Noel Francis

Noel Francis

Born: August 31, 1906
Died: October 30, 1959
in Temple, Texas, USA
Noel Francis was born in Temple, Texas in 1906. By age 20 she was appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies, working opposite the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey. Eventually Fox scouts noticed her and in 1929 she was signed to a Hollywood contract. Because of her Follies background, Fox intended to develop Noel as a musical and dance star. Unfortunately, musicals were on the wane at the time (they did rebound) and her contract was dropped. Luckily, she was picked up by Warner Brothers, and featured in a number of films that had her portraying the tough talking, sassy female connected to gangsters, convicts, and other underworld types, so popular with the movie going public then and now.

Noel was rarely given the lead female role, though she worked near the top with some of the era's best actors in films that included Smart Money (1931), in which she is a scheming blonde helping Edward G. Robinson lose his money, and Blonde Crazy (1931), where her target is James Cagney. Her most noted performance was in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), working with Paul Muni in one of his strongest performances. However, perhaps because of being typecast, she found herself in "B" productions after 1932, though one was as the lead female, in Mayfair Picture Corporation's 1934 What's Your Racket?, opposite Regis Toomey.

Needing work, Noel returned to Broadway, but couldn't resume her career there, and returned to Hollywood to make three final films with Buck Jones, including Stone of Silver Creek (1935), in which she used her Broadway musical expertise to play a saloon singer. Between 1929 and 1937 Noel made 47 films.

She died October 30, 1959 in Los Angeles, California.

Movies for Noel Francis...

Sudden Bill Dorn
Title: Sudden Bill Dorn
Character: Lorna Kent
Released: December 1, 1937
Type: Movie
Bundy has found gold on the Kent ranch but directs everyone to Ghost Town as he tries to take over the ranch. But Bill and Kent's niece Lorna have taken possession. When it appears Bundy is attracted to Lorna, his jealous girl friend has men destroy the ranch and the explosion helps uncover the gold vein.
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Left-Handed Law
Title: Left-Handed Law
Character: Betty Golden
Released: March 31, 1937
Type: Movie
An army colonel tries to bring peace to a lawless community.
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Stone of Silver Creek
Title: Stone of Silver Creek
Character: Lola
Released: April 14, 1935
Type: Movie
In perhaps the most tranquil B-Western of the 1930s, Buck Jones, who also produced, plays the tough but goodhearted proprietor of the Bonanza, the only gambling establishment in otherwise God-fearing Silver Creek. Noel Francis, who used to play blonde schemers in Warner Bros. gangster films, earns second billing as the casino's equally goodhearted chanteuse.
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Mutiny Ahead
Title: Mutiny Ahead
Character: Mimi
Released: March 1, 1935
Type: Movie
A wealthy playboy winds up getting himself involved with mobsters and a search for buried treasure.
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The White Cockatoo
Title: The White Cockatoo
Character: Elise
Released: January 29, 1935
Type: Movie
In a spooky hotel on the coast of France, two bands of crooks are working independently of the other in an attempt to steal the inherited fortune of an American girl, Sue Tally. Along the way the heiress is kidnapped, three murders are committed, a girl appears in two places at once, mysterious persons roam about the old hotel at night and mysteriously disappear, and there is a hidden room without any doors.
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Imitation of Life
Title: Imitation of Life
Character: Mrs. Eden (uncredited)
Released: November 23, 1934
Type: Movie
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
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Fifteen Wives
Title: Fifteen Wives
Character: Ruby Cotton
Released: July 15, 1934
Type: Movie
Shortly after his arrival from South America to New York, Steven Humbolt is found dead in his apartment at the Savoia Hotel. Inspector Decker Dawes investigates the case and although the cause of death is described as apoplexy, Dawes is convinced it as murder, especially after he learns that Humbolt had been married fifteen times.
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The Loudspeaker
Title: The Loudspeaker
Character: Dolly
Released: June 1, 1934
Type: Movie
A young man from a small town hits New York City, bound and determined to become a radio star. Amazingly, he achieves his ambition, but in the process alienates everyone around him with his arrogance and egomania.
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Strictly Dynamite
Title: Strictly Dynamite
Character: Lady Waiting in Georgie's Lobby (uncredited)
Released: May 11, 1934
Type: Movie
A failed poet ends up becoming a gag writer for a bombastic comedian.
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Good Dame
Title: Good Dame
Character: Puff Warner
Released: March 16, 1934
Type: Movie
A chorus girl gets stranded in a small midwestern town. Against her better judgement, she hooks up with a smooth-talking con artist who says he can help her get out of town.
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Son of a Sailor
Title: Son of a Sailor
Character: Queenie
Released: November 29, 1933
Type: Movie
A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.
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Havana Widows
Title: Havana Widows
Character: Gladys Gable (uncredited)
Released: November 18, 1933
Type: Movie
Two golddiggers go fishing for millionaires in Havana.
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Blood Money
Title: Blood Money
Character: Red's Girlfriend (uncredited)
Released: November 17, 1933
Type: Movie
The title refers to the business of affable, ambitious bail bondsman (and politically-connected grifter) Bill Bailey, who, in the course of his work, crosses paths with every kind of offender there is, from first-time defendants to career criminals.
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Only Yesterday
Title: Only Yesterday
Character: Letitia
Released: November 1, 1933
Type: Movie
On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young business man is about to commit suicide. With the note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices a thick envelope addressed to him at the desk. As he begin to read, we're taken back to the days of WW1 and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.
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Bureau of Missing Persons
Title: Bureau of Missing Persons
Character: Alice Crane
Released: September 16, 1933
Type: Movie
Butch Saunders has been transferred to Missing Persons because he was too brutal in other police work...
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The Important Witness
Title: The Important Witness
Character: Ellen Kelly
Released: July 15, 1933
Type: Movie
A freelance stenographer is hired for a job, but when she arrives at the address she was given, she finds that a murder has taken place there--and she is arrested for it.
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Reform Girl
Title: Reform Girl
Character: Lydia Johnson
Released: March 4, 1933
Type: Movie
A young girl just out of prison and desperate for money finds herself involved in a plot to smear a politician by pretending to be his long-lost daughter.
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Under-Cover Man
Title: Under-Cover Man
Character: Connie
Released: December 2, 1932
Type: Movie
When his father is murdered, erstwhile conman Nick Darrow asks the cops if he can go undercover to find the killers, and maybe even stop a crime ring that has been plaguing the police. The sister of another innocent victim joins him as they infiltrate the syndicate. Any wrong move could lead to instant death.
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Manhattan Tower
Title: Manhattan Tower
Character: Marge Lyon
Released: December 1, 1932
Type: Movie
The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor.
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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Title: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Character: Linda
Released: November 9, 1932
Type: Movie
A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.
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Guilty as Hell
Title: Guilty as Hell
Character: Julia Reed
Released: August 5, 1932
Type: Movie
Richard Arlen is the convicted murderer and Adrienne Ames his sister who believes in his innocence. We see the murder and the framing set-up at the beginning of the film, so there’s no mystery for the audience to solve. Just the pleasure of watching an intricate cat-and-mouse game, with the murderer one step ahead of his pursuers until the final, tense confrontation.
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Night Court
Title: Night Court
Character: Lil Baker
Released: June 4, 1932
Type: Movie
A corrupt night court judge tears an innocent young family apart in his efforts to elude a special prosecutor.
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Flames
Title: Flames
Character: Pat
Released: May 29, 1932
Type: Movie
Brown is a confident young firefighter. He and his buddy become interested in two girls, after saving their cat. He then fights a fire in the apartment building next door to his new girlfriend.
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So Big!
Title: So Big!
Character: Mabel
Released: April 30, 1932
Type: Movie
A farmer's widow takes on the land and her late husband's tempestuous son.
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My Pal, the King
Title: My Pal, the King
Character: Princess Elsa
Released: April 3, 1932
Type: Movie
The king of a European country, who is a child, meets the cowboy star of a traveling circus.
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The Mouthpiece
Title: The Mouthpiece
Character: Miss DeVere
Released: March 21, 1932
Type: Movie
A prosecutor quits his job and becomes a defense attorney when he finds out that a man he got convicted and executed was actually innocent.
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The Expert
Title: The Expert
Character: Daisy
Released: March 5, 1932
Type: Movie
An elderly gentleman arrives for an extended stay with his grown son in Chicago.
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Ladies of the Big House
Title: Ladies of the Big House
Character: Thelma
Released: December 26, 1931
Type: Movie
A woman tries to save her husband from the electric chair after both are sent to prison for a murder they didn't commit.
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Blonde Crazy
Title: Blonde Crazy
Character: Helen Wilson
Released: September 16, 1931
Type: Movie
Adventures of a cocky con man and his beautiful accomplice.
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Smart Woman
Title: Smart Woman
Character: Peggy Preston
Released: September 12, 1931
Type: Movie
A society man's loving, devoted wife, upon learning that he has been unfaithful and is planning to leave her for the other woman, strategically pretends to be having an affair of her own. The woman's friends gladly assist in the deception.
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Smart Money
Title: Smart Money
Character: Marie
Released: June 11, 1931
Type: Movie
Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
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Bachelor Apartment
Title: Bachelor Apartment
Character: Janet
Released: April 15, 1931
Type: Movie
A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.
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Up the River
Title: Up the River
Character: Sophie (uncredited)
Released: October 10, 1930
Type: Movie
Daily life at men and women's prison units where baseball and the marching band are serious business. Two prisoners escape in order to help paroled Steve from being blackmailed by his girlfriend's ex-partner-in-crime.
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Rough Romance
Title: Rough Romance
Character: Flossie
Released: June 15, 1930
Type: Movie
Love and logging in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.
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New Movietone Follies of 1930
Title: New Movietone Follies of 1930
Character: Gloria de Witt
Released: May 4, 1930
Type: Movie
Minimum plot. Maximum stars of early cinema. Rich young Conrad Sterling (William Collier Jr.) is in love with struggling actress Mary Mason (Miriam Seeger). To prove his love, he hires Mary and the entire company of the show in which she is appearing to entertain his weekend guests at his lavish mansion.