FRANCHOT TONE: The “Millionaire” Star

Classic Images
Issue Number 488
February 2016

“[I] was the playboy, the white tie and tails, the elegant fellow with the good tailor. That was my movie image. But not for the theatre audience. They saw me as an actor.”

Few actors came off slicker or smoother than FRANCHOT TONE (1905-1968). A posh, meticulous, shaken-not-stirred representative of the silver screen, Tone’s slim, aloof, cultivated-looking actor managed to carve a four-decade niche on stage, film and TV armed with a martini-dry wit, indolent masculinity and elegant exterior. The pre-Code prototype of the penguin-suited playboy who usually lost the girl, his flawed characters often shared a similarly messy, scandalous private life. Nevertheless, Tone brought customary flair and aplomb to each of his roles opposite such 30’s female heavyweights as Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Loretta Young, Katharine Hepburn and one-time wife Joan Crawford.

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