
1906-08-31 ( 118 years old ) 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
Sudden Bill Dorn
1937-12-01
Left-Handed Law
1937-03-31
Stone of Silver Creek
1935-04-14
Mutiny Ahead
1935-03-01
The White Cockatoo
1935-01-29
Imitation of Life
1934-11-23
Fifteen Wives
1934-07-15
The Loudspeaker
1934-06-01
Strictly Dynamite
1934-05-11
Good Dame
1934-03-16
Son of a Sailor
1933-11-29
Havana Widows
1933-11-18
Blood Money
1933-11-17
Only Yesterday
1933-11-01
Bureau of Missing Persons
1933-09-16
The Important Witness
1933-07-15
Hold Me Tight
1933-05-20
Reform Girl
1933-03-04
Under-Cover Man
1932-12-02
Manhattan Tower
1932-12-01
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
1932-11-09
Guilty as Hell
1932-08-05
Night Court
1932-06-04
Flames
1932-05-29
So Big!
1932-04-30
My Pal, the King
1932-04-03
The Mouthpiece
1932-03-21
The Expert
1932-03-05
Ladies of the Big House
1931-12-26
Blonde Crazy
1931-09-16
Smart Woman
1931-09-12
Smart Money
1931-06-11
Bachelor Apartment
1931-04-15
Up the River
1930-10-10
Rough Romance
1930-06-15
New Movietone Follies of 1930
1930-05-04
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