Tall, dark, and handsome - Kay Francis wearing clothes

Kay Francis was a brand of very popular Hollywood actress long since extinct: the clothes horse. If she is remembered at all today, it's for being the embodiment of that outmoded category. But, actually, she was much more than that. She was a charming, versatile, and prolific actress; she made an astonishing forty-three films between 1929 and 1934, alone. Under contract at Paramount and then Warner Brothers, she was the latter studio's top female star and reportedly Hollywood's highest paid actress during the first half of the 1930s. Other distinctions: At 5' 9", she was Hollywood's tallest leading lady of the period. (I've read that in contrast to her height she had a very small shoe size - a 5 - and that she was consequently not very well balanced and prone to falling down. I can't say if that was really true - fun story, anyway - but see for yourself what small feet she had.) The other quality she was best known for was a quite noticeable speech impediment - she pronounced the letter "r" as "w" - which gave rise to the nickname "The wavishing Kay Fwancis".

She made her first films in 1929 when the look of the Twenties and not yet transitioned to that of the Thirties.

Photographed by Horst P. Horst for Vogue, 1932.

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Orry-Kelly designed most of the clothes seen in this post. This is from "Stolen Holiday", 1937.

This is his sketch for the gown in the two photographs above. It appears the working title of the film was "Mistress of Fashion."

Orry-Kelly with Francis.

By the second half of the Thirties, Francis' career had begun to slow down. And then, in 1938, her name was included in the infamous "Box Office Poison" list concocted by Harry Brandt, the president of the Independent Theatre Owners of America, and published in the Independent Film Journal. The article called out several well-known contemporary film stars whose "box office draw is nil".

Wake up! Practically all of the major studios are burdened with stars—whose public appeal is negligible—and receiving tremendous salaries necessitated by contractual obligations...Among those players whose dramatical ability is unquestioned, but whose box-office draw is nil, can be numbered Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Norma Shearer, Luise Rainer, John Barrymore, Dolores del Río, Katharine Hepburn, Edward Arnold, and Fred Astaire... Garbo, for instance, does not help theater owners in the United States ... Kay Francis, still receiving many-thousands a week, is now making B pictures ... 

Rainer abandoned Hollywood that same year, del Río went on to become a legend in her native Mexico, and Arnold continued as a successful character actor; all the others went on to become film icons. With the exception of Francis. As the article stated, her position at Warners had already greatly declined and her contract was terminated the following year. She went on to play supporting parts at other studios or leading roles in "Poverty Row" productions. She also went back to stage work. She made her last film in 1946 and retired completely two years later. She died at the age of sixty-three, two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She'd been married five times - and has often been written of as having been a lesbian or bisexual, one of "Hollywood's lavender ladies" - but at the time of her death had no living relations. She was cremated and, according to her will, there was to be no funeral service or grave marker. But she left more than a million dollars to The Seeing Eye for the training of guide dogs for the blind.

A very different image of Kay Francis. Photograph by Edward Steichen, 1931.