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."
 

"I Steal!": The Unflinching "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang"

Paul Muni begins 1932's "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" in an Army uniform and ends it in the uniform of the forgotten man of the depression -- unshaven, battered hat, threadbare coat, wrinkled trousers, probably the slight smell of sweat and cigarettes. He has a wild look in his eyes, as he should -- he's just escaped from a chain gang for a second time and has permitted himself just one final moment with Helen (Helen Vinson), the woman he loves:


From the darkness: "I steal!"

The ending is as abrupt and as unflinching as the rest of "I Am a Fugitive." Eighty years after its release, the film remains a true classic that is carried by the power of its true story, by Muni's performance and by Mervyn LeRoy's swift and sure direction.

The movie begins as James Allen, played by Muni, comes home after World War I. He's greeted by his adoring mother and ineffectual brother, a pompous clergymen whose faith will be absolutely no help to Allen as he faces life's cruelty and challenges.

Walking away from a factory job that will keep him close to home, Allen sets out to work in construction and makes his way across the country. When he is reluctantly involved in a robbery, he is given the harshest sentence possible -- years on a chain gang. (In Georgia, but Warner Bros. didn't want to risk any lawsuits, so that state is unnamed.)

The inhuman conditions Burns faces on the gang leads to his first escape, a terrific piece of kinetic storytelling:


Then it's off to Chicago, where Allen makes a prosperous life as a builder-contractor, until he is undone by the mercenary Marie, played by one of the best of the tough Warner dames, Glenda Farrell. She finds out about Allen's past, courtesy of a letter from the clergyman brother, and blackmails Allen into marriage. When he tries to divorce her to marry Helen, who he really loves, Marie turns stool pigeon. Allen strikes a deal with the authorities -- he'll return to the work camp for a few months, followed by a quiet release.

But after Allen has worked on the chain gang for a year, the state goes back on its word. Watch how Muni plays it, as a man crumbling apart from the inside:


"I Am a Fugitive" has the grittiness we expect from a pre-code Warner film; Allen's safe haven after his escape is in a bawdy house, where he spends the evening with a prostitute (Noel Francis). In another scene, the broke Allen tries to hock the medals he received in the war -- but when he goes to a pawnshop, the broker shows him a box full of medals he's gotten from other veterans. And the beatings and whippings Allen suffers on the gang still seem painfully real.

As a result of the movie, Robert Burns, the real-life James Allen, was pardoned in 1933. And though Muni would go on to deliver award-winning performances, he did little else that matches his vivid portrayal in this film.