FilmIndia (Dec 1937 - Apr 1938)

Kay Francis Violates Hollywood's Rules and Gets Away with it Kay Francis is a rugged individualist. Maybe not so rugged, but certainly an individualist. She doesn't give a hang what anybody thinks about anything and there's your thumbnail sketch of one of the few interesting glamour girls. But the lovely Kay is too manysided to be dismissed with a generalization. The best-dressed girl on the screen, she goes about between pictures in almost slovenly slacks. She gives a director a tongue-lashing and then jumps into her car and rides 40 miles to call on a minor employee she has heard was in need. She dislikes people who are over-confident, yet she, herself, is definitely self-assured. She is the very rare combination of fast thihker and slow talker. Usually it's the other way 'round'. Her mind is always active. She is never mentally relaxed, although physically she appears to be entirely so. She sits quietly knitting between scenes and then says something that obviously has required complicated though processes. One day she was sewing while the director was making scenes with other members of the cast. Apparently, she was absorbed in her work and completely relaxed. When the scenes were over, she called the director. Then logically and in detail, she analyzed the entire story of the film, explaining where certain characters were inconsistent and certain scenes, wrong. Her analysis was so coldly accurate that the Director had to agree. Part of the script was rewritten forthwith. The rule of Hollywood abides little violation. Kay is an exception. To understand her, one must, of course, understand the rule. Hol By : Arthur Zellner. lywood does things to people. It changes their outlook, their habits of life, their social consciousness and their modes of thought. The picture colony itself is small enough for everybody in it to know, more or less, what his neighbour is doing. The same openings, the same cafes, the same general round attract them. They attend KAY FRANCIS A Warner Star each other's parties and adopt each other's fads. Business and social preferment are for those who "run with the pack". Going Hollywood has come to mean making one's self over to conform to what Hollywood expects of its habitues. There have been independent spirits who have appeared to resist the making-over process. Some resisted for a while and then gradually surrendered to expediency. Others refused to compromise and eventually disappeared from contention. Many of the latter returned to the East disappointed perhaps to write bitter memoirs of their life in pictures. Kay Francis, probably, is the only person to reach success in Hollywood and hold it without surrendering a whit of her independence. She goes with people she likes, and ignores those she dislikes. She attends parties of her own choosing. She repays her own social obligations with one big party a year, usually so novel and interesting that it is an event. The same friends she made when she first came to Hollywood are her friends now. She adds to the list slowly, because she has practically no casual friends— only close ones. She plays no politics. Makes no gestures to win approval. While working on a picture, she goes out only on Saturday nights. That occasions arise when it might be good business to make exceptions to this never change it. She reverses the general rule of being sweet to the important ones and harsh with the unimportant. She is much less considerate of her director than of her wardrobe woman, who idolizes her. When she finished "First Lady", which is her most recent production for Warner Bros, everybody from the prop man to the assistant director chipped in for an expensive gift. She gave a party for the crew and kissed the frightened underling who made the presentation. That's the kind of a girl Kay Francis is. 26