Kay Francis: The Queen of Pleasure

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"A top box-office attraction in the 1930s and an idiosyncratic and can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her screen presence, Kay Francis was undisputed royalty on the Warner Bros. lot. Oklahoma born, Francis was a tall, striking, raven-tressed beauty, an infamous clotheshorse onscreen, and a verifiable superstar whose face decorated scores of gushing fan magazines. Privately, her life was far more risqué than the Pre-Code vehicles that established her fame, including comedies like Trouble in Paradise and Jewel Robbery (opposite frequent partner William Powell), or melodramas like The Virtuous Sin. Even at the height of her popularity, Francis’s magnetism was never without a tincture of melancholy. She was oft-quoted to say that she couldn’t wait to be forgotten—and indeed her stardom would dim by the end of the ‘30s—but no performer so bewitching in love, laughter, and tears could ever really disappear, and so Metrograph is pleased to reintroduce a new generation to the woman who, in imitation of her charming speech impediment, was sometimes called the 'Wavishing Kay Fwancis.'"—Metrograph