Anne Francis

She tried very hard to become a big movie star but it never worked out for Anne Francis.  She was a looker with her curly blonde hair, sky-blue eyes and a beauty mark on the right of her lower lip.  Maybe it was her outspokenness that did her in.  Maybe she was too much the nymphet for some.  Whatever it was, two major studios gave her a try (one of them twice) and then off she went to the world of television.

How odd that it worked out that way considering how extraordinarily successful she was as a child performer.  Born an only child in Ossining, New York in 1930, she began modeling at age five as a means to help her folks during the depression.  By six she was a John Robert Powers model, making money beyond her parents' dreams and becoming quite successful.

She began acting around the same time, garnering a role in a radio soap opera and appearing on television.  By age 12 she was on Broadway in Lady in the Dark, portraying Gertrude Lawrence's character at a young age, and attending New York's Professional Children's School.

She attracted enough attention in New York that the mighty MGM took some notice and signed her to a contract at age 15.  Well, okay, Mama signed and then moved with Anne to California.  She would stay until the day her daughter turned 21.  Mama Francis, not a stage mother in the purest sense, was nonetheless thrilled at her daughter's career.  She loved movies and movie stars and sunshine and the intoxicating smell of orange blossoms.  This was gonna work out fine. 

She was decorative and unbilled in several MGM extravaganzas, including Summer Holiday, The Pirate and Portrait of Jennie, but attracted little attention until she was loaned out to United Artists to make the very B So Young So Bad (1950).  The part of a teenage prostitute with a baby in a girl's reform school... and I'm smiling now... suited her.  Her Lolita-like, sexy, schoolgirl insouciance lit a flame under hot-blooded teen boys.  

Francis and MGM parted company earlier than either of them expected and the young actress got a surprise contract at 20th Century Fox.  She was immediately signed for two Clifton Webb comedies, Elopement (1951) and Dreamboat (1952).  His films were very popular so her visibility increased.  In the latter movie she was paired with Jeffrey Hunter which wasn't a bad deal.

Mama apparently didn't mind that her daughter was a serial dater or that both of her studios had promoted her as a glamour girl with their penchant for scantily-clad publicity shots.  She loved the studio treating her and some contracted handsome hunk to dinner and a few timely photographs.  But by the time she was 21, she wanted to settle down and be a grown woman.  She married actor-director Bam Price and for their three-year marriage they were the subjects of a lot of shutter-clicking.  Unfortunately, their tempestuous union also made some gossip columns.

Fox put a lot of hope into Lydia Bailey (1952) or so they said.  The lusty story of a stormy love between Francis and Dale Robertson in war-torn Haiti caused heavy press and initial interest which soon faded.  I thought both actors pulled it off but their less-than-starry presences kept the film from being a hit.  Were Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward busy?  What about Cornel Wilde, Jean Peters, Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell?  They were all still at Fox and bigger stars.

The loss of heavy revenue for Lydia Bailey meant the loss of Francis' contract as well.  She jumped to RKO for the second- female lead in the Dick Powell-Debbie Reynolds silly romantic farce, Susan Slept Here (1954).  Was it this inane movie that told Powell it was time to quit acting?

MGM wanted her to play a moll in its 1954 gritty film noir cop drama Rogue Cop (1954) and negotiations got to the point that Francis wanted a contract to go with the film offer and she got it.  She was fifth-billed after Robert Taylor, Janet Leigh, George Raft and Steve Forrest and it is a good film.

Her next four films were the best of her career, three of which were at her home studio which shows its interest the second time around.  That's the good news.  The bad news was that despite being in some very good films, none of them were built around her character.

With costar and pal John Ericson

Director John Sturges assembled one of my favorite casts for the moody drama Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)... Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger.  Tracy, who is too old for the part, still delivers as a one-armed man arriving in a one-horse town and threatening to reveal a secret the townsfolk, shall we say, strongly resist.  There's nothing cheerful about this one but the acting is irresistible.  Third-billed Francis and handsome John Ericson play brother and sister and in 10 years they would reunite for Francis' greatest fame.  Sturges said it was the favorite of his many films.

She was loaned out to Warner Bros for the all-star romance military drama, Battle Cry (1955).  Of the various romances that were featured, I found the Francis-John Lupton one to be the least compelling.  He's a lonely soldier and she's a hooker, nearly-reformed, who meet on a ferry from time to time and fall in love before he is killed.  It was a monster hit and helped keep the lady very visible.

Francis and Glenn Ford were a good match

Then came the revolutionary Blackboard Jungle (1955).  It takes a hard look at a decent teacher (Glenn Ford) at a violent inner-city high school whose dedication to doing a good job is threatened by some scary students, a flaky faculty and a pregnant wife (guess who?).  What a blast this one is.  One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock...

Forbidden Planet (1956) is just too beyond my capabilities to discuss probably because I never received the science fiction gene.  I confess I haven't seen it but I have seen other 1950's offerings in the genre and aside from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, I usually took a pass because I knew they were terrible.  And now with hindsight they are even worse.  

When the censors got a look at her clothes before filming began, they deemed them too risque and a whole new wardrobe was made.  It was her first of several films with Walter Pidgeon and she was fond of costar Leslie Nielsen.  With all said, Forbidden Planet became Francis' most famous movie. 

Robby the robot didn't like her long gown

The Rack (1956) is famous for being an early Paul Newman flick.  It warrants the attention, too, and rarely gets it.  He plays a WWII vet who comes home to his military father's house after being a POW and is put on trial for collaborating with the enemy while imprisoned.  Newman, of course, is great and Pidgeon is superb as the father.  Francis, as the wife of Newman's dead brother, also lives in the home, and holds her own. 

She quickly did three more movies for MGM and then ended her contract with the studio for the second time.  She told the gossip mavens of the day that she thought free-lancing would add some excitement.  Oh really.  She actually began her long and new primary career as a television actress.  There would be a few movies tucked in there as well.

She went to Warners for a pair, both released in 1960.  The first is a B airline disaster movie, The Crowded Sky,  She plays a stewardess while John (South Pacific) Kerr is the copilot and their romance struck a chord with the studio.  It quickly dusted off a property they owned, Girl of the Night, for both of them.  She plays a call girl looking to go straight and it may be her best movie performance and no one saw it.

Well, apparently the Disney organization saw it and they decided not to use Francis in a planned movie because she had played a call girl.  I wish we knew her reaction to that one.

In 1960 she married for a second time, to a dentist.  It lasted four years and produced a daughter.  The divorce was vitriolic.

With Ball & Stanwyck at an industry affair

She rejoined her old pal, Jeff Hunter, for Brainstorm (1965), a little thriller that has him, playing a scientist, saving her from committing suicide.  After hearing how wicked the husband (Dana Andrews) is, the pair fall in love.  Perhaps in a nod to Double Indemnity, they plan to knock off the husband and Hunter will fake insanity to escape the murder charge.  What could possibly go wrong?  

Francis felt as though she must have made a wrong turn somewhere in Hollywood.  Frankly, she had rather fallen into success as a young child and yet it hadn't particularly followed her to the west coast.  Her career had its moments.  She worked in a few good films and shared the screen with a few giants.  She hadn't gone seeking a movie contract.  The movies came to her.

And she was a good actress... she always was, even in her early sparkly blonde starlet period.  And now she was 35 years old, hardly the nubile young thing of yore.  If Hollywood was holding something against her, could they perhaps ease up?  Perhaps it was the public.  Maybe they just hadn't held her to its collective bosom.  Then an offer to star in a television series came her way.  She would not only be the star but the title star. 

It was called Honey West (1965-66).  It would be America's first prime-time TV series featuring a female private eye.  It was a character that producer Aaron Spelling tried out on Burke's Law and it was a hit episode so Honey got her own series.  Ultimately it gave Francis her greatest fame.

Honey was sexy and ultra-stylish, good with a gun and could knock you on your ass with her martial arts moves.  She never took any prisoners... unless she wanted to.  She owned a man-hating ocelot named Bruce.  She had a partner, Sam, who constantly argued with her.  Francis asked for her buddy, John Ericson from Bad Day, and she got him.  Damn, they were a fetching couple.

Everyone was watching it and Francis' popularity soared.  So why then did it only last for the 30 episodes of the 1965-66 season?  Money is the reason.  At that point, the studio, Four Star Productions, bought the U.S. rights to the British The Avengers, with a similar female lead character.  And it was cheaper to have that series than to produce Honey.  So buhbye, Annie, better luck next time.

Francis, who returned to episodic television, thought she'd struck gold again when offered to play the showgirl friend of Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1968).  She would be working with the great director, William Wyler, her old pal Walter Pidgeon would be there and she would get to work with Streisand.  It was too much and Francis was giddy awaiting the start of production.

She was thrilled to have three strong scenes including a drunk scene, a routine as one of the Ziegfeld Girls and singing a part of Sadie, Sadie along with brief appearances here and there.  She knew before the film opened, however, that her scenes were either completely deleted or were severely cut.  

According to Francis, coworkers and a couple of books in my library, it was you-know-who who was behind the hatchet job.  One wonders why.  It couldn't be jealousy on a talent level but it is likely to be jealousy on a vanity level.  Francis was devastated no matter the reason.

Hollywood turned it into a joke:
First party:  Have you seen Anne Francis in Funny Girl?
Second party:  Anne Francis was in Funny Girl?

She formed her own production company so that in 1968 she could write and direct her own short subject documentary, Gemini Rising.  It is about the rodeo, of which Francis was a huge fan.

From here on out, except for a couple of minor big screen appearances, Francis appeared strictly on television, including some TV movies.   

She turned to other interests, chief among them, getting her pilot's license.  In 1970 she made the news when she adopted a 7-month old girl.  She was among the first unmarried women to do so.

She had long been involved with the International New Thought Alliance, a metaphysical religious organization.  In 1982 she published her autobiography, Voices from Home, subtitled An Inner Journey.  She referred to it as a spiritual exposé.

She retired from acting in 2004. She quit smoking after she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007.  In 2011 she died of complications from pancreatic cancer at a retirement home in Santa Barbara.  Anne Francis was 80 years old. 

I always liked her because she was kinda sassy although not in the class with the big girls... say like Ball and Stanwyck, for starters.  She made a few special movies and from the times I saw her on talk shows, she had a good sense of humor.  I suppose there were times in Hollywood when she sorely needed it.