Born Today January 13: Kay Francis (Not So Silent Eidition)

1905-1968

Born Katherine Edwina Gibbs in Oklahoma City to a mother who had been a stage actress as a young woman and later went on to found vocational schools for women.  During her childhood, however, her mother was still on the stage as an actress and singer under the name of Katherine Clinton; and being the child of a working single mother made her upbringing rather rough. She grew up constantly on the road with her mother, only attending school in intervals.   At the age of 17 she got engaged to a man named James Dwight Francis; the two married in 1922; hence her last name.  The marriage did not last.  In 1925 she actually traveled all the way to Paris, France in order to obtain a divorce.  When back in the United States she suddenly decided to follow her mother onto the stage; having the good fortune (due to real talent) to make her Broadway debut in 1925 in a modernized version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.  She claimed that she got the part (probably as a tongue and cheek joke) by "lying a lot, and to the right people."  One of these people was one Stuart Walker, who hired her to perform in his Portmanteau Theater Company in Dayton, Indiana and in Cincinnati.  In 1927 she returned to Broadway, in the play Crime, in which a teen aged Sylvia Sidney claimed the lead role.  Sidney later joked that Frances stole the show. She was encouraged to try out for a role in the full sound film Gentlemen of the Press (1929), which she got; but the audition brought her to attention of The Marx Brothers.  They gave her a part in their film The Cocoanuts (1929), which came out before Gentlemen.  Thus she technically made her film debut with The Marx Brothers.  In all, she made 5 films in 1929 all of them some form of early talkie.  Ironically, the last film she made, not the first, in 1929, The Marriage Playground, was only a partial talkie.  In this she played at character called "Lady Wrench."  She became known as the tallest leading lady in the business in the 1930's--standing at 5'9".  During World War II, she did extensive touring in support of American troops.  She passed away after a two year battle against breast cancer on the 16th of August in 1968 at the age of 63.  She was cremated and her ashes were scattered.  

On a USO tour with Mitzi Mayfair during WWII.

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Born Today November 21: Jobyna Ralston

1899-1967

Born Jobyna Lancaster Raulston in South Pittsburgh, Tenn., her unusual first name came from her parents naming her after the then very famous stage actress Jobyna Howland, who would go on to have her own successful turn in silent films.  Ralston's mother was a portrait photographer, who from the beginning had plans for her daughter to go into show business; she was literally raised to have some sort of an entertainment career.  She was on the professional stage by the age of 9, and went on to attend acting school  in 1915 in New York City.  Her Broadway debut came at the age of 21, when she began landing dancing chorus roles in musicals and small acting roles in plays.  Famous comedian Max Linder noticed her in one of these productions and persuaded her to go to Hollywood.  She had her film debut in 1919 in the short comedy Starting Out In Life and was credited as "Juliana Ralston."  She did not keep the Juliana part, proudly going back to her famous first name, but she kept the respelling of the last name.  in 1921 she played the "Heroine" in the famously lost first Marx Brothers film Humor Risk.  She then began to work in comedy one reel shorts of Hal Roach, and had a very prolific career throughout the 1920's.  In 1922 she abandoned the live stage altogether.  She starred in her first partial sound film in The Big Hop (1928), which had a mono musical score.  Her first full sound film came in The College Coquette a year later. Her greatest achievement came in 1927 when she had a billed roll in Wings which was the only silent film to technically win a "Best Picture" Oscar in the silent era, starring the likes of Clara Bow and Gary Cooper.  She quit acting in the early 1930's after having a child; she made only two films in that decade.  Her film career was almost entirely confined to the silent era.  During this time she worked with a myriad of Hollywood silent elite talent.  See links below.  She passed away at the age of 67 on 22 January 1967 in Wood Hills, Los Angeles.  Her grave marker states that she was born in 1900; her birth records indicate that 1899 was the correct year.

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Born Today November 16: George S. Kaufman

1880-1961

Born George Simon Kaufman in Pittsburgh he was a multi-talented Jack Of All Trades in the entertainment industry, well known early on for writing and/or directing musicals for The Marx Brothers. He started off as a writer; his first film credit came in that capacity in 1919 Someone Must Pay, which was an adaptation of a play that he wrote in 1918 as  Some One In The House.  Which was remade in 1920, directed by John Ince eldest of the Ince Brothers.  He had many rolls in the film industry including film credit, but also such a very successful career on Broadway.  He was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table crowd that also included Dorothy Parker, a character that the Jennifer Jason Leigh character in the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy  is based on.  He passed away inn New York City on 2 June 1971 at the age of 71. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered.