Want to know the best Kay Francis movies? How about the worst Kay Francis movies? Curious about Kay Francis box office grosses or which Kay Francis movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Kay Francis movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.
Kay Francis (1905-1968) 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 at the Warner Brothers studio and the highest-paid American film actress. Her IMDb page shows 72 acting credits from 1929-1951. This page will rank 49 Kay Francis movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television roles, some of her early Paramount movies (of course) and her 3 late Monogram movies (who?) were not included.
Drivel part of the page: During our research we stumble across a nice treasure every once in awhile. A couple of years ago we found this webpage on Kay Francis. Well….we put all of the Francis box office rentals from that page into our database….and pretty much forgot it. While recently Flora, requested a Kay Francis page….so it was a nice surprise to find domestic and worldwide box office rentals on almost 40 of her movies all ready to go.
Kay Francis Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Kay Francis movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Kay Francis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Kay Francis movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Kay Francis movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins each Kay Francis movie received.
- Sort Kay Francis movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive. For example…if you type in “William Powell” in the search box….the 3 Powell/Francis movies will pop right up.
Kay Francis Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses
Possibly Interesting Facts About Kay Francis
1. Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1905. Her nickname as a child was Kay…..and her first husband was James Francis….which is how she became Kay Francis.
2. Kay Francis had a speech impediment. She was known around the Paramount lot as “the wavishing Kay Fwancis.”…..that sounds kind of mean spirited.
3. From the years 1930 to 1937, Kay Francis appeared on the covers of 38 film magazines, the most for any adult performer and second only to Shirley Temple who appeared on 138 covers during that period.
4. Kay Francis was married five times…but never had any children.
5. Kay Francis was considered for the Scarlett O’Hara role in Gone With The Wind….then again it seems every acting actress of the 1930s was considered.
6. Kay Francis and her movies did not get much Oscar® love. She was never nominated for an Oscar®…..she never starred in a Best Picture Oscar® nominated movie….only four of her movies got a Oscar® nomination…and only one won an Oscar®.
7. Kay Francis’ star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6766 Hollywood Blvd.
8. Kay Francis left most of her $1 million estate to train dogs at Seeing Eye, Inc.
9. Kay Francis’ career adjusted box office gross was over $2.85 billion.
10. Check out Kay Francis’ movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Ten best from Kay Francis is no particular order
1. CONFESSION
2. 24 HOURS
3. GIRLS ABOUT TOWN
4. ONE WAY PASSAGE
5. IN NAME ONLY
6. RAFFLES
7. TROUBLE IN PARADISE
8. WONDER BAR
9. COMET OVER BROADWAY
10. HOUSE ON 56th STREET
Nice list of Kay films but I would have to include Jewel Robbery. Hey, that first 15 minutes where Powell gets the folks to smoke a joint makes this film a must-see.
Agree about Jewel Robbery. I would delete 24 Hours and Comet Over Broadway (a B movie!) Girls About Town has yet to be shown on TCM and I’ve never seen it. 🙁 (Paramount)
I rather like JEWEL ROBBERY, too. 70 minutes of fun + funny cigarettes. 🙂
How can a viewer go wrong? Gotta be in the Top 10.
Thanks for the feedback. Seems like Confession, Jewel Robbery and Trouble in Paradise are ones I should check out.
According to Wikipedia Kay Francis let people assume that her mother was the founder of the Katherine Gibbs school, not that she really was.
Mmmm…just checked that out too. I imagine there must have been an advantage to go with people assuming her mom was “that” Katherine Gibbs”. Her mother was an actress too….so I she followed in her mother’s foot steps. Thanks for the correction.
I haven’t seen too many Francis movies but one I seen recently, Trouble in Paradise was terrific. She was very beautiful and glamorous and you can see why she was popular in the 30’s. But it all seemed to go wrong by ’37. Up to that time she seemed content being a clothes horse, but I think her movies were becoming too routine and she wanted better scripts. But she had a big fall out with Warner Bros and threatened to take them to court, and they dug their heels in and insisted her fulfilled the rest of her contract doing B movies.
Around this time the famous Box Office Poison List was published, naming Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn and of course Francis herself. But unlike the others, she didn’t get a comeback movie and by the time her contract was finished, no studio really wanted her. She became a supporting player and gradually her career just faded.
Hey Chris…..Good to know that I am not the only one that has not seen many Kay Francis movies. It sounds like her dispute with Warner Brothers got real ugly. I think there is a good movie to be made during that time frame at Warners….Bogart, Francie, Cagney, Davis and Garfield all got into huge disputes….with Garfield and Cagney getting suspended a few times.
That Box Office Poison List has become very famous in itself. It seems that really only affected Francis….as the others went to have more successes in the future….though I guess you could argue that her biggest box office hit of her career….Charley’s Aunt….came after that list.
Thanks for the comment and visit….especially on somebody that is not one of your favorite actresses.
Hey Chris….you are another person that has highly recommend Trouble In Paradise….I am going to have to track that one down.
Oh yes, her mother is Katherine Gibbs, founder of the Katherine Gibbs schools fame.
Hey Dan….very cool…thanks for sharing that info.
Monogram was a pretty big B movie company releasing over 1000 features between approximately 1931 and 1980. They had numerous B westerns, the Bowery Boys, the cheaper Charlie Chan movies. In 1948 they decided to release higher class films through their new moniker Allied Artists. The first picture under that name was It Happened on Fifth Avenue. In 1948 they released the Babe Ruth Story. They released 2 Gary Cooper movies in the 50’s, Friendly Persuasion and Love in the Afternoon which also starred Audrey Hepburn. In 1961 they released El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren and Heston was also in their 1963 release 55 Days in Peking. They won, yes Allied Artists won a best picture with Cabaret in 1972 and in 1973 they released Papillon starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
Hey Dan. Thanks for all the information on Monograms….when I got her last three movies ….I found nothing about box office results…..seems like they are like Paramount very stingy with sharing that information. I had heard of Allied Artists….seems there movies got better as time went on. Cabaret won a ton of Oscars….but not Best Picture…it holds the record for most wins without winning the Best Picture Oscar. Thanks for sharing some of your massive movie knowledge…it is greatly appreciated.
You’re right, the Godfather won best picture that year.