The Noel Francis Film Festival: "Bachelor Apartment" and "Smart Woman"

Of all the actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Noel Francis (1906-59) was certainly one of them.

Noel Francis Madison

Not to be confused with Noel Madison, who was a guy, Noel Francis was an attractive blonde with a winsome expression. She had been a dancer on Broadway, appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies during the mid-1920s, often with the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey. She came to Hollywood in 1929 and ended up being signed to a contract at Warner Bros.

In Hollywood, she made over 40 movies, most of them during the pre-code period, so she usually played mistresses and prostitutes, potential mistresses and prostitutes, or former mistresses and prostitutes.

In the 1931 film ”Blonde Crazy," for example, she's the mistress of Louis Calhern and she helps him bilk the film's star, James Cagney. In "Smart Money," released the same year, she helps bilk Edward G. Robinson. In 1932's "Night Court," she's the mistress of crooked judge Walter Huston.

Her best-known film credit is probably 1932's "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang." She plays a prostitute who James Allen (Paul Muni) meets after his first escape from the gang. Her appearance is brief, but memorable:

Francis was rarely the female lead; she usually received fifth or sixth billing. In the 1931 film "Bachelor Apartment," for example, she is one of several women who are seduced by the film's hero, Lowell Sherman, who also directed. Sherman plays Wayne Carter, a bachelor whose apartment is just busting with women -- the movie is like a pre-code "Boeing Boeing." When the taxi Francis's character is riding in gets involved in an accident, Sherman -- who has been eyeing her from his limousine -- sweeps in and scoops her up:


Once Sherman gets Francis back to his bachelor apartment, he "accidentally" spills a drink on her dress, forcing her to change into something more comfortable:



Sherman has an impish comic quality and he's always fun to watch -- he also played the dipsomaniac director who discovers Constance Bennett in "What Price Hollywood?" -- and the film's storyline has him leaving girls like Francis behind so he can marry his proper stenographer, played by Irene Dunne.

In "Smart Woman," also released in 1931, Francis has a more substantial part. She's Peggy, the other woman who Mary Astor's husband (Robert Ames) has taken up with while Astor was with her sick mother in Paris. Gracefully directed by Gregory La Cava, "Smart Woman" is more comedy than soaper, thanks largely to the presence of Edward Everett Horton as Astor's husband's business partner. Astor decides to fight fire with fire, and invites the mistress and her mercenary mother to a weekend at the family estate; then she enters, carrying lawn shears:



Astor also tries to make her husband jealous by implying that she's been having an affair of her own with the kind Sir Guy (John Halliday), a British millionaire she met on the cruise back from Paris. But when Peggy learns of Sir Guy's fortune, she sets her cap for him:



It's too easy to blame the decline in Francis's career on the advent of the Production Code in 1935, but it's true that under the Code, parts like the ones Francis played were frowned upon. At any rate, by the mid-1930s, her career had declined to the point that she was appearing in quickie Buck Jones westerns and her final feature was 1937's "Left-Handed Law."

Here are the full credits for "Bachelor Apartment" and "Smart Woman."
 

"Thirteen Women," or Trance with Me

In "Thirteen Women" (1932), Myrna Loy is Ursula Georgi, a beautiful but mysterious mixed-race woman who uses hypnosis, astrology and an exploding toy ball to rid herself of the wealthy schoolmates who ostracized her because of her lineage.

"My eyes are up here, sport."

Talk about carrying a grudge.

Based upon a novel by Tiffany Thayer, who must have been the Jackie Collins of his day, "Thirteen Women" is lurid stuff that involves murder, madness and suicide.

You see, Ursula has been planning her revenge for years, do you hear? YEARS! So she seduces an astrologer who is putting together horoscopes for all the women.

Under Ursula's spell, the astrologer sends each woman a horoscope that warns of imminent death or other sorrow, and their imaginations get the better of them, leading to scenes like this:



Hazel Cousins, the screamer, was played by Peg Entwhistle. Shortly after this movie was released, she committed suicide by jumping from the giant HOLLYWOOD sign.

Anyway, back to the plot. When the astrologer outlives his usefulness, he is dealt with as well:

   

The one classmate who isn't unnerved by the predictions is Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne), probably because, based on the looks of her house, servants and chauffeur, she has a zillion dollars. Ricardo Cortez, who resembles a 1932 version of Stanley Tucci, is the detective on the case.

"I'm sorry we made your life a living hell, Asian Myrna Loy,
but we were just kids! Bygones!"

Because she can't unnerve Laura, Ursula targets Laura's son by giving him an exploding ball for his birthday, which leads to a chase through a newly-paved Beverly Hills just on the verge of bursting with bungalows. I live for this kind of Southern California location shooting, especially in movies of the early '30s:

  

Actually, there are only 11 women in "Thirteen Women," but if you want to get technical about it, you should probably just watch another movie. What makes "Thirteen Women" so much fun is Loy's performance as the exotic temptress Ursula, just two years before she would become cast as the perfect American wife in "The Thin Man." And the movie has its own unique visual style -- check out the ending, when Ursula's hallucinations begin to haunt her and she sees the astrologer she killed:



To me, Dunne has always been more interesting in comedies rather than dramas, and in "Thirteen Women" Loy steals the spotlight -- in one scene she tries to make a classmate shoot herself through hypnosis and then achieves almost orgasmic glee when she hears the gunshot. Her role may be stereotypical, but Loy gives it her all and despite the coldness of her character, she's actually the heart of "Thirteen Women."