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Kay Francis
Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star and highest-paid actress at Warner Bros. studio. She adopted her mother's maiden name (Francis) as her professional surname.[citation needed]
Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory (present-day Oklahoma), in 1905, the only child of Joseph Sprague Gibbs and Katharine Clinton (née Francis), an actress. Wed in 1903, her parents divorced in 1909 when Kay's mother left her alcoholic father and took Kay with her.
Her mother had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was a successful actress and singer on a hardscrabble theatrical circuit under the stage name Katherine Clinton. Kay often traveled with her mother. Kay attended Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student at the Institute of the Holy Angels at age five. After also attending Miss Fuller's School for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York (1919) and the Cathedral School (1920), she enrolled at the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. While there she did nothing to discourage the assumption that her mother was Katharine Gibbs, the pioneering American businesswoman who had established the Gibbs chain of vocational schools.[citation needed]
In 1922, 17-year-old Kay was engaged to James Dwight Francis, a well-to-do man from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Their marriage, at New York's Saint Thomas Church, ended in divorce three years later.
In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce. While there, she was courted by Bill Gaston, a former athlete at Harvard and member of the Boston Bar Association. Secretly married in October 1925, their marriage was short-lived, with only occasional visits between Bill in Boston and Kay in New York City following her mother's footsteps onto the stage.
She made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's Hamlet in November 1925. She often "borrowed" wardrobe for fashionable nights out in New York that were reported on by the day's press. Francis claimed she got the part by "lying a lot, to the right people". One of them was producer Stuart Walker, who hired her to join his Portmanteau Theatre Company. She soon found herself commuting between Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana. She played wisecracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies.
By February 1927, Francis returned to New York and got a part in the Broadway play Crime. A teenage Sylvia Sidney had its lead, but later said that Francis stole the show.
After Francis's divorce from Gaston in September 1927, she became engaged to society playboy Alan Ryan Jr. She promised his family that she would not return to the stage – a vow that lasted only a few months before she was playing an aviator in a Rachel Crothers play, Venus.
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Kay Francis
Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star and highest-paid actress at Warner Bros. studio. She adopted her mother's maiden name (Francis) as her professional surname.[citation needed]
Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory (present-day Oklahoma), in 1905, the only child of Joseph Sprague Gibbs and Katharine Clinton (née Francis), an actress. Wed in 1903, her parents divorced in 1909 when Kay's mother left her alcoholic father and took Kay with her.
Her mother had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was a successful actress and singer on a hardscrabble theatrical circuit under the stage name Katherine Clinton. Kay often traveled with her mother. Kay attended Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student at the Institute of the Holy Angels at age five. After also attending Miss Fuller's School for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York (1919) and the Cathedral School (1920), she enrolled at the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. While there she did nothing to discourage the assumption that her mother was Katharine Gibbs, the pioneering American businesswoman who had established the Gibbs chain of vocational schools.[citation needed]
In 1922, 17-year-old Kay was engaged to James Dwight Francis, a well-to-do man from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Their marriage, at New York's Saint Thomas Church, ended in divorce three years later.
In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce. While there, she was courted by Bill Gaston, a former athlete at Harvard and member of the Boston Bar Association. Secretly married in October 1925, their marriage was short-lived, with only occasional visits between Bill in Boston and Kay in New York City following her mother's footsteps onto the stage.
She made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's Hamlet in November 1925. She often "borrowed" wardrobe for fashionable nights out in New York that were reported on by the day's press. Francis claimed she got the part by "lying a lot, to the right people". One of them was producer Stuart Walker, who hired her to join his Portmanteau Theatre Company. She soon found herself commuting between Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana. She played wisecracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies.
By February 1927, Francis returned to New York and got a part in the Broadway play Crime. A teenage Sylvia Sidney had its lead, but later said that Francis stole the show.
After Francis's divorce from Gaston in September 1927, she became engaged to society playboy Alan Ryan Jr. She promised his family that she would not return to the stage – a vow that lasted only a few months before she was playing an aviator in a Rachel Crothers play, Venus.
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