Oscar Profile #110: Franchot Tone

Born February 27, 2005 in Niagara Falls, New York to well-to-do parents, Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone had an interest in the stage from an early age. President of the drama club at Cornell University, he made his Broadway debut in 1927. He drew attention a year later as Newland Archer, Jr. in Katharine Cornell’s production of The Age of Innocence. He had the lead in 1930’s Green Grow the Lilacs, the play that became the musical Oklahoma! thirteen years later.

In Hollywood from 1932, he made a name for himself the following year in seven films including Bombsehll and Dancing Lady, the latter in support of future wife Joan Crawford.

His big year was 1935 in which he made five films including his personal favorite among all his films, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, as well as the one for which he received his only Oscar nomination, Mutiny on the Bounty.

Tone’s nomination for Best Actor along with the film’s stars, Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, despite the fact that his was a supporting role, is often cited as the reason supporting players were given their own categories the following year.

Tone’s last film of 1935 was Dangerous for which Bette Davis received her first Oscar. Davis, not knowing Tone was engaged to Crawford, made a play for the actor that is believed to have caused the life-long feud between the two actresses.

Tone married Crawford in 1935, but the marriage was doomed from the start as Crawford’s star continued to shine brightly while Tone remained stuck in mostly secondary roles. They were divorced in 1939.

Tone married model turned actress Jean Wallace in 1941 with whom he had two sons. The marriage would end in a nasty divorce in 1948 after which she would marry twice again including a long-term one to actor Cornel Wilde in 1951. Tone’s roles during this period were usually of the other man variety, but he won excellent notices for change of pace roles in 1943’s Five Graves to Cairo and 1944’s Phantom Lady.

In 1950 Tone began an affair with actress/prostitute s Barbara Payton that resulted in his receiving a vicious beating and disfigurement from brutish actor Tom Neal who was jailed for the assault. Plastic surgery and a quickie 1951 marriage to Payton did not help his career and the two were divorced within months of their marriage.

His work in the 1950s consisted mainly of TV and stage work. On TV he starred in The Little Foxes opposite Greer Garson and Twelve Angry Men opposite Robert Cummings. On stage he starred opposite Wendy Hiller in Broadway’s A Moon for the Misbegotten and in the title role in off-Broadway’s Uncle Vanya where he met his fourth wife, actress Dolores Dorn, another union that was to end in divorce in 1959 after less than three years of marriage.

Tone had his last memorable screen role as the President in 1962’s Advise & Consent. He died of lung cancer on September 18, 1968 at 63.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935), directed by Henry Hathaway

Tone’s own favorite among his many films found the actor in his then standard role of the quick-witted ne’er-do-well, albeit one who turns heroic as the story progresses. One of the better epics about the glorious British Empire upon which the sun never set, Tone is good, but is ironically the least memorable of the film’s five stars. Gary Cooper, Richard Cromwell, Sir Guy Standing and Sir C. Aubrey Smith all have more memorable lines and character arcs.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935), directed by Frank Lloyd

The big epic of the year, and the year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, is renown among other things, as the only film for which three actors were nominated for Oscars in the lead category. Tone’s portrayal of Byam, the film’s narrator, is actually a supporting role, but an important one. Oscar voters were so affected by his performance that they nominated him along with the film’s legendary stars, Clark Gable as mutineer Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as the egomaniacal Captain Blight. The only other nominee was Victor McLaglen, who won for The Informer. Tone’s nomination is credited with the Academy’s opening up categories for supporting performances the following year.

FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO (1943), directed by Billy Wilder

Tone had one of his best roles as the dazed British soldier who finds refuge in an Egyptian hotel where he finds work as a waiter. When the hotel becomes the temporary headquarters of the desert fox himself, Field Marshal Edwin Rommel, he quickly seizes upon the opportunity to gain Rommel’s confidence and learn his plans for the invasion of the rest of Africa.

One of Wilder’s best, yet least-known films, Tone’s strong performance is overshadowed by Erich von Stroheim’s mesmerizing portrayal of Rommel and to some extent by Anne Baxter’s portrayal of a desperate young woman.

PHANTOM LADY (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak

One of the great films noir, brilliantly directed by one of the masters of the genre, Tone has top billing as the best friend of a man suspected of murdering his wife. Unfortunately for Tone, the film is more interested in following the antics of Ella Raines as the accused man’s secretary who pretends to be the woman with the big hat who was his alleged alibi. Featuring a delicious supporting performance from Elisha Cook, Jr. as a questionable character, the film bristles with tension as it draws to its inevitable conclusion. Tone is good, but Raines and Cook are better,

ADVISE & CONSENT (1962), directed by Otto Preminger

Tone plays the President of the U.S. whose controversial candidate for Secretary of State (Henry Fonda) is mired in a battle of wills between the liberals (Walter Pidgeon, Don Murray) and conservatives (Charles Laughton, George Grizzard) that is not resolved until Tone dies and Vice President Lew Ayres takes over. A good showcase for all, this is one of Tone’s most authoritative performances, partly due to the role, partly to the stature of the actor who was by now old and frail beyond his age but still capable of providing an assured measure of himself.