Oh, Kay!

A few weeks back, I told you about two soon-to-be-released biographies of glamorous '30s star Kay Francis. The second book is "Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career," co-authored by Lynn Kear and John Rossman. Like Scott O'Brien's forthcoming tome, Kear and Rossman rely on Kay's diaries, scrapbooks, and correspondence which are now housed at the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives. I had heard that the diaries weren't particularly revelatory about her personal life, though the authors claim many diary entries were written in code, and once deciphered, are actually surprisingly frank. Kear and Rossman feature some rare outtakes from Kay's films on their Web site. It's a lot of fun to see some quick glimpses of the real Kay. The biography should be published in late fall '05 or early '06