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Noel Francis
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.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 0.755 |
Birthday | 1906-08-31 |
Place of Birth | Temple, Texas, USA |
Also Known As | Noel Frances Sweeney, Noel Frances, |
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1932
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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
7.8/209
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 false...
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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
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1931
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Blonde Crazy
7/41
Adventures of a cocky con man and his beautiful accomplice.
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Blonde Crazy
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1931
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Smart Money
6.9/26
Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
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Smart Money
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1937
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Sudden Bill Dorn
0/0
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 tak...
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Sudden Bill Dorn
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1931
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Bachelor Apartment
6.2/6
A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.
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Bachelor Apartment
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1932
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The Mouthpiece
5.9/9
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 Mouthpiece
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1932
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Manhattan Tower
6/7
The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor.
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Manhattan Tower
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1931
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Smart Woman
5.9/7
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 preten...
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Smart Woman
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1934
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Good Dame
5.5/2
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 he...
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Good Dame
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1935
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The White Cockatoo
5.3/7
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 a...
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The White Cockatoo
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1930
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New Movietone Follies of 1930
0/0
Minimum plot. Maximum stars of early cinema. Rich young Conrad Sterling (William Collier Jr.) is in love with struggling actress Mary Mason (Miriam Se...
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New Movietone Follies of 1930
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1933
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The Important Witness
5/1
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...
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The Important Witness
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1930
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Rough Romance
5/3
Love and logging in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.
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Rough Romance

1932
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Guilty as Hell
5.8/5
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 be...
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Guilty as Hell

1932
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So Big!
5.846/13
A farmer's widow takes on the land and her late husband's tempestuous son.
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So Big!

1934
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Fifteen Wives
1/1
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 in...
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Fifteen Wives

1933

Only Yesterday
6.8/5
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 h...
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Only Yesterday

1931
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Ladies of the Big House
6/1
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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Ladies of the Big House

1932

My Pal, the King
0/0
The king of a European country, who is a child, meets the cowboy star of a traveling circus.
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My Pal, the King

1933
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Havana Widows
5.8/4
Two golddiggers go fishing for millionaires in Havana.
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Havana Widows

1932

The Expert
6.3/2
An elderly gentleman arrives for an extended stay with his grown son in Chicago.
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The Expert

1932
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Night Court
6.4/8
A corrupt night court judge tears an innocent young family apart in his efforts to elude a special prosecutor.
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Night Court

1932
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Under-Cover Man
4.5/2
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...
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Under-Cover Man

1935

Stone of Silver Creek
0/0
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 onl...
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Stone of Silver Creek
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1933
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Son of a Sailor
5/1
A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.
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Son of a Sailor

1933
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Blood Money
7/8
The title refers to the business of affable, ambitious bail bondsman (and politically-connected grifter) Bill Bailey, who, in the course of his work,...
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Blood Money

1934
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The Loudspeaker
0/0
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...
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The Loudspeaker
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1933
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Bureau of Missing Persons
5.6/16
Butch Saunders has been transferred to Missing Persons because he was too brutal in other police work...
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Bureau of Missing Persons

1937
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Left-Handed Law
4/1
An army colonel tries to bring peace to a lawless community.
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Left-Handed Law

1935
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Mutiny Ahead
4/1
A wealthy playboy winds up getting himself involved with mobsters and a search for buried treasure.
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Mutiny Ahead
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1934
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Imitation of Life
7/83
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 fami...
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Imitation of Life
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1930
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Up the River
5.7/26
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 St...
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Up the River
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1933
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Reform Girl
5.5/2
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 daugh...
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Reform Girl
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1934
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Strictly Dynamite
5.3/3
A failed poet ends up becoming a gag writer for a bombastic comedian.
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Strictly Dynamite
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1932
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Flames
4/1
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 apartmen...
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Flames
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1933
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Hold Me Tight
0/0
Newly married sweethearts Chuck Evans and Molly Roberts work at Blair's Department Store and Molly plans to quit to be a stay-at-home wife and mother....
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