Jean Dalrymple on Franchot and The Country Girl

In the fall of 1966, Jean Dalrymple had secured Franchot and Jennifer Jones as the leads in an upcoming production of The Country Girl. In addition to The Country Girl, Jean had also planned The Rose Tattoo (starring Maureen Stapleton) and Elizabeth the Queen for the fall season for City Center. Jean recalled:

To have it all go as planned was too much to expect. Just the week before rehearsals for The Country Girl were to start, Franchot went into the hospital for a routine checkup. A day later his doctor called me with tragic news. Franchot would be in the hospital for several weeks. A tumor had been discovered in one of his lungs.

My first impulse was to cancel the play, but Jennifer Jones had already come on from California and Lee Strasberg, although as shaken by the terrible news as I was, said he would personally find a replacement. Then Franchot himself called me from the hospital and said in a voice choked with emotion and tinged with his usual irony, "The show must go on, you know."

Although Franchot sadly missed out on The Country Girl (wouldn't he have been absolutely fantastic in that role?), he would soldier through the treatments and pain, never giving up on his professional projects. Between 1966 and his death in 1968, Franchot continued to appear in television and also did a play and a movie.

Source:
Dalrymple, Jean. From the Last Row. New York: JT White, 1975.

Arthur Penn on Franchot Tone

Franchot in Mickey One, 1965.

Discussing his directorial experiences, Arthur Penn talked about working with Franchot in 1965.

Franchot Tone is an absolutely fascinating actor. Before he went to Hollywood, Tone was the leader of young actors in the Group Theater with Strasberg, much earlier than John Garfield. He was remarkably well trained. I didn't know him before I made Mickey One, and he was very ill during filming. I directed him the same way I would have done with Newman, Brando or Jimmy Dean. It was quite remarkable that the language I used with actors from the old generation was also suitable for the next one.  I was very impressed by the skill he showed even while suffering from cancer. Every time we finished shooting, he would collapse into a chair, out of breath as if he just won a race. For me watching this man at work was unforgettable.

I wrote about Mickey One in 2015. You can read that post here.
Source:
Penn, Arthur. Arthur Penn: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2008. p71-72.