Stolen Holiday

I think I mentioned a while back having a string of Kay Francis movies that I hadn't seen before on my DVR, and writing up posts on them and leaving them in draft to space out when the posts show up here. The next of the Kay Francis movies is from her later years at Warner Bros. after Bette Davis started taking over the role of queen of the Warner Bros. lot: Stolen Holiday.

Francis stars as Nicole Picot, an American model who has made her way over to Paris in 1931, and is successful showing off the clothes others pay her to wear, although she'd really rather own her own business, confiding in her friend Suzanne (Alison Skipworth). One day at work, Nicole is approached by Russian émigré Stefan Orloff (Claude Rains), who is willing to put up Nicole at a fashionable mansion for a night in exchange for posing as his wife. Nicole agrees for the money, and although she quickly discovers the ruse, she remains friends with Orloff.

The thing is, Stefan needed to look fashionable because he's running a chain of pawn shops with some of his friends, on the grounds that France is the only country where one can issue bonds on the assets of what's been pawned. Stefan is the head of this scheme, although it's not quite honest, and it's his partners who seem to be taking more of a risk as their names are the ones on the documentation. But Nicole doesn't know any of this. She gets the money she needs to open the Maison Picot, which eventually becomes successfull.

When it looks like Orloff might be in trouble and it's suggested Picot get out of town until the thing blows over -- after all, Orloff doesn't really want to hurt Picot -- she goes to Geneva, which is where she meets Anthony Wayne (Ian Hunter). Wayne is a British diplomat who can travel wherever on his diplomatic passport. He immediately falls in love with Nicole, and the two become platonic friends much in the same way that Picot is friends with Orloff. In fact, it's that friendship with Orloff that leads Picot to decide she's not going to marry Wayne.

Meanwhile, the walls are beginning to close in on Orloff again, so he asks Picot to marry him! He's got ulterior motives. If he can invite all the people he's scamming to the wedding, who are basically the highest of high society, they won't be able to turn on him for fear of the public scandal they'll have to face when the fiscal chicanery comes to light. Or at least that's the theory. One of Orloff's business partners is taken away from the wedding by the police for questioning, which really begins to put the heat on Orloff and lead to the finale.

Stolen Holiday is little more than a programmer from Warner Bros., although unsurprisingly they do a good job making it look like a million bucks. The plot, however, is a bit of a mess. Then again, this is the sort of material where everything looks so glossy that you won't really notice how little the plot resembles any sort of reality. Claude Rains is as pleasant to listen too as always; Kay Francis looks good in all those fashions; and everybody should have listened to Alison Skipworth's advice.