- #INVISIBLE EXES IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FOREHEAD TWIZTED MOVIE#
- #INVISIBLE EXES IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FOREHEAD TWIZTED CODE#
By 1938 her period of greatest stardom was over, and she was labeled "box-office poison" in the celebrated Hollywood Reporter ad. When at last she began to fight for better parts, it was too late. As a result, her image was worn down eventually, as Warner Brothers increasingly relied on her name to redeem inferior vehicles. As long as her salary stayed on a steady incline, she took the roles she was offered. She was dismissive about her looks and never had much regard for her own talent.
Her friends remembered her as a kind and generous person, with a warmly self-deprecating manner. Given a script with genuine wit, as with One Way Passage or the superb Trouble in Paradise, Kay had a gently mocking manner well suited to high comedy.
#INVISIBLE EXES IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FOREHEAD TWIZTED MOVIE#
Her fans flocked to see her suffer, as in The House on 56th Street, a somewhat overwrought but touching movie where the troubles life heaps on her last through 30 years (and some unfortunate blonde wigs). The effect was of someone easily wounded and in great need of tenderness, though her movie plots usually offered her precious little of that. She had huge dark eyes and a slightly receding chin, combined with a low and gentle voice. Though she was hardly a talent for the ages, there was something lovable about this actress. We ah two wecked people.'Ĭute (although with that second quote Vermilye conflates two separate lines), but the Siren thinks Francis deserves better than jokes about her speech impediment. Sympathetic screenwriters usually helped Key avoid these verbal pitfalls, but Mandalay scenarists Austin Parker and Charles Kenyon must have had a grudge against her near the film's climax, they have her address costar Lyle Talbot with 'Gwegowy, we awwive in Mandalay tomowwow. 'If you touch my garter, I'll scweam,' she warns a lustful gentleman early on.
Still, it is usually irresistible to film writers looking for a laugh, like Jerry Vermilye discussing Mandalay in The Films of the Thirties: You hear a lot about her lisp, but it honestly isn't as prominent as people make it out to be-more Barbara Walters than Elmer Fudd. Mandalay is tosh, but it is enjoyable tosh, and nine-tenths of the pleasure is definitely Kay. I especially liked the bit where he gets stuffed through a porthole. The female audience that loved Kay so much must have enjoyed seeing Cortez get his just deserts more than once, as his character proves as difficult to bump off as Rasputin. But Tanya's own past intrudes in the form of Cortez, who turns back up, in the way all rotten exes eventually do. On the boat she meets and falls in love with an alcoholic doctor With a Past, Lyle Talbot. But again, this is a Kay Francis movie, and she leaves in a killer white suit, with cushy accomodations on a slow steamer to Mandalay. In very short order, after pulling a lucrative bit of blackmail on local official Reginald Owen, Tanya leaves town in a variation on the treatment Claire Trevor got in Stagecoach. Something like Mandalay, with a complicated plot fully teased out over 65 minutes, stands in pleasant contrast to a modern genre movie like X-Men, in which half an hour of exposition is combined with almost zero actual character development. His films move, often at breakneck speed. The Siren thinks of Curtiz's signal virtue as pacing. It should be Spot Cash." (The nickname seems to derive from Francis's all-white wardrobe in the picture, though it's never really explained.) Next thing you know, she is sashaying down a staircase in the greatest silver sheath of all time, as a grumpy bordello patron remarks, "They call her Spot White. After a night spent reflecting on Man's Perfidy, Tanya calls off a brief hunger strike and resolves to make the best of things. To square his debts and save himself from being turned in, he leaves poor Tanya Borisoff (Francis is supposed to be Russian) as payment with the local bordello owner.
But this is a Kay Francis vehicle, so that doesn't last long.Ĭortez, you see, is a gun-runner wanted by the authorities. The shot has a refreshingly natural, unposed feel to it, and she looks innocent and happy. Loose-fitting tropical blouse drooping off of one shoulder, Kay waves energetically as lover Ricardo Cortez approaches in a dinghy. The opening shot of Kay on a boat in Rangoon harbor is one of the nicest you will ever see of this actress.
#INVISIBLE EXES IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FOREHEAD TWIZTED CODE#
The movie came out in 1934, but apparently it was slipped into release just before the Production Code was etched onto stone tablets. The Siren, however, was watching this one for Kay Francis. This one was directed by Michael Curtiz, Warner Brothers' jack-of-all-trades, and a director whose reputation has been burnished in recent years by admirers such as Spielberg and Soderbergh. The Siren moves on to Mandalay (1934), another film she saw while awaiting Ben's debut.