Kay Francis Movies

francis 1111Want 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.

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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

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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.

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57 thoughts on “Kay Francis Movies”

  1. I have just discovered her. What a face! She is striking! To me, she seemed very down to earth and didn’t give a hoot about Hollywood! First movie I watched was Little Men. Read the biography ‘I can’t wait to be forgotten ‘

    Reply

  2. Kay Francis! Just like Sylvia Sidney almost forgotten today..although Sylvia at least kept working till the end and is known to a younger audience due to her work for Tim Burton.
    Back to Kay: just noticed you love to share the amount of movies you’ve seen with her: 19 in my case, with In Name only, Trouble in Paradise and One Way Passage my Top 3. BUT I also like stuff like I found Stella Parrish or Monograms Allotment Wives.

    Reply

    1. Hey Lupino…..glad you found our Kay Francis page……yep we a few of the readers have been sharing their tally counts for yours….your 19 would be the most. Flora from Canada has seen 15, while I have seen 2 (I recently watched and really enjoyed Trouble In Paradise…to double my total to 2)….while Steve from England has only seen 1. My other Francis film I have seen is In Name Only….which co-starred one of my all-time favorite actors…Cary Grant. I will have to check out One Way Passage. As for Francis and Sidney….they are sadly almost forgotten…though her role in Beetlejuice pops into my head right away when I see her name. Thanks for a great Kay Francis comment.

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        1. Hey Lupino….true…not a huge fan of Mars Attacks…so Sidney’s Earth saving skills…always escapes me…..thanks for the reminder.

          Reply

  3. I volunteer at a nursing home twice a week and last week one of the residents was watching a DVD of Kay Francis’ Gibe Me Your Heart. She told me she used to have 23 of her films on DVR when she lived in an apartment building in Brooklyn. But the power blew out for a few minutes and all the movies were lost. There is no one at all on the current Oracle of Bacon top 1000 Center of the Hollywood Universe that worked with her. Well her last film was in 1945. There are a few people on the 2000 list, now gone, who appeared with her.

    British Agent (134) – 151 Cesar Romero
    Divorce (1945) – 989 Bruce Cabot
    First Lady (1937) -222 Bess Flowers
    Give Me Your Heart (1936) – 222 Bess Flowers
    I Found Stella Parrish (1935) – 222 Bess Flowers
    I Loved a Woman (1933) – 463 Edward G. Robinson
    In Name Only (1939) – 969 Byron Foulger
    It’s a Date (1940) – 299 Fritz Feld, 395 Walter Pidgeon, 571 Charles Lane
    Jewel Robbery (1932) – 832 Don Brodie
    Ladies Man (1931) – 222 Bess Flowers
    Living on Velvet (1935) – 542 Paul Fix
    Man Wanted (1932) – 222 Bess Flowers
    Passion Flower (1930) – 187 Ray Milland
    Stolen Holiday (1937) – 222 Bess Flowers
    Storm at Daybreak (1933) – 234 Akim Tamiroff
    The Feminine Touch (1941) – 160 Robert Ryan
    The Keyhole (1933) – 740 George Chandler
    The Man Who Lost Himself (1941) – 27 Marc Lawrence, 562 Paul Bryar, 982 Billy Benedict
    The White Angel (1936) – 100 Ian Wolfe
    When the Daltons Rode (1940) – 241 Broderick Crawford, 783 James Flavin

    In addition considering her last film was in 1945, Kay appeared with at least 16 other Oscar winning actors (Danny Trejo has 12 and he’s still kicking).

    Always in My Heart (1942) – Walter Huston
    Behind the Make-up (1930) – Paul Lukas
    Charley’s Aunt (1941) – Anne Baxter, Edmund Gwenn
    Comet Over Broadway (1938) – Susan Hayward
    Cynara (1932) – Ronald Colman
    Gentlemen of the Press (1929) – Walter Huston
    Guilty Hands (1931) – Lionel Barrymore
    I Found Stella Parrish (1935) – Paul Lukas
    Illusion (1929) – Paul Lukas
    In Name Only (1939) – Charles Coburn
    King of the Underworld (1939) – Humphrey Bogart
    Paramount on Parade (1930) – Fredric March, Gary Cooper
    Passion Flower (1930) – Ray Milland
    Raffles (1930) – Ronald Colman
    Storm at Daybreak (1933) – Walter Huston
    Strangers in Love (1932) – Fredric March
    The Feminine Touch (1941) – Don Ameche, Van Heflin
    The Marriage Playground (1929) – Fredric March
    The Vice Squad (1931) – Paul Lukas
    The Virtuous Sin (1930) – Walter Huston
    When the Daltons Rode (1940) – Broderick Crawford
    Wonder Bar (1934) – Jane Darwell

    Reply

    1. Hey Dan….very cool that you volunteer at the senior home. Sad that she lost all of her Kay Francis movies. I think her following is small but very vocal. There are numerous websites out there devoted to her. One was very helpful to get this page done. As for the lists…List 1: Wow….not much star power there. Not knocking Bess Flowers…lol. 16 is pretty good…though far from the leaders in this pack. 🙂

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  4. I’m more willing to bet these are the Kay Francis movies YOU like BEST.

    Her “best” ones are, as you know, a matter of individual opinion 🙂

    Sepiatone

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    1. These are the movies where he could find box office information.

      Bruce has actually only seen ONE movie.

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        1. Thank-you. I like it too. Granted that I live nowhere near a lighthouse, I thought it was a beautiful photograph.

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  5. Cogerson–One thing:

    “The Feminine Touch” (1941) is better than # 40, IMHO. Francis and Van Heflin nearly steal the movie from Rosalind Russell and Don Ameche; at a Guess, it would be somewhere between #s 23–33, as Francis was not first billed. JMO.

    Reply

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