Frances Dee Movies

With great reluctance, Ricky (Desi Arnaz) allows Lucy (Lucille Ball) to purchase a new gown at the trendy establishment owned by designer Don Loper -- provided she spends no more than one hundred dollars. Unfortunately, there is nothing that cheap at Loper's, and thus Lucy tries to figure out a way to get a gown without paying a cent. Her opportunity comes when the wife of Gordon MacRae is forced to pull out of a charity fashion show featuring celebrities' wives as models. Armed with the knowledge that she'll get to keep the gown she wears, Lucy arranges to take Mrs. MacRae's place in the show -- but first, she must get herself a deep "California tan" so that she'll fit in with the Beverly Hills crowd. Alas, her overnight tan degenerates into a "burn" -- and it is very red-faced (and red-everything) Lucy who appears in the fashion show wearing a most uncomfortable tweed outfit. ~ All Movie Guide

Robert Jordan is a television star. Robert Jordan likes things orderly, on time and properly executed. In his world children are to be seen, not heard. So why would Mr. Jordan want to become the master of a rambunctious band of Boy Scouts? Ratings. His staff figures that if learns how to interact with the youth, they will be more inclined to watch his show. Of course watching Jordan cope comprises most of the fun. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Fans of Loretta Young were rather taken aback by the early scenes of Because of You, wherein Young is seen as brash, uninhibited bleach-blonde Christine Carroll. On the verge of marrying gangster Mike Monroe (Alex Nicol), Christine is arrested by the cops, and sent to prison on the strength of incriminating evidence slipped into her purse by the duplicitous Monroe. Through the kindness of prison psychiatrist Dr. Breen (Alexander Scourby), Christine turns her life around in prison, becoming a nurse's aid in the infirmary. Upon her release, Christine gets a job at a respectable hospital, where she falls in love with wounded combat pilot Steve Kimberly (Jeff Chandler). Will she ever be able to reveal her sordid past without sending the emotionally fragile Steve off the deep end? And what about that no-good Mike Monroe? The supporting cast of Because of You includes two of Loretta Young's contemporaries of the 1930s, Frances Dee and Mae Clarke, in strongly defined character roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Just before filming All About Eve, Bette Davis starred in the marital melodrama Payment on Demand. Davis plays the wife of Barry Sullivan, who one fine morning demands a divorce. Most of the film is in flashback, recounting the events leading up to the marital schism. After Sullivan takes up with Frances Dee, Davis heads for a Haitian vacation, hoping to spark a few affairs of her own. But after a chance meeting with an old friend (Jane Cowl) who's become hard and cynical since her own divorce, Davis heads back to the States and attempts to patch up her marriage. Director Curtis Bernhardt was particularly proud of the opening scene in Payment on Demand, wherein Barry Sullivan requests a divorce as calmly as if he was ordering breakfast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Writer/director Albert Lewin, ever on the lookout for esoteric story material that would accommodate his fascination with Egyptian sculpture and feline symbolism, managed to inject both into The Private Affairs of Bel Ami. Though based on a Guy de Maupassant story, Bel Ami seems to have been written by Oscar Wilde, another of Lewin's pets (e.g. The Picture of Dorian Gray). George Sanders plays an epigrammatic Parisian journalist, who rises to the top through the "kindnesses" of the various influential women that he's seduced and abandoned. This 19th-century rake's progress is ultimately halted by a duel, and somehow we're sorry that we don't get to see Sanders pull off at least one more caddish trick to save himself. Echoes from Lewin's previous works include his insertion of a Technicolor sequence (as he'd done in Dorian Gray and The Moon and Sixpence). George Sanders' stepping-stone ladies include Angela Lansbury, Frances Dee, Ann Dvorak, Marie Wilson, Katherine Emery and Susan Douglas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

RKO producer Val Lewton seemed to thrive upon taking the most lurid film titles and coming up with pocket-edition works of art. Saddled with the studio-dictated title I Walked With a Zombie, Lewton, together with scripters Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray, concocted a West Indies variation on Jane Eyre. Trained nurse (Frances Dee) travels to the tropics to care for Christine Gordon, the wife of seemingly abusive Tom Conway. At first, Dee merely believes her patient to be comatose. But as the drums throb and the natives behave restlessly, Dee tries to bring her patient back to life by jungle magic. Conway is racked with guilt, believing himself responsible for his wife's condition; his guilt is stoked by Conway's drunken brother James Ellison, who has always loved Gordon. Utilizing very limited sets and only a handful of extras, director Jacques Tourneur manages to evoke an impression of an expansive tropical island populated at every turn by voodoo worshippers. Many of the sequences, notably Frances Dee's first languid stroll into the midst of the native ceremonies, have an eerie dream-like quality that pervades even the most worn-out, badly processed TV prints of I Walked With Zombie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This lighthearted romantic comedy stars William Holden as working stiff Michael Stewart and Frances Dee as wealthy socialite Candace Goodwin. Falling in love with Michael, Candace agrees to marry him on his terms-namely, that they survive on his salary alone. Inevitably, Candace has trouble adjusting to her new lifestyle and yearns for the luxuries lavished upon her by her family. Meanwhile, Michael begins to suspect that Candace has been keeping company with men from her own social set. It takes the combined efforts of the Stewart and Goodwin families to reunite the quarrelsome couple in the final footage. There's nary an original moment in Meet the Stewarts, but the two leads are so darned atttractive that it doesn't matter at all. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Nazis are clearly the villains in So Ends Our Night, but since the film was made before America's entry into World War II, Adolph Hitler goes unmentioned (we wouldn't want to lose those foreign markets, would we?) Based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Flotsam, the film zeroes in on three German refugees. Frederic March despises the Nazis on ideological grounds; Margaret Sullavan, a Jew, is fleeing for her life; and Glenn Ford, born of a Jewish mother and Aryan father, is racked with confusion and torn loyalties. The three separate as they move from country to country in Europe, just a step or so ahead of the advancing Nazis. As Sullavan and Ford fall in love, March puts his life on the line by trying to arrange a reunion with his ailing wife Frances Dee, who has remained in Germany. Had So Ends Our Night been released a few months after the US entry into the war, it might have done better at the box office. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

If I Were King is a delightful costume adventure tale set in 14th century France, during the reign of Louis XI, and inspired by the legend of the rebel poet François Villon, whose exploits were filmed earlier as The Beloved Rogue (1927) with John Barrymore, and later transformed into the musical The Vagabond King on Broadway and onscreen. The movie opens with Paris surrounded by the forces of the Duke of Burgundy, whose armies have laid siege to the city in hopes of starving out King Louis XI (Basil Rathbone, in a riveting performance), a wily, cruel monarch who distrusts all around him -- mostly, however, Burgundy has succeeded in forcing Louis to hunker down and in starving the common people of Paris, whose well-being their king can't be bothered about.

The one man in Paris with the courage to raise a hand to ease the suffering is François Villon (Ronald Colman), a gifted poet and glib orator who understands the common people far better than Louis. We first meet him leading a raid on the king's storehouse for sorely needed food and wine. Pursued by the king's guards, he accidentally crosses paths with Louis himself -- trying to uncover a nest of traitors -- at a tavern, and is captured. Louis would normally have Villon put to death without a second thought, but the rebel poet has done him the service of killing a treasonous officer, and has also piqued the king's interest with his notion of inspiring loyalty rather than fear in his subjects. The king also wishes to show Villon that it isn't always easy, even with all of the power of the crown on one's side, to rule a kingdom, or even the capitol city of a kingdom. Louis appoints Villon to the post of Constable of France, in command of all military and police authorities, and nominally in charge of the army, and leaves it to him to do his job -- with the provision that, at the end of a week in so powerful a position, Villon will, indeed, hang. Villon does a very good job of dispensing justice in a way that makes his followers love the king, and even turns one traitor into a loyalist. He is less successful at getting the titled nobility on his side, or the generals to rally their armies for the task at hand, breaking the siege, and is further distracted from his task by his romantic entanglements, with Ellen Drew as the girl of the streets who loves Villon and Frances Dee as the lady-in-waiting to the queen who has stolen his heart.

Director Frank Lloyd uses the same sure hand that propelled his Oscar-nominated Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) to weave together the telling of this lusty and witty tale (from a clever screenplay by Preston Sturges, who added his own translations of Villon's poetry to the original script); but the real interest for most viewers will reside with the sparks that fly from the performances of Colman and Rathbone as the two equally matched antagonists, each toying with the other's perceived weaknesses (especially their vanity) while, in his way, secretly admiring elements of the other's character. In the end, Sturges' script cleverly interweaves their common interests, Villon realizing that he must save Paris in order to keep from losing his head. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Paramount's answer to Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) also involved mutiny and romance on the high seas. Gary Cooper stars as Nuggin Taylor, first mate on a slave ship in 1842. Ironically, Nuggin is an abolitionist. When a mutiny overthrows the ship's skipper and leaves him in charge, he frees his cargo. Back in England, charges against Nuggin and his fellow shipmate Powdah (George Raft) are dropped. Nuggin is approached by British intelligence agents and asked to embark on a secret information-gathering mission that could end the slave trade. Nuggin agrees and Powdah accompanies him on a ship bound for America, where both men fall in love, Nuggin with Margaret (Frances Dee) and Powdah with Babsie (Olympa Bradna). However, their adventures are far from over. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Francis Lederer stars as the prince of a mythical European kingdom. To mingle with the "common folk" while on a visit to New York, he takes a job as a hotel doorman. In this capacity he meets Frances Dee, a small-town secretary who has likewise come to Manhattan to put a little variety in her life. Gay Deception is an enjoyable trifle put expertly through its paces by William Wyler, a director just on the verge of bigger assignments. It was one of the last Fox Studios films to be released before Fox's merger with Twentieth Century Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first of three film versions of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage stars Leslie Howard as sensitive, clubfooted artist-cum-med student Philip Carey. Despite his yearnings for the finer things in life, Carey cannot extricate himself from a mutually destructive relationship with sluttish waitress Mildred Rogers (Bette Davis). After an incredible series of emotional disasters, Carey finally finds happiness in the arms of Sally Altheny (Frances Dee). The industry buzz in 1934 indicated that Bette Davis was a shoe-in for an Academy Award for her savage portrayal of Mildred, but her home studio Warner Bros. failed to mount an adequate publicity campaign on Davis' behalf, allegedly because she'd made the film on loan-out to RKO and Warners wasn't about to heap praise upon a rival. It is now generally conceded that Davis' Oscar win for 1935's Dangerous was consolation for her losing the statuette in 1934. Long out of circulation due to the 1946 remake, the 1934 Of Human Bondage has since slipped into the public domain, and is now seen more often than either of the subsequent remakes (the last was in 1964). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a lovely young debutante falls in love with a jazz violinist. Her mother wants her to marry a wealthy young man, but the strong-willed girl initially demurs until the night of her debut. Her well-meaning social adviser fills the debutante's dance card with partners and this inflames the jealous violinist causing a heated argument between himself and the deb. Out of spite, she marries a wealthy fellow, who unfortunately turns out to be a drunk. Later everything turns out all right after he grants her an annulment, and she and the violinist finally come together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide