Just a short note to celebrate TCM paying tribute to Kay Francis on Thursdays all next month. I love Kay Francis. She often played strong women, had an unconventional beauty, and was a top box-office draw at Warner Brothers for most of the 1930s. Watching her pre-code movies reveals a Hollywood that catered to what women thought about and felt, even if they did mostly end with the woman in her place where she belongs. Some of the Kay Francis movies I’ve seen, like Stranded (1935), actually have Kay not submitting to the man in the end, but actually show him admitting what a fool he’s been all along, something that must have thrilled her fans.