KAY FRANCIS. Elegant vintage 10.5 x 13.25 matte finish sepia tone half-length glamour portrait, by Elmer Fryer, circa 1937, signed and inscribed in black fountain pen, "To Franklin/my best wishes -/Kay Francis." Fine condition, with the photograph affixed to an identical size sheet of mat board. The writing, penned at the bottom right of her gown, is perhaps a shade light but still perfectly readable. Whereas stars such as Bette Davis repeatedly clashed with the studio heads at Warner Bros. over the quality of scripts assigned to her, Kay Francis kept those salary checks coming by accepting every mediocre project that was tossed her way. By the end of the 1930s, she had pretty much worn out her welcome at the box office, and by 1945 she was reduced to producing her own no-budget programmers at Poverty Row's Monogram Studio.
$220 |
