Kay Francis: "I Can't Wait to Be Forgotten" biography by Scott O'Brien

"I can't wait to be forgotten." -Kay Francis

Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins in "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Kay Francis in "Mandalay" (1934) directed by Michael Curtiz

Kay Francis, 1936

Carole Lombard, Cary Grant and Kay Francis in the film "In Name Only" (1939) directed by John Cromwell

For director John Cromwell, Kay was the sentimental choice to play Maida Walker. He had guided Kay to important stardom at Paramount. Carole Lombard had insisted on RKO hiring Kay for the part of the vicious Maida, after jokingly suggesting that Rhea Gable (Clark Gable’s former wife) audition for the role.

Carole and Kay had remained friends since their Paramount days and were particularly tight when Kay was living with Delmer Daves.

Daves later reminisced about their fun times with Gable and Lombard: We were all chums. Kay was a free spirit like Carole, and Clark loved women who could make him laugh. Carole would invite Kay and me up to dinner. We’d tell naughty stories and get a little drunk—not really drunk, just high. Then Carole would say ‘Is everybody hungry?’ We’d never move from our chairs! The butler would come out and put a table with folding legs right beside you and serve the soup, then the next course and we’d go on talking and never move. We’d arrive, have drinks, eat, the tables were removed, and then we’d have our brandy and tell funny stories we’d heard on our travels.

Kay Francis’ Maida Walker was one of her most riveting performances and worthy of a best supporting actress nomination. Reaping in accolades must have seemed sweet revenge on Warner Brothers for Kay. The cold and hard-edged temperament she displayed as Maida would have been perfect foil for film noir. However, another distinguished screen role that would take advantage of her unique skills as an actress would not be forthcoming. Kay would add thirteen more features to her credit, and not one of them carried any great impact or significance. It was Hollywood’s loss.

Carole Landis, Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair and Kay Francis in 1944

In October 1941, it was announced that Kay would join Ann Sheridan and Olivia de Havilland in the Warners picture Miss Willis Goes to War. Robert Buckner (soon to be Oscar-nominated for Yankee Doodle Dandy) had penned the script. The project never materialized.

In early 1942, Kay was denying a romantic-linking with actor John Payne. He was seven years her junior. Kay’s first public date with actor Payne was at the California State Guard Military Ball. Kay, along with Constance Bennett and Betty Grable, wore Bundles for Bluejacket uniforms. Kay referred to the affair in her diary as simply, “Horror Ball!” It was the only mention of Payne in her diary.

While Kay was contemplating her future with Erik and making major life decisions, her next screen assignment, Dr. Socrates, underwent a major sex-change. The story, from Collier’s magazine, had been filmed in 1935 starring Paul Muni. As good-guy Dr. Lee Cardwell, nicknamed Dr. Socrates, Muni foiled some notorious gangsters by injecting morphine into their veins. Muni had said the plot was nuttier than a walnut ranch. The story was retreaded at the Foy unit in 1938, re-titled Lady Doctor, and placed Kay in Muni’s shoes.

Typecast, Humphrey Bogart filled in as the notorious gangster. Kay joined Orry-Kelly to create a variety of tailored suits befitting her call. Filming was touch and go. Vincent Sherman was brought in to create a screenplay on Lady Doctor that could be shot in the twenty days allotted. Sherman got along fine with Kay and thought her a nice lady. He also states in his autobiography, Studio Affairs, that he admired her fortitude during her battle with Jack Warner. Bogart biographers Sperber and Lax pointed out that Kay and Bogart assisted Sherman with the script, “tooling away at the unfinished scenario and trying to make sense of a story about a killer with a Napoleonic complex (Bogart, of course) and a physician (Francis) who subdues him with toxic eye drops. Director Lewis Seiler, a house director with a predilection for glacial pacing, never bothered to consult the script the night before and arrived on the set each morning not quite knowing what to do.

Bogart, whose drawing ticket with the studio was still nebulous at this point, was given star billing for the first time—more out of spite for Kay than anything else. Shortly before the picture’s release in January 1939, the embarrassed Bogart was billed above a new title, King of the Underworld, and Kay, was demoted below the title in much smaller print as a featured player. “It was conceivably the first time that the supporting player drew nine times the salary of the ostensible star. Even the usually cynical industry was stunned, as was the press.”

Bogart’s top-billing was truly a non-achievement and a slap-in-the-face to Kay. Bogart had the added discomfort of having to live up to the impossible task that the ads for the run-of-the-mill feature promised: “Humphrey Bogart blasts his way to stardom!” One must remember that during the filming of King of the Underworld Humphrey Bogart was not the icon we know him today. Far from it. Sperber and Lax felt that by 1939, “the coming decade held little promise for Bogart. He was going nowhere. Duke Mantee was passé.”

Bogart’s character in King of the Underworld was a carbon-copy of the Mantee character Bogart had first portrayed for the Broadway stage in 1935. Director Vincent Sherman commented, “The word was, if it’s a louse-heel, give it to Bogart.” Bogart was used by a studio that repeatedly put him in roles where he was toting a gun.

In spite of fattening Bogart’s part as gangster (Gurney), the film’s focus still remains on the story of physician Carole Nelson (Kay). She attempts to redeem her career after her husband’s association with Gurney results in his being killed in a police raid. Kay leaves town to hunt down Bogart and gain evidence to prove her innocence. Arriving in Wayne Center (supposed hideout of Bogart and gang), Kay’s reputation had preceded her. The selfrighteous, crotchety local doctor gives Kay flack for being there. “This is a small town ya’ know!” he wails. Kay sizes him up and replies, “With small people in it!” It isn’t long before Bogart shows up at Dr. Kay’s doorstep wounded from a shootout. When he brags about not feeling pain, Kay caters to his unbridled ego. “Some people aren’t sensitive to pain,” she tells him, “especially the moronic type.”

Bogart takes it as a compliment. “Wait’ll I tell the boys!” he crows. “I’m the moronic type!” Humor is really the saving grace of the film, intentional or not, especially when Kay shoves a thermometer in Bogart’s mouth, in front of his gang, and tells him, “Keep your mouth shut!” Bogart, who sees himself as the “Napoleon of Crime,” Humphrey Bogart and Kay, whose ex-spouses had recently married each other, struggled through the filming of Lady Doctor. Kay finds her opportunity to roundup Bogart’s gang when his wound’s infection spreads to his eyes. She claims the highly contagious germ could blind Bogart and his gang. Bogart is miffed. “I gotta get mixed up with some cockeyed germ!” he bellows. Kay puts drops of the liquid “cure” (which creates temporary blindness) into the eyes of Bogart and his boys. Soon the police are surrounding the house and Bogart, as usual, ends up dying on the staircase pleading. “Do me a favor will ya?” he gasps with his last breath, “Don’t tell ‘em that a dame tripped me up!”

The picture was re-christened King of the Underworld (1939). Bogart felt like a heel taking top-billing from Kay. King of the Underworld was a formula gangster picture with some amusing incidental horseplay by gang members. Such shenanigans probably weren’t too far off the mark. Producer Bryan Foy’s connection with bookies and con men proved resourceful when filming crime pictures. To add some convolution to the storyline, Bogart kidnaps a British author, played by James Stephenson, to co-write his autobiography. Stephenson also adds romantic interest for Kay, which is finally consummated at the film’s finish by the sudden appearance of their seven-year-old child! Bosley R. Crowther, of The New York Times, took the studio to task in his January 7, 1939 review for the film: It never occurred to us that one day we might be the organizer of a Kay Francis Defense Fund. But after sitting through King of the Underworld… in which Humphrey Bogart is starred while Miss Francis, once the glamour queen of the studio, gets a poor second billing, we wish to announce publicly that contributions are now in order… we simply want to go gallantly on record against what seems to us an act of corporate impoliteness.

Among the rich and famous who saw how the studio seized every opportunity to kick her while she was down was Noel Coward. After witnessing the film and her undeserved demotion, Coward pointedly asked Bogart, “Have you and Jack Warner no shame?” Bogart retorted, “None.” Funny, but not very true. Bogart had misgivings about the picture and the way Francis was being treated. While filming a trailer for the picture, Bogart, as gangster Gurney, told of fighting his way to the top in the world of crime. At the finish, he capped his speech saying, “Now I’m King of the Underworld, and nobody is better than I am!” Without missing a beat, Bogart pointed a threatening finger at the camera and sneered, “And that goes for you, too, Jack Warner!”

Sperber and Lax, commented on the Francis-Bogart team, saying, "On the set, they were professionals making the best of a bad situation, with Bogart determined to see his costar through the process as quickly and painlessly as possible. They got along well. They also had ex-spouses married to one another." Another bond between Kay and Bogie was their friendship with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield. They often visited Bromfield’s 715-acre home, called Malabar Farm, near Mansfield, Ohio. Kay was a familiar sight at the environmental friendly utopia, carrying pails of milk while wearing her mink coat. During the 1940s Bromfield’s Malabar would play a significant role in both Bogart’s and Francis’ lives.

Malabar was the location for the much publicized marriage of Bogart and Bacall. In 1948, Kay would retreat to Malabar after an unfortunate and scandalous accident.

I cannot help but admire Kay Francis as an intelligent, resilient, compassionate, free spirit who loved to laugh and who took her work seriously. I can also see that whatever “weapon” was used against her by Warner Brothers would not have been possible without the puritanical overlay that still burdens the American culture. Instead of blaming Jack Warner for Kay’s “struggle,” maybe we should take a look at ourselves. James Robert Parish noted that “the obituaries for Kay all eulogized her… for her representation of the American woman as a poised, intelligent, and admirable person. However, all marveled at the flood of bitterness that cascaded from the pages of her will, the dammed-up emotion of three decades of hurt.”

Ultimately, whatever Kay suffered from her mistreatment in Hollywood was simply grist for the mill—and she was smart enough to realize that. But, Kay was human — the greater truth was expressed by Kay herself to British critic W. H. Mooring, when she told him that Warner Brothers “almost broke her heart.” Inevitably, Kay’s Zen-like commentary from her 1933 film Keyhole not only summed up the film, but life as we know it: “Funny thing. We worry and struggle and try to work out our little problems, and then, all of a sudden it’s over.” (She snaps her fingers.) “Just like that! It just doesn’t seem possible.” -"Kay Francis: I Can't Wait to Be Forgotten" (2006) by Scott O'Brien

Notes: Thanks to Laura Wagner, who helped me to receive this fantastic biography of Kay Francis written by Scott O'Brien (published by Bearmanor Media in 2006, 2nd edition in 2007 with a foreword by Robert Osborne). Laura is one of my favorite book reviewers and columnist in Classic Images (www.classicimages.com), I visit her column regularly and I try not to miss any of her Facebook posts, which are thoroughly informative about the stars from the Golden Age, especially I find admirable her work of rescuing the most obscure actors from the silver screen, giving them equal position than the most celebrated ones. Laura is an exhaustive film historian, a superior connoisseur of the early Hollywood and a source of inspiration. I cannot recommend her books enough, vindicating a string of actresses who deserve more of our devotion: "Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames" by Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner (2004), "Bride of Golden Images" by Eve Golden and Laura Wagner (2009), "Anne Francis: The Life and Career" by Laura Wagner (2011), and her fabulous deconstruction of biographical tomes - "Let Me Tell You How I Really Feel: The Uncensored Book Reviews of Classic Images' Laura Wagner, 2001-2010" by Laura Wagner and Bob King - this puzzlingly exacting analysis fixes some glaring errors buried amidst pages of praised yet misleading biographies, and it elevates Miss Wagner as one of the few lucid voices in discerning the good authors from the gossip mongers.

Actresses with Pale Gold Hair & The Imaginary Blonde (fragments by Ross MacDonald)

Jayne Mansfield
Mamie Van Doren
Rita Hayworth
Lana Turner
Alice Faye
Jean Harlow
Joan Caulfield
Evelyn Keyes
Lucille Ball
Veronica Lake
Ann Sothern
Betty Grable
Claire Trevor
Mary Beth Hughes
Carole Landis
Audrey Totter
Marilyn Monroe
Marie Wilson

THE IMAGINARY BLONDE ©1953 by Ross MacDonald

I backed away from her righteous indignation: female indignation is always righteous, and went out to my car. The early spring sun was dazzling. Beyond the freeway and the drifted sugary dunes, the bay was Prussian blue. The road cut inland across the base of the peninsula and returned to the sea a few miles north of the town. Here a wide blacktop parking space shelved off to the left of the highway, overlooking the white beach and whiter breakers. Signs at each end of the turnout stated that this was a County Park, No Beach Fires. It was a long black Cadillac nosed into the cable fence at the edge of the beach. I braked and turned off the highway and got out. There was no registration on the steeringpost, and nothing in the glove-compartment but a half-empty box of shells for a .38 automatic. The ignition was still turned on. I untied the slip, which didn't look as if it would take fingerprints, and went over it for a label. It had one: Gretchen, Palm Springs. It occurred to me that it was Saturday morning and that I'd gone all winter without a weekend in the desert. I retied the slip the way I'd found it, and drove back to the Siesta Motel.

Ella's welcome was a few degrees colder than absolute zero. "Well!" She glared down her pretty rabbit nose at me. "I thought we were rid of you." "So did I. But, I just couldn't tear myself away." She gave me a peculiar look, neither hard nor soft, but mixed. Her hand went to her hair, then reached for a registration card. "I suppose if you want to rent a room, I can't stop you. Only please don't imagine you're making an impression on me. You're not. You leave me cold, mister.' "Archer," I said. "Lew Archer. Don't bother with the card. I came back to use your phone."

I made a snap decision, the kind you live to regret. "All right. I'll take a fifty-dollar advance. Which is a good deal less than five hundred. My first advice to you is to tell the police everything you know. Provided that you're innocent." Palm Springs is still a one-horse town, but the horse is a Palomino with silver trappings. Most of the girls were Palomino, too. The main street was a cross-section of Hollywood and Vine transported across the desert by some unnatural force and disguised in western costumes which fooled nobody. Not even me. I found Gretchen's lingerie shop in an expensive-looking arcade built around an imitation flagstone patio. In the patio's centre a little fountain gurgled pleasantly, flinging small lariats of spray against the heat. It was late in March, and the season was ending. Most of the shops, including the one I entered, were deserted except for the hired help. It was a small cool shop, faintly perfumed by a legion of vanished dolls. Stockings and robes and other garments were coiled on the glass counters or hung like brilliant treesnakes on display stands along the narrow walls.

"I met a girl," I said. "Actually she was a mature woman, a statuesque blonde to be exact. I picked her up on the beach at Laguna, if you want me to be brutally frank." "I couldn't bear it if you weren't. Married woman, eh? What do you think I am, a lonely hearts club?" Still, she was interested, though she probably didn't believe me. "She mentioned me, is that it? What was her first name?" "Fern." "Unusual name. You say she was a big blonde?" "Magnificently proportioned," I said. "If I had a classical education I'd call her Junoesque."

"Fern Dee. She wasn't a bad little nightingale but she was no pro, Joe, you know? She had it but she couldn't project it. When she warbled the evening died, no matter how hard she tried, I don't wanna be snide." "Where did she lam, Sam, or don't you give a damn?" He smiled like a corpse in a deft mortician's hands. "I heard the boss retired her to private life. Took her home to live with him. That is what I heard. But I don't mix with the big boy socially, so I couldn't say for sure that she's impure. Is it anything to you?" "Something, but she's over twenty-one."

The iron finger, probing my back, directed me down a lightless corridor to a small square office containing a metal desk, a safe, a filing cabinet. It was windowless, lit by fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. Under their pitiless glare, the face above the gun looked more than ever like the dead man's face. I wondered if I had been mistaken about his deadness, or if the desert heat had addled my brain. My mind was still partly absent, wandering underground in the echoing caves. I couldn't recall the voices, or who they were talking about. I had barely sense enough to keep my eyes closed and go on listening. I was lying on my back on a hard surface. The voices were above me.

A sickness assailed me, worse than the sickness induced by Gino's fists. Angel breathed into my face: "Fern Dee is a stage name. Her real name I never learned. She told me one time that if her family knew where she was they would die of shame." He chuckled dryly. "She will not want them to know that she killed a man." I drew away from his charnel-house breath. The building stood on a rise in the open desert. The last rays of the sun washed its walls in purple light and cast long shadows across its barren acreage. It was surrounded by a ten-foot hurricane fence topped with three strands of barbed wire. Palm Springs was a clutter of white stones in the distance, diamonded by an occasional light. The dull red sun was balanced like a glowing cigar-butt on the rim of the hills above the town. A man with a bulky shoulder harness under his brown suede windbreaker drove me towards it. The sun fell out of sight, and darkness gathered like an impalpable ash on the desert, like a column of blue-grey smoke towering into the sky. The sky was blue-black and swarming with stars when I got back to Emerald Bay. A black Cadillac followed me out of Palm Springs. I lost it in the winding streets of Pasadena. So far as I could see, I had lost it for good. The neon Mexican lay peaceful under the stars. The office door was open behind a screen, throwing a barred rectangle of light on the gravel. I stepped into it, and froze. Behind the registration desk in the office, a woman was avidly reading a magazine. Her shoulders and bosom were massive. Her hair was blonde, piled on her head in coroneted braids. She looked me over coldly. "What happened to your face, anyway?" "I had a little plastic surgery done. By an amateur surgeon." She clucked disapprovingly. "If you're looking for a room, we're full up for the night. I don't believe I'd rent you a room even if we weren't." Under her mounds of flesh she had a personality as thin and hard and abrasive as a rasp.

Yellow traffic lights cast wan reflections on the asphalt. Streams of cars went by to the north, to the south. To the west, where the sea lay, a great black emptiness opened under the stars. Ella made a decision. I could tell a mile away what she was going to do. She dropped the gun on the blanket. Her mouth had grown softer. She looked remarkably young and virginal. The faint blue hollows under her eyes were dewy. She was wrong. Something crashed in the kitchen. A cool draft swept the living room. A gun spoke twice, out of sight. Donny fell backwards through the doorway, a piece of brownish paper clutched in his hand. Blood gleamed on his shoulder like a red badge. I stepped behind the cot and pulled the girl down to the floor with me. Ella Salanda ran across the room. She knelt, and cradled Donny's head in her lap. Incredibly, he spoke, in a loud sighing voice: "You won't go away again, Ella? I did what you told me. You promised." "Sure I promised. I won't leave you, Donny. Crazy man. Crazy fool." "You like me better than you used to? Now?" "I like you, Donny. You're the most man there is."

She held the poor insignificant head in her hands. He sighed, and his life came out bright-colored at the mouth. It was Donny who went away. His hand relaxed, and I read the lipstick note she had written him on a piece of porous tissue: "Donny: This man will kill me unless you kill him first. His gun will be in his clothes on the chair beside the bed. Come in and get it at midnight and shoot to kill. Good luck. I'll stay and be your girl if you do this, just like you always wished. Love. Ella." She was rocking his lifeless head against her breast. Donny had his wish and I had mine. I wondered what Ella's was.

* * * *

Philip Marlowe describing Eileen Wade: "She was slim and quite tall in a white linen tailormade with a black and white polka-dotted scarf around her throat. Her hair was the pale gold of a fairy princess. There was a small hat on it into which the pale gold hair nestled like a bird in its nest. Her eyes were cornflower blue, a rare color, and the lashes were long and almost too pale. She reached the table across the way and was pulling off a white gauntleted glove and the old waiter had the table pulled out in a way no waiter ever will pull a table out for me. She sat down and slipped the gloves under the strap of her bag and thanked him with a smile so gentle, so exquisitely pure, that he was damn near paralyzed by it. She lifted her glance half an inch and I wasn't there any more. But wherever I was I was holding my breath." -"The Long Goodbye" (1953) by Raymond Chandler

Jake Gyllenhaal "End of Watch" Interview

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a police officer in the upcoming thriller End of Watch. We recently sat down with Jake at the Toronto International Film Festival, and he opened up about what drew him to the project and his friendship with his onscreen partner, Michael Peña. Jake also revealed why he gets nervous after finishing a film and even weighed in on his directorial aspirations. End of Watch hits theaters Sept. 21. Source: www.popsugar.com

John Payne ("Strauss" classical music) video

John Payne in Kid Nightingale" (1939) directed by George Amy


John Payne video featuring photos of John Payne and stills from his films with co-stars Maureen O'Hara, Mary Murphy, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Lindsay, Betty Grable, Joan Caulfield, Sonja Henie, Arlene Dahl, Alice Faye, Gloria Dickson, Rhonda Fleming, Lynn Bari, June Haver, Gail Russell, Coleen Gray, Ellen Drew, Jan Sterling, Jane Wyman, Gene Tierney, Carmen Miranda, Susan Hayward, Mari Blanchard, Linda Darnell, Donna Reed, Natalie Wood, Evelyn Keyes, Shelley Winters, Faith Domergue, Donna Reed, Mona Freeman, Dona Drake, Jane Wyman, Cobina Wright, Florence George, Doe Avedon, Mary Healy, etc., and his wives Anne Shirley, Gloria DeHaven and Alexandra Crowell Curtis. Soundtrack: "Deutsche motette" op.62 by Laurence Equilbey from the Album "Strauss, A Cappella".

"Foxy Lady: The Authorized Biography of Lynn Bari" by Jeff Gordon

Lynn Bari (1919–1989)

Practically every Fox stockgirl went before the cameras of Pigskin Parade (1936). Stock players at Twentieth Century Fox were not nurtured to become movie stars. And, indeed, none would attain stardom — with the exception of Lynn Bari. Zanuck would only be indirectly responsible for Bari’s progression, but it would be his remarkable steerage of his studio that would afford her the opportunity to succeed.

She was prominent in Roy Del Ruth’s On the Avenue, where she backed up Alice Faye in several Irving Berlin music sequences, spoke a line as a guest at a party, and had her portrait framed on Dick Powell’s dressing table.

Lynn Bari: Claire Trevor was the star [in "Walking Down Broadway"], a wonderful actress and a helluva nice girl. I was a bridesmaid at her first wedding. Claire Trevor had been Fox’s premiere ‘B’-picture actress for the past five years. By the time Walking Down Broadway was released, Trevor and the studio had parted ways. This break would prove most fortuitous for Lynn, for she’d instantaneously inherit her friend’s position at the Western Avenue lot. Lynn Bari had been a bit player in almost all of Claire Trevor’s Fox vehicles. While working in that minor capacity, she had come to be befriended by the star.

Claire Trevor, Phyllis Brooks and Lynn Bari in "Walking Down Broadway" (1938) directed by Norman Foster

Claire Trevor: “I couldn’t tell you when I first noticed Lynn; it was a gradual thing. She was a darling and we became good friends. As I’ve said, there wasn’t much time for a social life; so, there was never a chance to develop a big friendship. I liked Lynn enormously, though — well enough to have her as my bridesmaid. She wasn’t a pushy, self-centered actress like a lot of them were; that’s one of the things that I liked about her. I thought she had great potential. She was a serious actress and a good actress. I was crazy about her as a person and I thought her work was terrific.”

Lynn figured much more prominently in the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, "Always Goodbye", the first ‘A’ fi lm in which she would be cast as a second lead. She would continue to appear in this light, with occasional frequency, through 1941. Being a second lead in ‘A’ pictures was a two-sided affair for a young actress. In a positive respect, it afforded one the opportunity to work with top-notch talent on films that would gain them greater exposure. The downside of this casting was that the roles themselves were limited in nature, usually being one of three types: girlfriend to the female principal, someone’s sister, or “the other woman.” Bari herself would almost always portray the third kind.

Darryl Zanuck would deal with Lynn in an uncharacteristically sympathetic manner for the better part of her tenure at Fox. Perhaps their “maternal bond” helps to explain why this would be so. Of course, Zanuck was also impressed by Bari’s professional dedication, her engaging personality — and her looks. Lynn Bari: Zanuck was terribly nice to me, he really was. At first, all I did was say “hello” to him. Being just a stockgirl at the studio, he really gave me my first break. He was always very kind. I liked him and I loved being at Fox.

You couldn’t tell Howard Hughes anything. He pretended not to hear when he didn’t want to. He was interesting if you were talking to him about his field of aviation. But I wouldn’t know how to fly a kite. I spent as little time with him as possible. However, he was very kind to me, I must say. When we would talk he’d kind of laugh at me in a nice way. He liked to dance with me, too. I can’t say that there was anything wrong with him. There were things about him I observed that I didn’t agree with, but everybody to their own taste. You hear all these wild stories about Hollywood and jumping in and out of the sack with this guy and that. They always treated me as a lady. None of that ever, ever happened to me at the studio. Oh, maybe they tried to make a pass or kiss me, but nothing else. I’m sure people participated in all those things when they wanted to. But I don’t think that anybody was forced.

"Hotel for Women" was a big production. I enjoyed working on it and had a lot of fun. I really got along with everyone — except Elsa Maxwell. She never spoke to me. She only spoke to “God” or lovely ladies like Princess Grace, who banged every guy in Hollywood — (laughing) if you’ll excuse the expression.

"Kit Carson" was released through United Artists in August 1940. Under the direction of George B. Seitz, it proved to be a moneymaker. The oater gave second-billed Lynn a substantial part, one which she handled in a winning way. Playing heroine here also served to introduce her to Dana Andrews, who would go on to become a lifelong friend. (Dana was an awful nice guy.) The actor was also under long-term contract to Fox, working on loanout to Small. Dana Andrews had been but one of many additions to Fox’s stable of players during 1939 and 1940. Included among the newly-signed were Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda, Laird Cregar, George Montgomery, John Payne and John Sutton.

Bari’s career had so far encompassed many breaks, but "Sun Valley Serenade" came to be her luckiest one. The fates were truly working in Lynn’s favor here, for she was rushed into the film as a last-minute replacement for starlet Cobina Wright, Jr. The role she took over was that of blues singer Vivian Dawn. The temperamental Vivian descends upon Sun Valley at its outset, during a session at a New York recording studio. This setting is where the songbird develops a crush on Ted Scott (John Payne), the pianist in Phil Corey’s (Glenn Miller’s) orchestra. Next to Glenn Miller, no one benefited more from appearing in Sun Valley than twenty-one-year-old Bari.

Lushly captured by cinematographer Cronjager (a wizard) and sumptuously clothed by Travis Banton, she was finally being accorded the full movie-star “treatment”. By presenting her in such an alluring manner, Sun Valley highlighted the striking contrast between Lynn and the film’s leading lady, Sonja Henie.

Every time the two were framed together Bari’s sexy, womanly qualities became more apparent — as did the diminutive Henie’s coquettish and cloying tendencies. The skater did have her charming ways, but those faded in Lynn’s presence. As Vivian Dawn, Bari punched up a formula “other woman” role with a special dynamism and shadings of vulnerability. Her performance would, in effect, make one question why a piano player would dump a woman of substance for a “Scandinavian Hillbilly” (as Vivian tagged her rival in a fit of pique).

Preview audiences reacted most favorably to Lynn’s appearance as Vivian. So did Zanuck. He sent Bari out on her first multi-city promotional tour, coinciding with Sun Valley’s release. Lynn was accompanied by costar John Payne, her brother’s childhood friend. The two gave countless radio and press interviews, in addition to attending local premieres of their film. Both experienced a moment of personal glory when they stopped off in Roanoke and were greeted by an ardent mob of hometown fans.

Lynn Bari, John Payne and Alice Faye in "Hello, Frisco, Hello" (1943) directed by H. Bruce Humberstone

Cornel Wilde and Lynn pose with Daisy, one of the four-legged players of The Perfect Snob" (1941) directed by Ray McCarey

Lynn Bari: He [Cornel Wilde] was anything but wild; a very serious person. He was married to a real little Puritan girl. Some of us were playing poker on location one day and he came up to me and said, “You gamble?” The Perfect Snob was Cornel Wilde’s debut film at Fox and his first lead assignment.

The picture’s second lead, Anthony Quinn, would be signed by the studio once the film wrapped, remaining under contract for three years. Already a veteran of ‘B’ pictures, Quinn’s career rise would be even more protracted than Lynn’s, encompassing tenures at five different studios over a period of sixteen years (1937-53). His long climb to international acclaim would entail over sixty stepping stones, two of which (Blood and Sand and Snob) he shared with Bari.

The source of 'The Falcon Takes Over' was the first-rate Raymond Chandler novel, 'Farewell, My Lovely'. None of the bite of the Chandler work was, however, to be found in its Falcon incarnation, a lackluster hodgepodge of mystery and comedy. Lynn played reporter Ann Reardon, a role that was too vapid for her to mold into something interesting. She was not at all a dominant presence here but, nonetheless, she received star billing alongside Sanders.

Lynn Bari: I had worked on bits and small parts in George’s films before this. We were very friendly. The Falcon Takes Over was remade as "Murder, My Sweet" (1944) right after that; it brought Dick Powell into the limelight again. I liked Robert Siodmak tremendously. He was a very interesting guy. Mary Beth Hughes was good in it, but the studio never gave her a fair shake.

Bari hadn’t even finished shooting "The Night Before the Divorce" when she embarked upon what she considers her worst film, "Secret Agent of Japan" (1942).

Lynn Bari married Sidney Luft on November 23, 1943, only two days after divorcing his first husband Walter Kane

Lynn had met Sid Luft in the latter half of 1942 and they became a steady item during Bari’s filmmaking hiatus. Luft was four years older, born November 2, 1915. The ruggedly attractive six-footer had an outgoing, enthusiastic personality that Lynn found appealing.

Lynn Bari: An autobiography would be too painful — I really couldn’t do it. I’ve thought about it, but I just couldn’t go back into that — the thing with my mother and the thing with Sid, and this last husband Dr. Nathan Rickles (whom she had divorced in 1972) — he was the worst and that’s too near. You know, the only good autobiography I read was Doris Day’s.

Lynn went on to give numerous interviews during her final trimester, none particularly noteworthy. Something far more fascinating — and revelatory — was an article she herself had written for a summer issue of Movie Mirror magazine. Under the title, “How I Feel About Hollywood,” Bari penned the following: "When I first went into pictures, I was a 13-year-old youngster fresh from Roanoke, Va. And I was terrified. After working in pictures for more than 10 years, I’m still frightened.

Every day brings a new problem, a new experience. I don’t think an actress is ever truly happy. The ambition that drives us all may bring us to sheer ecstasy one moment — and make us miserable the next. But I’m used to the roller-coaster feeling by this time. I’ve never been sorry that I chose this career. I’ve never been bored with my life in Hollywood. So many people find themselves in a rut. They become complacent and contented with their narrow outlook on life. Maybe they are happier than we are — if you call that happiness." -"Foxy Lady: The Authorized Biography of Lynn Bari" by Jeff Gordon (2010)