keep a member whose spirit had turned against it. When the day came for Franchot to leave, he told me he was going to try Hollywood. At Tony’s, on West Fifty-second Street, he wept over his drink. …

I find it interesting that, according to Clurman, Franchot was pushed out of the Group for "disruptive ambiguity" much like he was pushed out of The Hill School as a teen for "subtle influence for disorder." And both of these punishments only led to more success for Franchot—leaving The Hill School led to success at Cornell University while leaving the Group led to success in films.

Clurman goes on to address the difficulty the Group had replacing Franchot in their plays. I think it's telling that despite his causing trouble, the other actors always appreciated Franchot's value and that Clurman was able to see that some of his rebelliousness was due to Franchot's schrewd observation of the inner shifting of the group.

Although he'd worked himself into a corner with Strasberg and Clurman, Franchot was definitely torn in leaving the Group for Hollywood and would never be able to definitely choose one over the other for the rest of his career. Actress Ruth Nelson shared in the documentary Broadway Dreamers:

I remember the night, his last Saturday night with Success Story. He came to me to say goodbye. He leaned over, kissed me, and had tears in his eyes. I said, 'Franchot, if that's the way you feel, why are you leaving?' And he said, 'Well, Ruthie, I just have to find out what it's [Hollywood] all about.'

Actors Sandy Meisner and Robert Lewis went with Franchot to Grand Central Station. As they said their goodbyes, an emotional Franchot:

...stood on the steps of the famous Twentieth Century Limited club car, teary-eyed, and as the train started to pull out of the station, he called to us, 'Keep your line.'

Walking across Forty-second Street, I turned to Sandy and observed, 'Did you hear what he said? Here we are, going back to our struggling new Group while he's off to Hollywood to make a movie with Lilyan Tashman and he tells us to keep our line.'

Said Sandy, 'He meant keep it for him.'

I think Clurman's belief that Franchot "expected a gentler approach, for people like Franchot, always want evidence that they are loved" is valid and that his statements about the emotional contrasts in Franchot's character echo those of Gloria Vanderbilt and Clifford Odets and Christopher Plummer.

Franchot, of course, would maintain an association with the Group Theatre, both publicly as an actor and privately as a benefactor. Much more on the post-1933 involvement with the Group coming soon!

Sources:

• Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties. Knopf, 1950.
• Kramer, Joan, David Heeley, Joanne Woodward, Steve Lawson, Stella Adler, Harold Clurmaan, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. Broadway's Dreamers: The Legacy of the Group Theatre. New York, N.Y: PDR Productions, 1994.
• Lewis, Robert. Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life. Stein and Day, 1984.
• Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940. Knopf, 1990.

Childhood Photos and Memories

Tiny Franchot Tone. Source: Photoplay, May 1937.

In May 1937, Walter Ramsey published his authorized biography of Franchot within the pages of Photoplay Magazine. The May issue focused on Franchot's childhood through his high school years. The second volume detailed Franchot's collegiate years and entry into an acting career. Franchot provided some of his favorite memories as well as a joyful abundance of childhood photographs. In the lengthy articles, Franchot recalled a happy, close family life, a home in which he was encouraged to have interests and embrace adventures and causes. His father became more successful with each year. Franchot said:

We started out modestly enough but each time Father was promoted, we moved up the street a notch. We approached the Falls as father approached the presidency of his Carborundum Company of America.

I've noticed these changes in addresses, from 328 Buffalo Avenue to 131 Buffalo Avenue, on census reports and always wondered about that, so now it makes sense!

Franchot was the youngest child of Frank and Gertrude. When Franchot was born, older brother Jerry said the baby's squealing was "something terrible. Bet my cat's caught his tail under the pantry door again."

Tiny Franchot in the snow. Source: Photoplay, May 1937.

Franchot's first taste of being a star came at the age of three. Although Jerry had been practicing a Christmas poem for weeks, he forgot the lines when it came time to recite them at a Christmas party. Franchot, having listened to his brother's practice, recited all the lines by heart for the family and friends gathered there.

Tiny Franchot among the trees. Source: Photoplay, May 1937.

Franchot was a thin, small child with a penchant for mischief. After fishing in the family's goldfish bowl, Franchot received a spanking from his mother. Franchot remembered thinking this punishment was ridiculous and irrational. He's successfully caught a goldfish so why all the fuss?

When Franchot's dad traveled to observe factories in Europe, the whole family went along. Franchot lived in Paris, Cannes, and on the Riviera. It was in France that little Franchot saw his first film, a "flickering, green sort of affair" about cowboys, playing in the hotel lobby and viewed by a little boy peeking from the banister.

Jerry Tone (left) and Franchot Tone (right) with their burro in Arizona.
Source: Photoplay, May 1937.

When Frank came down with a serious illness, the family moved to a more restorative climate in Tucson, Arizona. In Arizona, Jerry and Franchot had a burro, pictured above with Franchot on top and Jerry on the stairs. Franchot shared:

We were never off his back for a moment and the neighborhood kids joined in the fun, too...And I recall this vivid reaction—that while it didn't bother me to ride the burro to death in the daytime, I'd cry about him at night because of the awful way he was treated.

Franchot (left) and Jerry (right).
Franchot has this exact same stance
later in so many film scenes!
Source: Photoplay, May 1937.

When living in Arizona didn't appear to make any changes to Frank's health, the family returned to New York—first to Saranac Lake and then to Franchot's birthplace of Niagara Falls. Eventually, Frank regained his health fully.

Franchot swimming as a child. Source: http://lantern.mediahist.org

Franchot loved wandering off and seeking adventure. Except for writing poems, Franchot didn't care for school very much. Here is one of his childhood compositions:

It reads:

I was going to a schol my 

mother siad I cood not go for 

she siad you wood see there 

something that wood make 

you crie and crie until thie 

one eyess wood be out of 

thie one hed which ye 

see in your one vishuns 

in the night.

O human best, O giv me bak
my hart O didst yee now
yee hast my hart? O giv
me bak my hart; I will neverey be
cinde to yee inlest yee giv
me bak my hart.
-By S.P. Franchot Tone.

Upon return to Niagara Falls, Franchot went to a private school with Miss Otis. Still not much for school, Franchot would lead the rest of the kids down Buffalo Avenue to the Shredded Wheat factory where they would join the groups of tourists that were allowed to sample biscuits with fruit and cream. 

Franchot remembered that his first love was named Alice and he kissed her on the porch when tourists goaded him into it one day. He liked movies, banana splits, Charlie Chaplin, Pearl White, eating, fighting with another gang of kids, and being in charge.

Franchot. Source: Photoplay, May 1937.

When Franchot entered The Hill School (in Pottstown, Pennsylvania) in 1919, he worked on the newspaper and managed the football team. His family moved into a nicer house at 131 Buffalo Avenue and when he came home for the holidays, Franchot liked to cruise around Niagara Falls with a pretty girl by his side in the family Buick. Just as he'd fallen for Alice as a kid, teenaged Franchot now set his eyes on a local girl named Caroline. 

As a teen, Franchot contracted scarlet fever and spent eight weeks in the school infirmary before being sent to specialists in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. It was a long, slow time of recuperation and Franchot felt he was missing out on all the fun. He later reflected:

I was alone so much that I really think that period was a big turning point in my life. I started to read good books. I got a chance to rearrange my outlook on life and people and transpose or change many former ideas and ideals. Where before, I had merely accepted—I began to question everything and find new answers. Many of the ideals I formed at that time are still working for me, unchanged.

Then, in December 1923, Franchot received a letter dismissing him from The Hill School for being a "subtle influence for disorder":

I think I shall never forget that phrase: subtle influence for disorder. I didn't know that the real reason had been a senior class rebellion after I had left for the holiday and that the professors had traced the spirit of the rebellion to me. At that moment, as I read those words, it seemed as though the whole four years of my life at The Hill were passing in review on that small piece of white paper. As though it were unwinding on a motion picture screen, I could see myself waging campaigns for more self government among the students (this was the reason)...agitation for more senior class liberties...my head bowed deeply as I stood outside the church on Sunday awaiting the more devout students with whom I would argue religion vs. agnosticism for hours, later...the long summer twilights and the rendezvous with the 'Town Girls' who would wander out to the edge of town to meet the upperclassmen...those nonchalant affairs somehow became terribly important in retrospect...quick mental flashes of my contempt for rules and the secret satisfaction I got out of shooting-a-smoke in the basement of the professors' building on the very morning the treasurer of the school was showing the insurance salesman how little fire hazard there was about such a building...the happy hours I had spent at the editor's desk of the newspaper and the literary desk of the school magazine...

No, there was nothing they could pin on me definitely—I'd seen to it that I was never caught infringing any rule. But there was my notice. I was fired! There it was on cold, white paper and I had to show it to father. Just before my graduation, too. I remember walking into my father's study, handing him the paper, and walking slowly upstairs to my room. 

Franchot at 20. Source: Cornell University Yearbook.

Franchot's older brother Jerry had the idea for Franchot to take this opportunity to test and enter Cornell University early. (Jerry was already a student at Cornell.) Franchot passed all his exams. Soon, Franchot was an active member (and later president) of Cornell's dramatic club. Three students joined Franchot in renting a house that they named "The Little Gray Home in the West." Franchot said:

If that paints a quiet, sentimental picture, it's a false one. If The Little Gray House could talk, it would certainly have tales to tell of Saturday night beer busts, of dishes that were never washed, floors that were left unswept and of a big, blazing fireplace that soon became the focal point of every mentally undigested idea or notion in the clan. We had grand times, great talks and sometimes a heavy beer hang-over. The four of us did almost everything—including joining the Book & Bowl Club and acquring a model T Ford. When a fire broke out in The Little Gray Home, we spent three winter weeks with nothing but a canvas flap over the burned-away front door. And I'll never forget the night my Ford went "nuts" and chased the night watchman all over the campus—well, no one knows the truth of that little incident but the model T and myself.

Franchot at 22. Source: Cornell University Yearbook.

Several years into his Cornell education, Franchot enrolled in a French school and spent weekends with a Yvonne whom he described as a "cute little girl at Zelli's in Montmartre. There, at a small table in a far and dimly-lighted corner, we'd sit over a bottle of wine and she would speak to me in French. I learned a lot from her—about French, I mean—and I grew rather fond of her in the bargain."

You can read more about Franchot's childhood and school years in these earlier posts:

Childhood of FT

Family

~I think this definitely wins Most Adorable Post in this blog's 4.5 year history for all these childhood Franchot pics. What a cutie! I squeaked when I saw the first photo while swiping through the online Photoplay archives. I'm so glad Franchot shared these photos and stories with Walter Ramsey! ~

Sources:

Ramsey, Walter. "The Intimate Life of a Gentleman Rebel." Photoplay. May 1937.

Ramsey, Walter. "The Intimate Life of a Gentleman Rebel." Photoplay. June 1937.

Franchot and Sylvia Sidney

Sylvia Sidney was born on August 8, 1910 in New York and, like Franchot, never abandoned her first love of the theater. In fact, Franchot and Sylvia had a lot of connections throughout the years as you'll see. Sylvia successfully juggled theater, film, and television from the mid-1920's all the way up to her last role the 1998 tv reboot of Fantasy Island. (Sylvia would argue with me that it was simply a "part," not a role...she was particular about that.)

Sylvia is a member, along with Loretta Young and Natalie Wood, of my trio of favorite actresses. I could watch her work without end. I'm fortunate that Franchot worked with all three in his lifetime. I've watched a lot of Sylvia over the last several years and wrote about the Tone-Sidney 1939 play The Gentle People back in 2016 (here.) This summer I finally read Scott O'Brien's biography Sylvia Sidney: Paid by the Tear which I highly recommend. Sylvia was beautiful, driven, talented, and very outspoken. As she grew older, she became especially cantakerous, but sometimes her quips to reporters and fans were delivered with an ounce of humor and mischief. If you've ever watched 1990's interviews of her on Youtube, you know what I am talking about here. Let's just say if I had had the opportunity to meet her, she may have very well made me cry. O'Brien writes that when a fan approached Sylvia in Bloomingdale's and told he had hundreds of photos of her, Sylvia replied, "You're f'***ing crazy! Your house must be a mess!" Reading that passage made me laugh out loud, but if I were that fan, I would've been shocked. Without further ado, all of the Sylvia Sidney photos and play-related scans in this post are from my own collection. I assure you I'm not crazy and my house is mostly tidy.

Sylvia was so much more than a grouchy workaholic (look how exuberant her smile is in the candids above) and O'Brien's biography really delves into her familial and professional experiences and her dedication to her son, dogs, and career. I also think it's telling that Sylvia liked to attend celebratory film events and then criticize its attendees for living in the past. She didn't have to attend these events or be interviewed. But she did and I think it's because she secretly liked it. There were disappointments throughout her life that I believe hardened her shell a bit so that she increasingly spouted these harsh, irascible comments as a shield of protection. As a fan myself, I wish that she would've been more receptive to and outwardly appreciative of her fans' interest in her, but I must admit that I really admire how she lived her life on her own terms. I wish that I had an ounce of the audacity she possessed. 

Like Franchot, Sylvia grew up in a household without financial issues and very early on dedicated herself to being an actor. Both Franchot and Sylvia could've coasted through life, but possessed the drive to embrace their own paths and be discovered through hard work on the stage instead. They would both state how disenchanted the film world made them feel at times and continuously worked at improving their skills while delivering plays with important social messages through the Group Theatre. Both Franchot and Sylvia refused to take fame too seriously and embraced their transformation into character actors. On top of their personal and professional similarities, Franchot and Sylvia simply liked each other.

Ten years before they teamed up for their Group Theatre comebacks in The Gentle People, 24-year old Franchot and 19-year-old Sylvia acted together in Cross Roads. It ran for 28 performances at the Morosco Theatre in November and December 1929. Written by Martin Flavin, the play would be adapted into the 1932 film The Age of Consent. Eric Dressler played a first-year medical student Michael who wants to quit school to marry Pat. When Pat (Sylvia Sidney) wants to wait, Michael is caught in a clandestine evening with a waitress and his life at school and with Pat is threatened.

On November 6, Variety called it a "poignant, wistful little comedy...Excellently acted, the dialog, easy and natural, and it has all been staged superbly." By November 27, the play had grossed $8,500 (Measuringworth.com rates that around 1 million today.) 

The dialogue may have not been the only aspect that came "easy and natural" to its actors. Author O'Brien reveals that Franchot told interviewer Gladys Hall in 1933 that he had been "seriously in love" with a co-star:

We didn't marry, because I felt it would be unfair to the girl. She was very talented. She had a big career ahead of her. We broke it off and she has gone on, as I knew she should. She is a very successful star right now.

Although Franchot didn't name the costar, Hall then and O'Brien later guessed that Sylvia may be the girl. By 1933, Sylvia had become a big star in Hollywood. 1931 to 1933 saw Sylvia in such classics as An American Tragedy, City Streets, Merrily We Go to Hell, Street Scene, Madame Butterfly and Jennie Gerhardt. In 1934, movie magazines declared that Sylvia was the Hollywood beauty with the most ideal face. I believe that it is very likely that Franchot is referring to Sylvia in this interview. Although a great deal of his costars were very successful in theater, Sylvia's the only one of his early theater costars that comes to mind who had that level of stardom in Hollywood in 1933. Franchot had many, many love affairs—some not so serious and some very serious, some well-publicized and some very secretive. But I have a feeling he may be talking about Sylvia here, too. 

In 1939 after many years focused on films, Franchot returned to the stage in The Gentle People, a Group Theatre production co-starring Sylvia. On February 6, 1939, Life magazine reported:

Where The Gentle People lags, it is supported by radiant acting from Franchot Tone, Sylvia Sidney and Sam Jaffe, all returned from Hollywood to Broadway, and from the Group company who have become past masters at U.S. realism.

Variety, on January 11, 1939, reported:

Franchot Tone returned from Hollywood to play Goff, giving the part a clear reading and believable type of tough guy...Sylvia Sidney is the willful Stella, an assignment which she excellently delivers.

During the play's run that included 141 performances from January to May 1939 at the Belasco Theatre, Franchot and Sylvia were frequently seen out together socializing for fun as well as for a cause. Sylvia was married to actor and director Luther Adler at the time and would give birth to their only son Jody whom she absolutely adored by the end of the year. Still, Franchot and Sylvia were photographed together in restaurants and many wondered if a romance was afoot.

Franchot and Sylvia took the social causes that drew them to the Group Theatre to heart. They were committed to using their fame to bring awareness to injustice. Just two months before The Gentle People's opening night, German Jews were brutally attacked by paramilitary and civilians in retaliation for the assassination of a Nazi German diplomat. We know now that this horrific persecution would only get worse. To encourage the United States government to take a stand against Nazis and brutal acts such as these, Franchot and Sylvia hosted a fundraiser for Committee of 56. The 56 was named for the number of original signers of the Declaration of Independence. The Committee aimed to rally against acts of Nazism and boycott anything associated with Germany until those acts were prevented.

Franchot and Sylvia also traveled to Washington, D.C. together. They met with President Roosevelt to protest the budget cuts against the Federal Theatre Project.

Having spent a great deal of time together in 1939, Franchot and Sylvia went their separate ways but still took such similar paths. Sylvia had her son Jody with Luther Adler. In 1946, Sylvia divorced Luther and was married to Carlton Alsop from 1947 to 1951. Franchot would marry actress Jean Wallace in 1941 and have two sons. He and Jean would divorce in 1948 and he would later marry Barbara Payton and then Dolores Dorn. Franchot would balance a life in films, theater, and television as would Sylvia.

When I'm asked which two actors I'd liked to have seen in a film together, I've always immediately answered Franchot and Sylvia. I'm so disappointed that they didn't do something together in the 1930's. I think they would've been perfect in a romantic drama together. Look at Franchot's movies that include messages about the human condition and moral dilemma. I could easily picture Sylvia as Franchot's leading lady in Exclusive Story or Gentlemen are Born or Straight is the Way. Equally, I could envision Franchot as Sylvia's leading man in Street Scene, Jennie Gerhardt, and One Third of a Nation.

It seems I was almost granted my wish in the 1940's. O'Brien's book reveals that Franchot and Sylvia nearly did co-star in a film in 1946. They both signed on to co-star in the film Repeat Performance. After the film was delayed, Sylvia dropped out to film Love from a Stranger instead. Franchot would film Honeymoon, Lost Honeymoon, and Her Husband's Affairs in 1947. Repeat Performance went on to star Louis Hayward and Joan Leslie and was released in 1947. It as a film noir that includes elements of time travel and science fiction.

In 1956, Luther Adler and Sylvia reunited to co-star in the play A Very Special Baby. There was a lot of tension and bickering between the two exes and although the play was noted for Sidney and Adler's superb acting, critics found the play to be "overwrought." Playwright Robert Alan Aurthur witnessed the battles and ended up writing The Thundering Wave, an episode of Playhouse 90. The Thundering Wave was about two exes who are reunited on the stage and clashes ensue. Those two exes, based on Sylvia and Luther, were performed by Joan Bennett and....Franchot Tone.


Sources:

• "Cross Roads." Variety. November 6, 1929. pg 63.
• Doherty, Thomas. "Remembering the Hollywood Mogul who Rescued Hundreds of Germany's Jews." The Hollywood Reporter. December 29, 2015.
• "Low Tide Totals of Between Holiday Period Expected by B'way Legits." Variety. November 27, 1929. pg 59.
• O'Brien, Scott. Sylvia Sidney: Paid by the Tear. Bear Manor Media, 2016.
• Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940; New York: Knopf, 1990.

Garry McGarry

Garry McGarry. Source: eBay.

Variety called Franchot a protege of Garry McGarry. Who was Garry McGarry? He was born in Pennsylvania in 1889 and died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 38 in New York in 1927. He was an actor, director, and leader of a stock company in theater, and a prominent member of the early Vitagraph and Edison picture companies.

As a young man, McGarry was a celebrated leading man in pictures. IMDb lists the following films and film shorts from 1914 to 1921 in Garry's filmography:
The Plaything of Broadway
The False Faces
A Prince in a Pawnshop
The Car and His Majesty
The Scarlet Runner
Mr. Jack Inspects Paris
The Wrong Mr. Wright
By Love Redeemed
Saints and Sinners
Sis
On the Turn of a Card
Brown's Summer Boarders
One Performance Only
Hearts Ablaze
The Tigress
Life's Yesterdays
The Silent W
The Esterbrook Case
Cutey's Sister
The Love Whip
The Return of Maurice Donnelly
The Capitulation of the Major
Lillian's Sweetheart
The Radium Thieves
The Wrong Girl
A Daughter of Israel
A Question of Clothes
The Greater Love
The Athletic Family
The Methods of Margaret
The Peacemaker

At the time of McGarry's sudden death in 1927, Franchot was twenty-two years old and recently graduated from Cornell University. Franchot worked as a stage manager and actor for Garry's stock theater company, Garry McGarry's Players, the summer and early fall after his college graduation. In my last post, Variety had a little note about college senior Franchot being picked to test with a film studio in 1927. I wonder if that arrangement fell through or if Franchot, always a play actor first and a film actor second, chose the theater instead.

After completing his studies, Franchot returned to Buffalo, New York to work with McGarry. Franchot's cousin Pascal Franchot was a major funder of the McGarry Players and that family relation helped Franchot get his foot in the door. According to the Buffalo Historical Society, Pascal Franchot was recognized for his efforts in the first World War and his charitable endeavors at an annual meeting that took place in 1925. At that meeting, McGarry spoke publicly of his appreciation of Pascal Franchot's services. This close friendship between Pascal and Garry certainly paved the way for Franchot to get his first chance at the stage in 1927.

Franchot began to get noticed as a "promising new juvenile" immediately and quickly advanced from the McGarry's company to roles in more prominent theater groups, in plays like The Belt, Centuries, and The International at New Playwrights' Theatre, and The Age of Innocence at the Empire Theatre. It was during Franchot's run in The Belt during November 1927 that he would've learned of his mentor Garry McGarry's death.

As one of Franchot's earliest supporters, McGarry aided Franchot in his discovery of the New York stage and into an acting career that would last for his entire life. Other than cast lists, ads, and his obituary, I have been unable to uncover as much about Garry McGarry as I'd hoped. If I find more and I hope I do, I will come back and add to this post later.

Ad for "The Garden of Aloha". Source:
Variety, September 1917. Media History Digital Library.

Sources:

• Block, Maxine. Current Biography Yearbook 1940. H.W. Wilson Company, 1940.
• "Address of the President and Report of the Director Submitted at the Annual Meeting." Buffalo Historical Society. The Society, 1925.
• Film magazines accessed via the Media History Digital Library at http://mediahistoryproject.org/

Pre-Hollywood Variety Mentions

Franchot first gained notice with filmgoers in 1933, but he was creating a buzz in Variety magazine as early as 1927. I've gathered a timeline of those Variety mentions.

May 4, 1927:
First National Pictures searched college campuses for future cinema talent and spotted ten talented actors at Cornell University. "The lucky ten at Cornell included Franchot Tone, president of the Cornell Dramatic Club.

January 18, 1928:
Starring as David Fitch in "The International", which Variety noted was "anything but not original in creation and presentation. So hectic and cacaphonous is its production that the play might well be styled a true exponent of a new school of vo-do-de-o drama."

October 23, 1929:
Franchot is busy rehearsing "Cross Roads" with Sylvia Sidney and others.

November 20, 1929:
Performing as Duke in "Cross Roads", Franchot is called "capable" in this "truthful, sympathetic picture of youth wrecked by the standards of modern society."

May 7, 1930:
"Franchot Tone, Niagara Falls boy, and protege of the late Garry McGarry, has signed with the New York Theatre Guild."

My note: I'm currently working on an individual post on Garry McGarry that I'll be posting within the next two days. I feel he deserves his own post, not a mere mention in this little Variety timeline.

September 1930:
Franchot is busy rehearsing Uncle Vanya, his first of several associations with this play.

October 6, 1931:

Performing as Will Connelly in The House of Connelly. "First nighters were impressed with this carefully prepared, serious drama"

December 5, 1931:
Performing as Adam in the play "1931". "A graphic picture of unemployment among the city's laboring class, strikingly scened but a depressing play."

March 15, 1932:
Performing as Federico in "Night Over Taos". "The Group Theatre which had the aid of the Theatre Guild but claimed now to be on its own offers a third production this season. 'Night Over Taos' is as good a production as 'House of Connelly' if not more skillful and certainly more striking. The mistake called '1931' has been forgotten."

May 3, 1932:
For his work in "A Thousand Summers", Variety writes, "Franchot Tone is especially good as the boy, presenting him sincerely and with great earnestness."

June 28, 1932:
Franchot leaves "A Thousand Summers" on June 25 and is replaced by actor Johnny Griggs.

October 4, 1932:
Performing as Raymond Merritt in "Success Story". "Franchot Tone, one of the Group's most promising players, does well but is third to the Adlers [Luther and Stella]."

October 25, 1932:
"Franchot Tone goes Metro on a six months' contract, plus a similar option, booked by Mike Connolly of the Jenie Jacobs office. He leaves 'Success Story', current New York play, and goes to the Coast next week. First assignment is 'Nora' opposite Jean Harlow."

November 8, 1932:
"Franchot Tone arrived Saturday (6) from New York, to start his Metro contract."

Source:
Variety Publishing Company. Accessed via Media History Digital Library. 

The Age of Innocence (1929)

Although he appeared in several plays before it, The Age of Innocence is often reported as Franchot's New York stage debut.  The successful play ran for 207 performances between November 1928 and May 1929 at the Empire Theatre. Located at 1430 Broadway, the Empire Theatre was built in 1893 and demolished in 1953.

Setting from Age of Innocence. Source: Billy Rose Theatre Division,
     The New York Public Library. "Stage and the hall."
         The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1928.
       http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-e2d8-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Based on Edith Wharton's novel, the play was written by Margaret Ayer Barnes and produced by Gilbert Miller. Katharine Cornell, dubbed the "First Lady of Theatre", starred as Ellen Olenska. Highly respected for her dedication to the theatre and starring roles in compelling stage dramas, Cornell was also a successful writer and producer.

Katharine Cornell. Source: Billy Rose Theatre Division,
     The New York Public Library. "Katharine Cornell as Countess Ellen
Olenska in The Age of Innocence. N.Y., Empire Theatre."
         The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1928.
       http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-e335-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Indicating that many years have passed, Franchot enters at the end of the play as Newland Archer, Jr., the product of a marriage between Newland Archer and May Van Der Luyden. Although married to his mother, Jr.'s father has always been in love with Countess Olenska and made many an attempt to leave May to be with Ellen. Earlier in the play, it is May's announcement that she is pregnant (with Newland Archer Jr.) that seals the separation between Archer and Countess Olenska permanently.

At twenty-three years old when the play first began, Franchot was called a "disciple of the new emancipation" and a "member of our chucking generation" by the New York Times (the chucking comment is based on his line, "My generation chucks that." in the play). The Age of Innocence cast was praised for its acting being "eloquent even when it was hushed".

Original playbill from my collection

Original playbill from my collection

Original playbill from my collection

Sources:

http://www.ibdb.com/Production/View/10792

More or Less in the Times Square Spotlight: Miss Vale of "Let Us Be ... New York Times (1923-Current file); Mar 31, 1929; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times pg. 104

The Play by J. Brooks Atkinson. New York Times (1923-Current file); Nov 28, 1928; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times pg. 33

Franchot at Cornell

Source: 1927 Cornell University Yearbook

Franchot's senior yearbook from Cornell University sheds some light on his collegiate activities. Above is Franchot's senior photo, taken when he was approximately 22 years old. Franchot's nickname to his classmates was "Pamp". He was a member of Alpha Delta Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Kappa Beta Phi. Franchot was also active in the Sphinx Head society, Book and Bowl, Savage Club, and Dramatic Club. He served as the President of the Dramatic Club in his fourth year.