Noel Francis

Actor · 1906 – 1959 · 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.

Movies24

Movie7.8
Drama
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.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
1932 · 234 votes
Movie7.0
DramaRomance
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.
Imitation of Life
1934 · 88 votes
Movie8.0
DramaComedy
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.
The Loudspeaker
1934 · 1 votes
Movie5.7
CrimeComedy
A young woman goes to the police looking for her missing husband. When it turns out her husband is both a murder victim and a bachelor - and that she is the primary suspect - tough cop Butch Saunders comes up with a scheme to crack the case.
Bureau of Missing Persons
1933 · 19 votes
Movie6.9
CrimeDrama
Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
Smart Money
1931 · 31 votes
Movie6.0
ComedyAdventure
A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.
Son of a Sailor
1933 · 2 votes
Movie6.0
Drama
A woman tries to save her husband from the electric chair after both are sent to prison for a murder they didn't commit.
Ladies of the Big House
1931 · 3 votes
Movie7.1
DramaRomance
On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young businessman is about to commit suicide. With a note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices an envelope addressed to him on his desk. As he begins to read, we're taken back to World War One and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.
Only Yesterday
1933 · 7 votes
Movie5.7
ComedyCrime
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.
Up the River
1930 · 32 votes
Movie10.0
Music
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.
New Movietone Follies of 1930
1930 · 1 votes
Movie7.0
DramaCrime
The adventures of a cocky con man and his beautiful accomplice.
Blonde Crazy
1931 · 47 votes
Movie8.0
Western
The king of a European country, who is a child, meets the cowboy star of a traveling circus.
My Pal, the King
1932 · 1 votes
Movie8.0
Crime
Mae Cosgrove, a nightclub hostess, carries out a robbery on the safe of a gangster's palatial home.
What's Your Racket
1934 · 1 votes
Movie6.2
Drama
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.
The Mouthpiece
1932 · 12 votes
Movie8.0
Western
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.
Stone of Silver Creek
1935 · 1 votes
Movie6.6
Comedy
Two golddiggers go fishing for millionaires in Havana.
Havana Widows
1933 · 5 votes
Movie7.0
Drama
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.
Good Dame
1934 · 3 votes
Movie3.5
CrimeDrama
Bob Curtis (William Gargan), the youngest member of the New York City plain-clothes squad, is assigned to help Detective-Sergeant Doyle (Paul Hurst) uncover the people behind a number of fur robberies. Peggy Arnold (Marian Nixon), a beautiful girl, comes under suspicion, but Bob, convinced of her innocence, adopts a desperate plan to clear her and round up the real criminals.
The Line-Up
1934 · 4 votes
Movie7.1
Crime
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.
Blood Money
1933 · 9 votes
Movie5.8
DramaRomance
A farmer's widow takes on the land and her late husband's tempestuous son.
So Big!
1932 · 17 votes
Movie5.4
ComedyDrama
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.
Smart Woman
1931 · 9 votes
Movie5.9
Mystery
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.
The White Cockatoo
1935 · 9 votes
Movie5.9
ComedyDrama
A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.
Bachelor Apartment
1931 · 9 votes
Movie7.2
ComedyDrama
An elderly gentleman arrives for an extended stay with his grown son in Chicago.
The Expert
1932 · 4 votes