Noel Francis
Also Known As: Noel Frances Sweeney, Noel Frances
Biography: 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.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Temple, Texas, USA
Birthday: August 31, 1906
Deathday: October 30, 1959
Adult: No
Gender: Female
Popularity:
Known For:
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Overview: 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.
Genres: Drama Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-11-09
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Blonde Crazy
Overview: Adventures of a cocky con man and his beautiful accomplice.
Genres: Drama Crime Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1931-09-16
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Smart Money
Overview: Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
Genres: Crime Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1931-06-11
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Sudden Bill Dorn
Overview: Bundy has found gold on the Kent ranch but directs everyone to Ghost Town as he tries to take over the ranch. But Bill and Kent's niece Lorna have taken possession. When it appears Bundy is attracted to Lorna, his jealous girl friend has men destroy the ranch and the explosion helps uncover the gold vein.
Genres: Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-12-01
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Bachelor Apartment
Overview: A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.
Genres: Comedy Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1931-04-15
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The Mouthpiece
Overview: 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.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-03-21
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Manhattan Tower
Overview: The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-12-01
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Smart Woman
Overview: 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.
Genres: Comedy Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1931-09-12
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Good Dame
Overview: 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.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-03-16
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The White Cockatoo
Overview: 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.
Genres: Mystery
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-01-29
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New Movietone Follies of 1930
Overview: 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.
Genres: Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1930-05-04
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The Important Witness
Overview: A freelance stenographer is hired for a job, but when she arrives at the address she was given, she finds that a murder has taken place there--and she is arrested for it.
Genres: Action Adventure Comedy Drama Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-07-15
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Rough Romance
Overview: Love and logging in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.
Genres: Adventure Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1930-06-15
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Guilty as Hell
Overview: Richard Arlen is the convicted murderer and Adrienne Ames his sister who believes in his innocence. We see the murder and the framing set-up at the beginning of the film, so there’s no mystery for the audience to solve. Just the pleasure of watching an intricate cat-and-mouse game, with the murderer one step ahead of his pursuers until the final, tense confrontation.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-08-05
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So Big!
Overview: A farmer's widow takes on the land and her late husband's tempestuous son.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-04-30
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Fifteen Wives
Overview: Shortly after his arrival from South America to New York, Steven Humbolt is found dead in his apartment at the Savoia Hotel. Inspector Decker Dawes investigates the case and although the cause of death is described as apoplexy, Dawes is convinced it as murder, especially after he learns that Humbolt had been married fifteen times.
Genres: Mystery
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-07-15
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Only Yesterday
Overview: On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young business man is about to commit suicide. With the note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices a thick envelope addressed to him at the desk. As he begin to read, we're taken back to the days of WW1 and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-11-01
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Ladies of the Big House
Overview: A woman tries to save her husband from the electric chair after both are sent to prison for a murder they didn't commit.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1931-12-26
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My Pal, the King
Overview: The king of a European country, who is a child, meets the cowboy star of a traveling circus.
Genres: Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-04-03
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Havana Widows
Overview: Two golddiggers go fishing for millionaires in Havana.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-11-18
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The Expert
Overview: An elderly gentleman arrives for an extended stay with his grown son in Chicago.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-03-05
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Night Court
Overview: A corrupt night court judge tears an innocent young family apart in his efforts to elude a special prosecutor.
Genres: Crime Drama Thriller
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-06-04
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Under-Cover Man
Overview: When his father is murdered, erstwhile conman Nick Darrow asks the cops if he can go undercover to find the killers, and maybe even stop a crime ring that has been plaguing the police. The sister of another innocent victim joins him as they infiltrate the syndicate. Any wrong move could lead to instant death.
Genres: Drama Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-12-02
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Stone of Silver Creek
Overview: 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.
Genres: Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-04-14
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Son of a Sailor
Overview: A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.
Genres: Comedy Adventure
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-11-29
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Blood Money
Overview: 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.
Genres: Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-11-17
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The Loudspeaker
Overview: 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.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-06-01
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Bureau of Missing Persons
Overview: Butch Saunders has been transferred to Missing Persons because he was too brutal in other police work...
Genres: Comedy Crime Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-09-16
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Left-Handed Law
Overview: An army colonel tries to bring peace to a lawless community.
Genres: Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-03-31
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Mutiny Ahead
Overview: A wealthy playboy winds up getting himself involved with mobsters and a search for buried treasure.
Genres: Action Adventure
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-03-01
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Imitation of Life
Overview: 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.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-11-23
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Up the River
Overview: 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.
Genres: Comedy Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1930-10-10
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Reform Girl
Overview: A young girl just out of prison and desperate for money finds herself involved in a plot to smear a politician by pretending to be his long-lost daughter.
Genres: Crime Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-03-04
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Strictly Dynamite
Overview: A failed poet ends up becoming a gag writer for a bombastic comedian.
Genres: Comedy Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-05-11
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Flames
Overview: Brown is a confident young firefighter. He and his buddy become interested in two girls, after saving their cat. He then fights a fire in the apartment building next door to his new girlfriend.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-05-29
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Hold Me Tight
Overview: Newly married sweethearts Chuck Evans and Molly Roberts work at Blair's Department Store and Molly plans to quit to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. But Chuck unexpectedly and unfairly gets fired so Molly stays on. She catches the eye of Dolan, the crooked store detective, and he makes a play for her, trying to make Chuck, who is still unemployed, small in her eyes. Meanwhile, Dolan puts into action his plan to steal the store's fur coats by hiring his girlfriend, Trudie Holmes, and Molly to do a sham inventory one night, then hires Chuck to unwittingly drive the contraband away. Dolan arranges with his mugs for Chuck to be the fall guy if anything goes wrong. Molly & Chuck become suspicious and manage to foil the robbery. Blair appoints Chuck the head of the shipping department and the young couple see a bright future ahead.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-05-20
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