Sa douce maison

Stage performer Kay Francis leaves wealthy lover John Halliday to marry society man Gene Raymond. Visiting Halliday after an operation, he says he should have married her, pulls out a gun, and tries to kill himself. Miss Francis tries to stop him, but fails, and is found guilty of his murder. Twenty years go by before she is released and gets a makeover. She meets gambler Ricardo Cortez and they fall in love, but returning to New York, they get jobs at the gambling house, where her daughter Margaret Lindsay, who thinks her dead, shows up. And then the story gets complicated.

Miss Francis gets a lot of costume changes and a couple of hair-dye jobs, of course, from stage tights through high fashion, and does very well in her performance as usual. After her heyday, she got an undeserved reputation as a clothes horse and nothing more. Cortez, still trying to hang onto leading roles after sound revealed an accent unsuitable for his silent, Valentino-like roles, does also does very well. Director Robert Florey might have made this about the changing face of New York, and perhaps that story wound up on the cutting-room floor. With Frank McHugh, William 'Stage' Boyd, and Hardie Albright.

The House On 56th Street is a Stella Dallas like melodramatic soap opera that Kay Francis did for Warner Brothers before Bette Davis made a specialty of them for that studio. This pre-Code film is laced with irony for Kay.

Kay's a Floradora girl from the Ragtime Era who has all the men chasing her in 1905. She's the kept woman of ragtime rake John Halliday, but young Gene Raymond sweeps her off her feet and they marry and have a daughter. He takes her back to the family digs on East 56th Street in New York City and fancy digs they are.

Halliday gets some bad news from his doctor that he's only got months to live and he wants to live them with Francis, whatever the scandal. Francis tries to prevent him from committing suicide, but when Halliday does in the struggle for the pistol, she goes up for manslaughter and gets 20 years.

Fast forward to the Roaring Twenties and Kay's now free and living anonymously and making a living as a gambling lady with Ricardo Cortez and William 'Stage' Boyd. She gets an opportunity however to impart one really big favor on grownup daughter Margaret Lindsay and it's a beaut.

Although Bette Davis would later do these kind of parts, I mention Stella Dallas because The House On 56th Street also involves a mother separating herself from her daughter for her own good. Francis's role which she does a fine job with seems to fit Barbara Stanwyck even better.

Favorite scene here is the gambling scene on board a ship where Francis takes Cortez to the cleaners even though he's cheating. It reminded me a lot of the climax in Rounders with Matt Damon and John Malkovich.

Though The House On 56th Street is dated, it's still an effective film. Note the sense of irony in Francis's final line in the film.

Lightning-paced drama directed by Robert Florey stars Kay Francis (top female star at Warners) as a chorus girl in 1905 who is pursued by an older man (John Halliday) who has no interest in marriage and a younger man (Gene Raymond) who wants to marry her. She opts for Raymond and becomes a society hostess and eventually has a baby. Later, when she learns Halliday is ill, she visits. He tries to commit suicide but Francis is convicted and jailed for 20 years. The baby daughter grows up (Margaret Lindsay). Out of jail, Francis goes by the name of Mrs. Stone and meets up with a gambler (Ricardo Cortez). They work in a speakeasy and everything is OK until the daughter shows up one night. The ironic ending is perfect.

At 68 minutes, this film whizzes along but is filled with lots of period detail and plot elements. Very nicely done. Kay Francis gets to transform from the frilly 1905 fashions and hair to a sleek henna-rinsed beauty in 1927 and finally to a slightly graying babe dealing cards in 1933. She's terrific, and the ending will surprise you.

Co-stars include Nella Walker, Henry O'Neill, Frank McHugh, Hardie Albright, and William "Stage" Boyd.

Kay Francis is as silky and dazzling as ever, but the plot to this film is a mess. It flits along melodramatically in its 68 minute run time, and we see Kay in three roles (chorus girl, socialite, and card sharp) as well as with three leading men (Gene Raymond, John Halliday, and Ricardo Cortez). There are several plot points which strain credibility, but there are also a few fine moments here and there. Had the film not tried to do as many things and had a little more depth, it would have been better, so if you're a Kay Francis it's worth a watch, but probably not otherwise. Oh, and gotta love that ending, which while unbelievable and silly, was only possible pre-Code.

Every cliché, every stock character and every conceivable plot twist are knitted into this gloriously daft, frenetically fast early thirties ultra, ultra-soapy melodramatic melodrama.

If you found yourself in 1933 and was asked to make something which you knew audiences would flock to, you'd make this. It's got everything 1933 wanted. Rose-tinted nostalgia for the gilded age, romance, tragedy, estranged daughters, murder, prison ...and Kay Francis. In many ways it is just a box ticking exercise, there's absolutely nothing special about this. There's too much happening in too short a time for you to become emotionally engaged but nevertheless it's enjoyable enough.

Unlike something like NIGHT COURT, made a year earlier which makes you get up and rant at the screen with the injustice it portrays, this doesn't quite hit you where it's meant to. Although fortunately nothing like the awful STELLA DALLAS which ushered in the sentimental fluff of the forties, there are ominous clouds of that type of mush visible on the horizon in this. It's not helped by Robert Florey's bland direct-by-numbers approach, weird incongruous close ups and sloppy editing.

But still, where else are you going to get so much squeezed into just over an hour than in a classic Warner pre-code?