Noel Francis | WatchedThis
Noel Francis
Acting
Biography
Noel Francis was born in Temple, Texas in 1906. By age 20 she was appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies, working opposite the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey. Eventually Fox scouts noticed her and in 1929 she was signed to a Hollywood contract. Because of her Follies background, Fox intended to develop Noel as a musical and dance star. Unfortunately, musicals were on the wane at the time (they did rebound) and her contract was dropped. Luckily, she was picked up by Warner Brothers, and featured in a number of films that had her portraying the tough talking, sassy female connected to gangsters, convicts, and other underworld types, so popular with the movie going public then and now. Noel was rarely given the lead female role, though she worked near the top with some of the era's best actors in films that included Smart Money (1931), in which she is a scheming blonde helping Edward G. Robinson lose his money, and Blonde Crazy (1931), where her target is James Cagney. Her most noted performance was in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), working with Paul Muni in one of his strongest performances. However, perhaps because of being typecast, she found herself in "B" productions after 1932, though one was as the lead female, in Mayfair Picture Corporation's 1934 What's Your Racket?, opposite Regis Toomey. Needing work, Noel returned to Broadway, but couldn't resume her career there, and returned to Hollywood to make three final films with Buck Jones, including Stone of Silver Creek (1935), in which she used her Broadway musical expertise to play a saloon singer. Between 1929 and 1937 Noel made 47 films. She died October 30, 1959 in Los Angeles, California.
Filmography Movies
Acting
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.
Blonde Crazy
The adventures of a cocky con man and his beautiful accomplice.
Smart Money
Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
Sudden Bill Dorn
Bundy has found gold on the Kent ranch but directs everyone to Ghost Town as he tries to take over the ranch. But Bill and Kent's niece Lorna have taken possession. When it appears Bundy is attracted to Lorna, his jealous girl friend has men destroy the ranch and the explosion helps uncover the gold vein.
Bachelor Apartment
A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.
The Mouthpiece
A prosecutor quits his job and becomes a defense attorney when he finds out that a man he got convicted and executed was actually innocent.
Manhattan Tower
The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor.
Smart Woman
A society man's loving, devoted wife, upon learning that he has been unfaithful and is planning to leave her for the other woman, strategically pretends to be having an affair of her own. The woman's friends gladly assist in the deception.
Good Dame
A chorus girl gets stranded in a small midwestern town. Against her better judgement, she hooks up with a smooth-talking con artist who says he can help her get out of town.
The White Cockatoo
In a spooky hotel on the coast of France, two bands of crooks are working independently of the other in an attempt to steal the inherited fortune of an American girl, Sue Tally. Along the way the heiress is kidnapped, three murders are committed, a girl appears in two places at once, mysterious persons roam about the old hotel at night and mysteriously disappear, and there is a hidden room without any doors.
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