I Found Stella Parish

source: I Found Stella Parish

Trailer—I Found Stella Parish

I Found Stella Parish

Kay Francis had started out a couple years back when the talkies were just starting. Here, she's Stella, a British stage star who runs off to Amurrica to escape her past in this Warner Brothers film. Her daughter is child-star Sybill Jason, a precocious eight year old. and her mother, played by the amazing Jessie Ralph. check her out in Bank Dick, and so many other great films. what a presence. Co-stars Ian Hunter as the newspaper guy chasing after Stella to find out what's going on. What IS the big secret ?? Pretty good story. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. From a story by John Saunders. Had won an oscar for Dawn Patrol. and wrote the 1927 version of "Wings". and was married to Fay Wray. who could ask for more? apparently that wasn't enough. offed himself at age 44.

A potboiling soap opera with Kay Francis decked out in all the most exaggerated finery of the day. Emotions abound throughout as logic and reason are cast to the wind. This is what they were aiming toward and what the audience wanted. They expected Kay Francis to suffer and emote and play on the heartstrings of some innocent man. Her actions in this film are so illogical that they can only be seen as the conveyance to situations where Francis can suffer and emote even more. They pulled it off fairly well.

Good for you. You can keep her. Like too many of Kay Francis' post "Paradise" pics the best part of it is pulling the plug which for me occurred twenty minutes in when I suddenly realized that I did not give a rodent's posterior about the title character's past (or present, for that matter), nor could I abide another minute of relentlessly adorable Sybil Jason. PS...Ian Hunter is a Cary Grant for troglodytes.

Considering Mervyn Leroy directed this film, it has to rank as a disappointment. Kay Francis sleepwalks her way through a ridiculous plot about an actress whose career is threatened by blackmail. Casey Robinson's hastily written screenplay was probably an afterthought while he worked on Captain Blood, but there's no excuse for a film set (partly) in Britain to include constant references to people's 'apartments' and feature cars with left hand drives! Ludicrous Cockney accents we can overlook, but these details distracted me throughout the film. Everything about Stella Parish looks like a rush job, and Ms. Francis seems particularly anxious to call it a day. Not a complete disaster, but edging close to it.

For KAY FRANCIS admirers, I suppose this one is one of their favorite vehicles. She gets a stunning wardrobe and close-ups to die for. But unfortunately, even Mervyn LeRoy's direction and Orry-Kelly's wardrobe and Casey Robinson's script can't bring reality to the mawkish story. She's a stage actress with a gilded reputation, but she's hiding her past transgressions in order to protect her child (SYBIL JASON). Improbably, IAN HUNTER is a reporter who's so anxious to get the inside scoop on where she has fled to, that he goes to extreme lengths to discover her whereabouts. Naturally, they fall in love and he has to confess that he's the journalist who spilled her story to the press. At this point, the plot forgets about reality and sinks into soap suds until the bitter end. It's typical slush for Miss Francis, who suffers and suffers until that magical moment when everything is coming up roses for the last reel. Forget about it.

Sad to see the unacceptable comments about Sybill Jason posted. She was a doll. Look at "I'm a little Big Shot" and watch her magic. Kay insisted that Jason take another part in a movie in which she played her daughter. Her acting is precious and remember folks, she was being coached. I feel that people are unjust in speaking of a child they way they did on the comments. Kay Francis and Ian Hunter are magic. The scene where Gloria (Jason) is crying for her mother to Hunter is so real. Watch it, enjoy it and remember when year it was made. There will never be another Kay Francis. I wish more of her movies were available to purchase. I recorded several and my DVR crashed and lost all of them so I am buying them little by little but some are hard to find and TCM shows them only rarely.

I Found Stella Parish masterfully engages the viewer. It is very stylized hokum, but yet it is sincere and rather poignant. Kay Francis plays an actress with a secret past that involves having given birth to a child out of wedlock. Taking a break from her stage career, she decides to focus on her role as a mother and travels incognito with her daughter, played by Sybil Jason. It's a nice bit of casting, and their performances nicely complement each other. Three years later, Warners would reunite Francis and Jason on screen in Comet Over Broadway. Once again, they are mother and daughter, and once again Miss Francis is an actress.