If you are home due to the pandemic and want to distract your mind with some Franchot Tone performances, I have the list for you!
Franchot on The Internet Archive (FREE)
Twelve Angry Men (tv): Link
Wagon Train: The Malachi Hobart Story (tv): Link
The Man on the Eiffel Tower (film): Link
I Love Trouble (film): Link
Jigsaw (film): Link
Lost Honeymoon (film): Link
Tales of Tomorrow: Diamond Lens (tv): Link
*I had not realized that Diamond Lens was added this year until I began working on this post and I am overjoyed! I have not seen this episode before and cannot wait to watch it today.
Franchot on Daily Motion (FREE)
Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Final Performance (tv): Link
Franchot on Hulu (with subscription; www.hulu.com)
Twilight Zone: The Silence (tv)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Impossible Dream (tv)
Franchot on Amazon Prime Video (with subscription; www.amazon.com/Prime-Video)
I Love Trouble (film)
This list certainly does not include everything on the internet, but there should be enough here to keep your mind occupied and your heart happy. Take care of yourselves!
Franchot made appearances on quite a few variety, entertainment, and game shows in the 1950's. He also did two brief spots on Playhouse 90 and Sizeman and Son to plug the next week's episode in 1955-56. IMDb lists the following shows featuring Franchot as himself:
The Milton Berle Show
Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall
Saturday Night Revue with Jack Carter
General Electric Guest House
The Name's the Same
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Cassini Show
The Colgate Comedy Hour
Igor Cassini's Million Dollar Showcase
The Arthur Murray Party
I know that there are more appearances than what IMDb includes, because Franchot hosted a 1959 A Salute to the American Theater production that is not listed there.
I wish I could write that all of these episodes had been lovingly saved and restored for us to enjoy, but that is not the case. I've been searching for years and have only been able to view one of Franchot's personal appearances so far. I think many (especially the Dumont Network shows) are probably permanently lost, but I know that some are likely included in archive collections—more on that below. There are a few that I believe may actually pop up somewhere online in the future if we're lucky...perhaps one will appear at the very end of this post! Let's work backwards from 1959!
Franchot on A Salute to the American Theatre
This production was listed as being available to rent in kinescope form in the Jewish Audio-visual Review published in 1966. Since I know copies were circulated at least 7 years after it first aired, I'm hopeful this program is out there waiting to be discovered. Here is that vintage listing in full:
A Salute to the American Theatre, an edited kinescope, based on the original one-hour program by CBS/TV, in cooperation with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1959, scrips by Elliot Baker, narrated by Franchot Tone, 45 minutes. Rental price on request. Distributed by Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
Content: Presents excerpts of outstanding dramatic and musical plays whose theme is freedom and anti-discrimination.
Evaluation: "A Salute to the American Theatre" constitutes a fine anthology of dramatic presentations of social problems. In addition to showing how the theatre has been alert to its responsibility of dealing with grave issues of the day, this kinescope provides the viewer with good entertainment. While the transitions from one play to another are abrupt, at times, and the treatment of some of the issues is not always adequate, given a good discussion leader, "A Salute to the American Theatre" can be used effectively as program material. This program is recommended for high school-adult groups of all religious denominations.
Franchot hosted this entire production and also read a speech from "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." I have a newspaper clipping photo of Franchot hosting this, but I cannot find it...as soon as I find that file I will add it to this post.
Franchot on The Arthur Murray Party
Franchot appeared on The Arthur Murray Party three times! In season 3, episode 6, Franchot and his wife Barbara Payton appeared together in a production that also featured singer Kitty Kallen, dancer William Callahan, and the Ray Carter Orchestra. This episode aired on February 10th, 1952.
Franchot returned on July 15, 1957, for season 8, episode 14. This star-studded episode also included Errol Flynn, Farley Granger, June Lockhart, and Cornelia Otis Skinner. Featured dancers were Rod Alexander and William H. Vaux.
Franchot's third and final appearance at the party was for season 9, episode 1 on September 29, 1958. Franchot and Susan Strasberg were promoting their latest play. Teresa Brewer, Ricardo Montalban, and Dan Dailey were also on hand. Featured dancers were Martel and Mignon and William H. Vaux.
The Library of Congress has thirteen of the episodes in their archives and there are a handful of clips, mostly featuring singer Johnnie Ray, from the show on Youtube. As far as I know, the Franchot episodes are not part of the surviving collection.
Franchot on Igor Cassini's Million Dollar Showcase and The Cassini Show
Franchot was a guest on the eighth episode of the first season of Igor Cassini's Million Dollar Showcase. His interview on this talk show was broadcast on December 9, 1955. The show only aired from 1955-1956 and its host was a popular gossip columnist whose column appeared in Hearst newspapers across the nation.
Just a year before this appearance, Franchot was featured on The Cassini Show which was really just the same talk show format with a more succinct name. On April 25, 1954, Franchot, John Drew Barrymore, Arthur Blake, and Geraldine Page were just several of the names that audiences at home were able to see on their tv sets.
Since these shows were part of the Dumont Network, they are most likely lost unless a collector is stowing them away somewhere. The Dumont Network library was mostly destroyed in 1958 and then the surviving archival material was dumped into the New York bay in the 1970's. The horror! So many Franchot gems discarded.
Franchot on The Colgate Comedy Hour
Franchot and costar Gloria Vanderbilt performed for hosts Jerry Lewis and Gordon MacRae on The Colgate Comedy Hour in late January 1955. Franchot and Gloria performed a scene from the play The Time of Your Life.
Colgate Comedy Hour was a variety show that aired from 1950 to 1955 and was hosted by Eddie Cantor, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and Abbott & Costello, among others. The show lost viewers as The Ed Sullivan Show gained favor. Not all episodes survived and those that exist are typically poor quality duplicates that came from the original kinescopes. Some have been released on DVD or posted online, but I've yet to see the Franchot episode.
Franchot on The Ed Sullivan Show
Franchot, Gig Young, and Betsy von Furstenberg performed scenes from the theater comedy hit Oh, Men! Oh, Women! on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. The episode aired on January 17, 1954. This one is probably in an archive, possibly the Paley.
Getty Images has photos from this episode here and here.
Franchot on The Name's the Same
I feel like this episode is possibly out there somewhere! The Name's the Same was a 1951-1955 game show in the vein of What's My Line. Contestants shared their name with a celebrity and the panelists would ask a series of yes/no questions to try to guess the name. A few years ago the episodes aired on both Game Show Network and Buzzr Network. Not all episodes are surviving and I'm not sure if Franchot's show (which aired on August 25, 1953) was saved, but I'm hoping a collector out there has it. A Youtube user even posted many of the 1953 episodes, but, sadly, not Franchot's. The Paley Center has some episodes in their archives, but I haven't located Franchot's.
On this particular episode, the host was Robert Q. Lewis and the panelists included Carl Reiner, Joan Alexander and Bill Stern.
Franchot on General Electric Guest House
Franchot popped on General Electric Guest House on July 29, 1951. Durward Kirby hosted and the guests included Melville Cooper, Ginny Simms, Ogden Nash, and Franchot. The Guest House aired over 10 episodes and served as a summer replacement for The Fred Waring Show in 1951. On each episode, four celebrities participated in a trivia game about the entertainment industry.
The Paley Center has a few of the episodes in their archives, but I haven't placed Franchot's yet.
Franchot on The Saturday Night Revue with Jack Carter
On March 4, 1950, Franchot stopped by The Saturday Night Revue to talk with host Jack Carter.
Cass Daley, Don Ameche, The Step Brothers, and Gertrude Niesen were also on hand for the entertainment.
This show aired weekly in 1950 and 1951 and was vaudeville-inspired. The Paley Center has some of these episodes but I've yet to see an entry for this particular episode.
Franchot on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall/The Chesterfield Supper Club
Franchot Tone and his best friend Burgess Meredith appeared on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall on February 5, 1950. This is also listed as The Chesterfield Supper Club in the Paley Center's archives, where it exists! Franchot and Burgess were there to promote their film The Man on the Eiffel Tower. They were dressed as gangsters as they talked with host Perry Como. Also appearing on this episode were Ethel Waters and the Fontane Sisters.
This long-running show entertained audiences from 1947 to 1967.
Franchot on The Milton Berle Show
Franchot stopped by The Milton Berle Show on January 31, 1950. Franchot appeared in a comedy skit with Milton and comedic actress Pert Kelton and, shared with the intent of educational and entertainment purposes only, here it is!
If you cannot see the embedded video, you can watch it on my Youtube channel here. Enjoy!
The 115th anniversary of Franchot's birth is coming up in just a few days, on February 27th. Happy Birthday, Mr. Tone. I hope you know how much love you receive here.
Suzy (Jean Harlow) is a chorus girl who convinces her pal Maisie (Inez Courtney) that she can easily seduce a wealthy man into a relationship and that love can naturally follow. On a foggy day in London, Suzy falls in front of a car driven by a chauffeur and with Terry Moore (not the actress, ha! Franchot's character) in the backseat. Suzy assumes the car belongs to Terry and that he is wealthy.
When he invites her to the derby, Suzy confesses to the maid that she will absolutely marry Terry. Terry pulls up in a decidedly cheaper automobile than the Rolls Royce, and Suzy realizes Terry is not the millionaire she assumed he was. Although not wealthy, Terry is hard to resist. He's an intelligent triple threat: inventor, engineer, and pilot. He's sweet to Suzy and completely falling in love with her. Suzy agrees to marry Terry, but their marriage is short-lived; showing off his work in the lab, Terry and Suzy accidentally cross the path of a German spy (Benita Hume).
Terry is shot, his shooter flees, and Suzy is accused of murder by the landlady. Devastated by the death of her new husband and threatened with a murder charge, Suzy escapes to Paris where her friend Maisie is now living and starts fresh.
As World War I begins, Suzy works as a singer in a bar, meeting wealthy pilot Andre (Cary Grant). Andre charms and marries Suzy, but he is not a faithful husband when he returns to the front. Suzy finds herself spending most of her time with Andre's father Baron Charville (Lewis Stone) and desperately missing Andre.
Next up is a necessary plot spoiler for this post, but I promise it is not a spoiler of the film's ending.
When Andre is wounded and hospitalized, Suzy visits him and there in the hospital room is...
Terry!
Terry was terribly wounded by the earlier shooting, but he survived unbeknownst to Suzy who fled the scene so abruptly. Suzy is shocked to see her husband standing in front of her. Terry, understandably, feels abandoned and betrayed by Suzy, but neither of them share their past with Andre. Terry has been inventing new fighter planes for Andre to pilot and is close to him. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman appears in Andre's life.
Suzy must decide whether she will stay with the wealthy man whom she loves but cannot trust or turn to her former husband Terry for whom she still feels deeply...unless an irrevocable event makes this decision for her.
This is my second favorite of Jean and Franchot's pairings (the first is The Girl from Missouri) and sadly it was their last chance to work together before Jean's untimely death the following year. The acting they do in Terry's apartment come across as effortless and casual; you completely believe that these two are becoming close friends and falling for one another. Jean is adorable in her borrowed pajamas from Terry's closet and her hair up and messy.
My only criticism is that Franchot drops his character's Irish accent occasionally throughout the film, but I find that pretty typical with most American movie stars taking on accents in 1930's films. Cary Grant is the playboy pilot (it's kind of a surprise that Franchot didn't end up with that role since he was so often typecast as the wealthy playboy) who is loved by both Suzy and Terry. Lewis Stone is fabulous as always as the father figure.
Suzy is available on DVD, but often out of print or only available via Warner Archive's Jean Harlow box set.
Franchot left the Group for Hollywood (click here for part one of this story), but he continued to support them. Harold Clurman wrote that Franchot's financial generosity funded much of the Group's script purchases and productions.
Franchot wrote to Harold that the Group had been ¨the most important influence¨ in his life, but that he deeply loved Joan Crawford and intended to remain with her in Hollywood. Franchot knew that the Group members judged him for his decision, yet they also came to him frequently for money, the same money he made from the Hollywood career choices on which they judged him. Clurman recalled spending afternoons with Franchot and Joan when he visited California:
Franchot was happy to play the host to his companions of old. To him we were clean spirits who brought light and warmth into his almost locked heart. Joan Crawford, a good sport, wanted to make friends with Franchot's friends. She thought at times of appearing on the stage, an ambition perhaps stimulated by Franchot. She wished to be able to follow him in all his steps, so that he might not be included to wander too far from hers.
In the afternoon we would chat, mostly about the theatre, play badminton, swim in the pool, dine, and see a picture in the projection-room, right off the pool. It was quite a pleasant routine that we followed almost every time we visited them. Once, while I lay afloat in the pool, basking lazily in the Sunday sun, Franchot observed me with friendly malice and remarked: “The life of a prostitute is pretty comfortable, isn’t it?”
Often, Franchot would take a loss on his investments with the Group. Clurman remembered:
He wanted to know about his failure to realize any money on Awake and Sing, and I tried not to be sheepish in admitting our mismanagement. He did not take the matter amiss however (in these questions he always alternated between peevishness and indulgence). Basically Franchot was an idealist, and he still idealized Lee Strasberg and me. Though in the long run there is more peril than pleasure in being idealized, I was at the moment the beneficiary of Franchot’s warmest hospitality. I was the (awkward) prophet of a religion centered in the theatre. Franchot’s wife, Joan Crawford, was prepared to believe. Some day, Franchot intimidated, he would return to the theatre, and, at the time, theatre was synonymous to him with the Group.
Franchot's return to the Group-1939's The Gentle People
The success of Golden Boy strengthened Franchot's desires to return to the stage, or as Clurman put it, Franchot ¨glowed in anticipation.¨ Once his marriage to Joan ended, Franchot found himself financing and starring in The Gentle People. Clurman no doubt was eager for Franchot's return to the theater and credited his ¨excellent¨ talent many times over the years, but he also seemed to be banking on the fact that two former Group actors-turned-movie stars (Franchot and Sylvia Sidney) would fill seats whether the play was a hit or not. Although definitely using Franchot's financial and professional reputation for the Group's gain, Clurman did seem to care and worry about Franchot the idealist:
I warned Franchot that he might encounter disappointment in the Group…I suspected that Franchot looked toward the Group with the fondness of a youthful memory. “Franchot, “I said, “promise me that you will stay with us for one year no matter what happens. Give yourself and us a chance.” Franchot looked solemn and uncertain, but he promised.
Franchot threw himself into his work with an eager will. On the whole, he was well pleased with the conduct of rehearsals; his criticisms were affable and slight. When conferences on the progress of The Gentle People were held, I failed to invite him to join them, as it was not our custom to consult members of the cast on production problems of the plays in which they took part. That Franchot was not only one of the leading players but the play’s backer gave him no special privilege in this matter. It was not my intention to snub him in any way, but Irwin Shaw pointed out that, whatever my intention , my behavior was tactless. Franchot, however, bore this with good grace.
But Franchot was restless, just as he'd been in the year leading up to his departure from the Group and arrival in Hollywood years before. He praised the Group at a speech he gave at the Town Hall Club, saying:
I’d better not get started on the Group,” he began, “because I’ll get emotional about it and then I won’t be able to talk at all...The Group has a well-defined attitude toward human problems and affairs, and while I’m perfectly sure that such a formalized policy as this is by no means necessary to success in the theatre, it is necessary to me.
Still, Franchot turned down Clurman's offer to do the play Quiet City saying that he was too tired to do more than one play at a time. When he was offered My Heart's in the Highlands, Franchot made stipulations before stating that he didn't feel he would do a good job in the role.
When Franchot wouldn't fully commit to the Group in the 1940's, Elia Kazan, Clurman, and others staged a sort of intervention with him. They asked him to commit to them and trust in them and the theater. Franchot asked if they respected him. When they answered that he was the kind of actor they needed, Franchot asked pointedly, ¨But you don't respect the reputation I have made in pictures?¨ Clurman answered, ¨This is not why we want you.¨ Franchot confirmed his fears about the Group when he asked, ¨But you are willing to exploit my name for its commercial value?¨ and Clurman answered, ¨Of course.¨
In his book, Clurman seems misunderstood about why Franchot alternated between complete worship and bitterness in his feelings about the Group, even going so far to say that Franchot ¨built up a case against us in his mind. Perhaps he needed an inner justification for giving us up.¨ I don't believe it's that hard to see why Franchot had mixed feelings about the Group and in all of my own personal research I have only read kind or nostalgic remarks about the Group from Franchot in interviews. As late as 1966 Franchot was praising Lee Strasberg to TV Guide:
Everything I know about acting I learned from Lee Strasberg. At the Group, I learned Strasberg's variant on the Stanislavsky System—that's S-y-s-t-e-m, not Method. Method actors lack discipline. System actors are disciplined. I'm a pretty good actor today only because I've always renewed myself at the feedbag—the theater.
It's clear that Franchot acted out in many ways, but it is also clear that he had some insecurities and wanted to be told he was valued for his own talent. When he wrote to Clurman baring his soul about his deep appreciation for the Group, Franchot probably hoped for a return letter with the same sentiment about himself. Instead, he received a letter requesting money to fund another show. Back in the early 30's, young Franchot had been hurt when Strasberg told him they didn't care that he was leaving for Hollywood; after all, Franchot was secretly hoping for validation (and a personal request to stay with the Group) from this father figure he idealized. It's no surprise that Franchot would be sullen and hurt again in the 1940's when he realized that the Group begging him to come back still didn't fully respect or include him despite now benefiting from his wealth and celebrity status.
Despite this complicated history with the organization, Franchot was proud of his association with the Group and always attributed his passion for acting with the skills and conditioning he gained as a Group member.
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.
"Who Has Ever Had a Better Time?" TV Guide. January 1, 1966. 12-14.
I was looking for another article on Franchot and came across this funny little piece of news from 1941:
Franchot Tone was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, when a group of children asked for his autograph. He complied, and one of the little boys gave him a tiny puppy. Franchot explained that he had no place to keep a dog. But the kid looked so hurt that Franchot took the puppy, anyhow. As the children disappeared, Franchot heard one of them remark, "Gee, now we've got only five more to get rid of." Since then, Franchot has been phoning all his friends, but he admits that, to date, he isn't as good a salesman as the kid.
Source: "In Movieland." Statesville Daily Record. March 7, 1941.
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.
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:
~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.
