D: William Keighley. Kay Francis, Warren William, Jean Muir, Verree Teasdale, Emma Dunn, Phillip Reed, Herbert Bunston, Ann Shoemaker. Francis is very good as a physician who desperately wants to have children but can't conceive. She's stunned to discover that her cad husband (William) is not only having an affair with her close friend (Muir) but has also gotten her pregnant. Frank, mature treatment of adultery and illegitimacy ran into censorship trouble and was severely cut but is still worthwhile. Original running time: 65m.

D: Tay Garnett. Kay Francis, William Powell, Aline MacMahon, Warren Hymer, Frank McHugh, Herbert Mundin. Tender shipboard romance of fugitive Powell and fatally ill Francis, splendidly acted, with good support by MacMahon and McHugh as con artists. Robert Lord won an Oscar for his original story. Remade as TILL WE MEET AGAIN.

D: Michael Curtiz. Kay Francis, George Brent, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, Monroe Owsley, Helen Ware, Henry Kolker. Francis' wealthy older husband suspects her of being unfaithful and hires private eye Brent to shadow her... but he falls in love with her and discovers she's being blackmailed by her sleazy first husband. Seedy romantic drama with Francis anguishing in a variety of elegant Orry-Kelly gowns.

D: Joe May. Kay Francis, Basil Rathbone, Ian Hunter, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan, Dorothy Peterson, Laura Hope Crews, Veda Ann Borg, Robert Barrat. Extremely stylish, well-acted soap opera in the MADAME X vein, with singer Francis recounting events leading up to her murder of oily Rathbone. Visually arresting, this looks more like a 1920s German film than a late 1930s Hollywood product; in fact, director May was a German emigre. Based very closely on the 1935 German film MAZURKA (which starred Pola Negri).

D: Norman Z. McLeod. Kay Francis, Jack Oakie, George Bancroft, Jimmy Lydon, Ann Gillis, Charles Esmond, William Demarest. Occasionally cute but slight, predictable adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott novel, focusing on rough adolescent Lydon "learning the ways'' at Francis' school. Oakie easily steals the film as an irrepressible con man. Remade in 1998.

D: Robert Florey. Kay Francis, Margaret Lindsay, Ricardo Cortez, Gene Raymond, John Halliday, Frank McHugh, Sheila Terry, William "Stage'' Boyd, Hardie Albright. Sprawling chronicle of 25 years in the life of a house, as Francis spends two decades in jail for a crime she didn't commit. The residence is now a speakeasy/gambling joint, where Francis returns to save her daughter from the same situation she was in. Offbeat but nothing special.

D: John Farrow. Kay Francis, Bonita Granville, Anita Louise, Bobby Jordan, John Litel, Dickie Moore, Elisabeth Risdon. Heart-tugging soaper about well-meaning, poverty-stricken small-town widow Francis and her four children; three are ingrates, but the youngest, Bill (Moore), is extra-special. Originally filmed in 1930 as COURAGE.