Franchot Tone
Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone was an American actor, producer, and director of stage, film and television. He was a leading man in the 1930s and early 1940s, and at the height of his career was known for his gentlemanly sophisticate roles, with supporting roles by the 1950s. His acting crossed many genres including pre-Code romantic leads to noir layered roles and World War I films. He appeared as a guest star in episodes of several golden age television series, including The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour while continuing to act and produce in the theater and movies throughout the 1960s.
Tone was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Midshipman Roger Byam in Mutiny on the Bounty, along with his co-stars Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, making it the only film to have three simultaneous Best Actor nominations, and leading to the creation of the Best Supporting Actor category.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Tone received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Placed February 8, 1960, it is located at 6558 Hollywood Boulevard.
Early life and education
Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone was born in Niagara Falls, New York, the youngest son of Dr. Frank Jerome Tone, the wealthy president of theCarborundum Company, and his socially prominent wife, Gertrude Van Vrancken Franchot. Tone was also a distant relative of Wolfe Tone. Tone was of French Canadian, Irish, Dutch and English ancestry. Through his ancestor, the nobleman Gilbert L'Homme de Basque, translated to Basque Homme and finally Bascom, he was of French Basque descent.
Tone was educated at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, from which he was dismissed and Niagara Falls High School. He entered Cornell University, where he was president of the drama club, acting in productions of Shakespeare. He was also elected to the Sphinx Head Society and joined the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. After graduating in 1927, he gave up the family business to pursue an acting career, moving to Greenwich Village, New York.
Career
1927–1932: Broadway
Tone was in The Belt, Centuries, The International, and a popular adaptation of The Age of Innocence with Katherine Cornell. He followed it with appearances in Uncle Vanya, Cross Roads, Red Rust, Hotel Universe, and Pagan Lady.He joined the Theatre Guild and played Curly in their production of Green Grow the Lilacs '', where Tone sang, which later became the basis for the musical Oklahoma! Robert Benchley of The New Yorker said that "Tone made lyrical love to Walker" between the Sammy Lee chorus routines of the play. The Lynn Riggs play received mixed reviews, mostly favorable, and was a popular success lasting 64 performances on Broadway. Tone joined the Group Theatre along with other former Theatre Guild members Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Clifford Odets. Clifford Odets recalled of Tone's acting, "The two most talented young actors I have known in the American theater in my time have been Franchot Tone and Marlon Brando, and I think Franchot was the more talented." Strasberg, who was a director in the Group during 1931–1941 and then teacher of "The Method" in the 1950s, had been a castmate of Tone's in Green Grow the Lilacs.
These were intense and productive years for him; among the productions of the Group he acted in were 1931 lasting 12 performances, Maxwell Anderson's Night Over Taos a play in verse that lasted 10, The House of Connelly lasting 91 performances and John Howard Lawson's Success Story directed by Lee Strasberg. Outside of Group productions, he was in A Thousand Summers.
Tone made his film debut with The Wiser Sex'' starring Claudette Colbert, filmed by Paramount at their Astoria Studios.
1933–1939: The MGM years
Tone was the first of the Group to go to Hollywood when MGM offered him a film contract. In his memoir on the Group Theater, The Fervent Years, Harold Clurman recalls Tone being the most confrontational and egocentric of the group, a "strikingly individualistic personality." Burgess Meredith credits Tone with informing him of the existence of "the Method" and what was soon to be the Actors Studio under Strasberg's teachings. Tone himself considered cinema far more invasive to private life and paced differently from theater productions. He recalled his stage years with fondness, financially supporting the Group Theater in its declining years.MGM immediately gave Tone a series of impressive roles, casting him in six pre-Code film standards, starting in 1933 with a support role in the romantic WWI drama Today We Live, written by William Faulkner in collaboration with director Howard Hawks. The script was first conceived as a WWI buddy film, but the studio executives wanted a vehicle for their popular leading lady Joan Crawford, forcing Faulkner and Hawks to work in the romance between co-stars Gary Cooper and Crawford. Tone was then the romantic male lead in Gabriel Over the White House starring Walter Huston, followed by a lead role with Loretta Young in Midnight Mary.
Tone romanced Miriam Hopkins in King Vidor's The Stranger's Return and was the male lead in Stage Mother. He also had a role in Bombshell, with Jean Harlow and Lee Tracy. The last of the sequence of films was Dancing Lady, with an on-screen love triangle with his future wife Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, which was a "lavishly staged spectacle" with a solid performance by Tone.
Twentieth Century Pictures borrowed Tone to romance Constance Bennett in Moulin Rouge as she played dual roles in which "she shines as a comedienne" and his performance was called "equally clever in a role that calls for a serious mein" by The New York Times. Back at MGM, he was again co-starring with Crawford in Sadie McKee, then was borrowed by Fox to co-star "commendably" with Madeleine Carroll in John Ford's French Foreign Legion picture, The World Moves On.
After The Girl from Missouri with Harlow, MGM finally gave Tone top billing in Straight Is the Way, although it was considered a "B" film, one which didn't have a high publicity or production cost. Warner Bros. then borrowed him for Gentlemen Are Born.
At Paramount, Tone co-starred in the Academy Award nominated hit movie, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer with Gary Cooper. He was top billed in One New York Night but billed underneath Harlow and William Powell in Reckless. He supported Crawford and Robert Montgomery in No More Ladies and had another box-office success with Mutiny on the Bounty, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with co-stars Clark Gable and Charles Laughton.
Warner Bros. borrowed him again, this time to play Bette Davis' leading man in Dangerous. After a lead role in Exclusive Story, he was again paired with friend Loretta Young in The Unguarded Hour, and also starred with Grace Moore in Columbia's The King Steps Out, notable for the debut of an eleven-year-old Gwen Verdon.
Tone and Harlow co-starred again in Suzy with then up and comer Cary Grant, who was billed third. The film was popular with audiences, but reviews were less than kind with The New York Times negatively comparing it to other recent WWI movies calling it "balderdash", but thanked "Mr. Tone for the few honest moments of drama that the film possesses. His young Irishman is about the only convincing and natural character in the piece." He then filmed The Gorgeous Hussy with Crawford, Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore with co-star Beulah Bondi earning an Academy Award nomination for the Andrew Jackson period piece. A Crawford and Gable film capitalizing on It Happened One Night by casting the pair in roles as fast talking journalists in Love on the Run, found Tone in a supporting role.
RKO borrowed him to appear opposite Katharine Hepburn in Quality Street, a costume drama that lost $248,000 at the box office. Back at MGM he supported Spencer Tracy and Gladys George in They Gave Him a Gun.
He had the lead in Between Two Women and co-starred for the final time with Crawford in The Bride Wore Red, then joined Myrna Loy in Man-Proof and Gladys George in Love Is a Headache.
In Three Comrades Tone was teamed with Robert Taylor and Margaret Sullavan in a film about disillusioned soldiers returning to Germany after World War I. He made Three Loves Has Nancy with Janet Gaynor and Robert Montgomery and co-starred with Franciska Gaal in The Girl Downstairs, a Cinderella type story. He then starred in a "B" picture with Ann Sothern in Fast and Furious as married crime sleuths, the third movie in a series with different sets of actors in each, that were marketed towards the Thin Man films audiences.
After his contract ended, Tone left MGM in 1939 to act on Broadway in a return to his stage roots, often working with "the Group's" members of its formative years, and playwrights such as Eugene O'Neill. He returned to Broadway for Irwin Shaw's The Gentle People and an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Fifth Column, which only had a short run.
1940–1949: The Universal, Columbia & Paramount combination
Tone signed a contract with Universal, starring in his first Western there, Trail of the Vigilantes, where he more than earns his spurs alongside the likes of Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine. He was soon back supporting female stars though, making Nice Girl? with Deanna Durbin.Tone also signed a multi-picture deal with Columbia, where he made two films with Joan Bennett, She Knew All the Answers and The Wife Takes a Flyer.
Back at Universal he was top billed in This Woman Is Mine. Tone went to Paramount to star in Five Graves to Cairo, a World War II espionage story directed by Billy Wilder.
He also returned to MGM to star in Pilot No. 5 then it was back to Universal for His Butler's Sister with Durbin.
Tone made two more films at Paramount, True to Life with Mary Martin and The Hour Before the Dawn with Veronica Lake. He had one of his best roles in Universal's Phantom Lady directed by Robert Siodmak, an early film noir picture and a villainous part for Tone. Also impressive was his performance in Dark Waters with Merle Oberon for Benedict Bogeaus.
He continued his stage career by performing on Broadway in Hope for the Best with Jane Wyatt; the production ran for a little more than three months.
At Universal Tone did That Night with You with Susanna Foster and Because of Him with Durbin.
Tone made Lost Honeymoon at Eagle-Lion Studios and Honeymoon with Shirley Temple. While at Columbia he had roles in Her Husband's Affairs with Lucille Ball, and I Love Trouble, then Every Girl Should Be Married reteamed with Grant at RKO. He had the lead as an assistant D.A. looking for the murderer of a journalist while being distracted by a beauty played by then wife Jean Wallace in the film noir thriller, Jigsaw. He then had a supporting part as a murder victim in Without Honor, a noir film co-starring Laraine Day.