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5.0 out of 5 stars
Thanks to Scott O'Brien, She Won't Be Forgotten, 15 May 2009
This review pertains to the revised and expanded second edition of "I Can't Wait to Be Forgotten," which I highly recommend.
Biography is a difficult endeavor, especially when you're writing about someone as exceptionally private as Kay Francis was. Especially toward the end of her life, Miss Francis was distinctly uninterested in talking about her career, and there are very few people left who worked with her. Scott O'Brien, however, found people who knew Kay, and was also able to access her private diaries, which he uses to great effect. She wrote in shorthand, but what she wrote was not censored in any fashion.
What results from Mr. O'Brien finding these sources is a remarkable account of a passionate, interesting and eventful life. Though she was terribly careful with a penny, thus allowing herself to gather a vast fortune for a comfortable retirement, Kay was anonymously generous to a plethora of friends, fans and others in need. Her greatest legacy, in addition to the beautiful films we can see whenever we wish, is her bequest to The Seeing Eye, something she told friends she intended to do, but which came as a surprise to the institution that still benefits from her gift.
What is most surprising and illuminating from reading Kay's diary entries is the sheer passion with which she lived her life, and I mean this literally and figuratively. Kay had many, many lovers, and documented most of them in her shorthand notes (with ratings on their quality). She was also tireless in her quest to "live for today;" doing work very near the front lines during WWII and standing up to career misfortunes with class and guts. Scott O'Brien manages to capture all of this, giving us a very good idea of what made Miss Francis tick and why we should be interested in her life. He doesn't shy away from the more unpleasant events in her life, but he doesn't wallow in them. Thanks to this deft handling of all the facts, he creates a fair, even-handed, yet respectful document to an actress, and a woman, who should be celebrated and never "forgotten."
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