Christian's Blog: Franchot Tone

On Sunday morning I finished posting my translation of "Sermonette" by Boris Vian and downloaded the lyrics for his song "Sans blague" (No Joke).

I memorized the chorus of "Lavabo" (Washbasin) by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation of one of the verses.

I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast.

Around midday, now that I've cleaned the living room windows, I put all of my daughter's old plastic toy figures back on the window. I also put away all of the file folders of my writing, since I won't be organizing them from now until the Christmas holidays.

I read more of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People for my Medieval Literature course.

I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade.

When I got up from my siesta it was raining, so I wasn't sure if I'd be taking a bike ride. I had a bowel movement and again had stomach pain, but only when I pushed. By the time I finished, it had stopped raining and it was warm out and so I wore shorts for the first time in a week or so. I took a bike ride downtown and back.

I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:30.

I was caught up on my journal just after 18:00.

I finished reading Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. It's basically pagan conversion therapy.

I read the first 1650 lines of Beowulf. That's a little over half the poem. This has to be at least the third or fourth time I've read it. But I don't like the fact that the translation of the Old English text doesn't even attempt to recreate the alliteration, which is crucial to the dynamic power of the oral story. There are better versions available.

I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 14 of Ben Casey.

The story begins with the unlikely scenario of Dr. Ben Casey, a senior resident of neurosurgery, making a house call in a skid row flop house. Robert Ashton is found drunk in his bed, but even through his drunkenness, he shows himself to be eloquent and extremely well-spoken. He is injured from having been in a drunken brawl and the damage includes a broken leg and a head injury. He loses consciousness and wakes up in the hospital. The first person he sees is a seventeen-year-old candy striper named Ann Mullen. He is always friendly with Ann but she later becomes cold towards him when she discovers that he is an alcoholic. She is bitter because her mother is also an alcoholic.

Casey and Zorba discover that Ashton is actually a renowned chemist who developed a life-saving procedure that is now used throughout the medical profession. But he had a fall from grace and lost his position. Casey breaks hospital rules and, as a type of occupational therapy, has Ashton perform blood tests in the lab. It helps to build Ashton's confidence, and even though there are bottles of pure alcohol in the lab, he resists the temptation. But when Ann finds out that Ashton is working in the lab, she reports it to the lab director.

One of Ashton's ward mates is Joe Conklin, who has injuries to his larynx and stomach. He is not allowed to talk and so Ashton reads Hawthorn to him. Later Conklin becomes sick and Ann hears that it was because of a faulty blood test. She blames Ashton and thinks that he must have been drinking. He hasn't fallen off the wagon but he does have self-doubt because of past experience and now he thinks he might have made a mistake. He leaves the hospital and Casey finds him back in the flophouse with a bottle in his hand. He explains to Ashton that the blood test was not his mistake. The lab director didn't trust his findings and redid the test, getting it wrong. Casey gets Ashton back to the hospital and after a full recovery, Zorba gets him a job in a private hospital.

Ashton was played by Franchot Tone, who rejected his wealthy father's business to go into acting. He made his Broadway debut in 1929 in Age of Innocence. He joined Lee Strasberg's Group Theatre and after he performed in Success Story, Strasberg declared him to be the best actor in the company. This led to Hollywood. His first film was an appearance in The Wiser Sex. While filming "Today We Live" he began dating his co-star, the young Joan Crawford. They starred together in The Dancing Lady and Sadie McKee. He then co-starred with Bette Davis in "Dangerous". Some say that the lifelong rivalry between Davis and Crawford began over their mutual affection for Tone. Crawford won the first round by marrying him. He starred in "Lives of a Bengal Lancer", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "Five Graves to Cairo", "Phantom Lady", and "The Man On The Eiffel Tower". He preferred theatre to Hollywood and spent the 1950s becoming a star on and off Broadway. His last starring film role was in "Advise and Consent" in 1962.