I Found Stella Parish

Stella Parish (Kay Francis) is a famous stage star in England. Her private life is private. As she reaches new heights, a mystery man from her past threatens it all. She escapes to America with her daughter Gloria and close personal friend Nana (Jessie Ralph). Eager reporter Keith Lockridge (Ian Hunter) smells a story and follows them.

I really like the mystery man with him not showing his face. I would like for the mystery figure to show up once in awhile. In comparison, Keith is less compelling. The exposition is a bit too long, but she does have to tell the whole story. I would have liked this story more as a mystery thriller and less as a melodrama.

This is a badly dated melodrama about an actress whose dark past is revealed by a conniving reporter. Kay Francis is luminous, but she can't play trash.

When Stella gets tough and starts on her downward trend, Kay, with her patrician beauty and educated accent, can't do it. A very talky movie, supposedly set in England, but the atmosphere and language aren't very British.

Apparently the play she appears in has something to do with Caligula - trust me, it's no starmaking play or performance. It was fun to see that the play actually had an orchestra, a reminder of the old days when "straight plays" were really huge events.

A chance for Kay Francis to drop her r's, wear a stunning Orry-Kelly wardrobe, and emote in several styles, this melodrama, effectively directed by Mervyn LeRoy, has her as an American who's become the First Lady of the West End, rather like Talullah Bankhead. She also has a daughter--Sybil Jason, whom several posters have panned, and I think she's good--and a Deep Dark Secret, which, when a silhouetted Barton MacLane threatens to expose it, sends her packing after a triumphant opening night (in a play about Caligula, and it looks like a dog) and running off to New York in unconvincing old-lady disguise. She's trailed by Ian Hunter, a reporter determined to uncover her history, and as he's exposing her unsavory past to the public, he's also falling in love with her. The implausibilities just keep mounting: Once in New York, Stella abandons her disguise, yet NO ONE recognizes her though she's the toast of the London theater, and her fall to cheap burlesque makes no sense, nor does the happy-ending resolution, with Hunter performing a good deed (aided by her producer, a dapper Paul Lukas) that makes everything right. It's mighty entertaining, though, and Kay, sometimes just a clothes horse, does some actual acting.

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.

Super melodramatic sudser with Kay suffering and suffering and suffering and the audience suspending disbelief. If you can do that you'll enjoy this exercise in excess.

Kay is as usual dressed in high fashion throughout. A kaleidescope of 30's fashion, which was what the public expected from a Kay Francis vehicle at the time and it's easy to see why. Due to her height, slenderness and perfect posture she's able to carry off even the most exaggerated clothes. However the clothes only take the film so far and the story that it's pegged on is the usual preposterousness that was also a regular component her films. Supported by a good cast, although Ian Hunter is rather stiff as the male lead, Kay plays one ridiculous situation after another with complete conviction. This was one of her biggest hits.