Steineded How sad is this?

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

JohnHowardReid Rise and fall pictures were very popular in the 1930s. I mean films depicting the rise and fall of leading characters like Susan Lennox or Anna Karenina or Mata Hari or Tom Powers or Little Caesar. But even more popular were the Rise and fall and rise again brigade of which this is a top example. It has the benefit of an especially strong script. I must admit, though, that I'm a sucker for films with a theatrical setting. And when that theatrical background is as atmospherically created as it is here, then I take my hat off to all the artists involved, starting off with the director, the photographer, the orchestra, the production designer et al, and going right through to the associate producer. Mervyn LeRoy's direction was generally geared to a far more inventive style at Warner Bros than in his staid years at MGM. Here I heartily commend his naturalistic use of on-stage dialogue to complement the back-stage action and I love the idea of showing the blackmailer (Barton MacLane) in silhouette. LeRoy's handling of the many crowd scenes is equally as deft as his depiction of the picture's more intimate moments, and he sent me to seventh heaven with his brilliant contrasts of theaters high and low, legitimate to burlesque, Broadway to Skid Row. Kay Francis gives the performance of her career. Stella Parish enables her to encompass not only a wide range of emotions but a broad range of acting styles. I'm pleased to report that she is more than equal to the challenge. She brings off the many-faceted Stella with such panache and perfection, it's a shame she was not able to share this aspect of her talent with similar wide-ranging roles on other occasions. In the course of this picture, we see her as a gracious yet aloof leading lady, and as a sensitively romantic heroine, and in a mind-blowing character role. Plus her totally realistic portrayals of the various roles she enacts on stage. Ian Hunter too rises to the heights with a more rewarding part than usual. Almost always he plays uninterestingly stuffy, self-righteous characters, but here he's cast in what must be the only totally unsympathetic role of his career. He conveys with great insight the coldness, heartlessness, ruthlessness and deceitful hypocrisy of his Keith Lockridge. On the other hand, Paul Lukas has only a small part to play-which is just as well. At best, he's no more than adequate and makes no attempt whatever to grasp his dramatic opportunities. Despite Lukas, however, this movie still rates 100% in my book!

mark.waltz I can't wait to be forgotten, Kay Francis once said, and as it inches closer to the 50th anniversary of her death, she is about as forgotten as another great star who also died the same year: Judy Garland. Only three years later, Liza Minnelli exclaimed in "Cabaret", "I feel just like Kay Francis!" It took decades for her re- discovery, but she has gained a true cult following as her glamorous image was captured by two books and constant showings of her movies on TCM. During the VHS era, only a handful of her films were available. Now through the TCM and Universal archives, they are slowly all coming out, and this soap opera is one of her best.As the Tallulah Bankhead of the fictional London stage, Stella Parrish is an American actress who is highly in demand, winning the love of her manager, Paul Lukas, and gaining the admiration from afar of journalist Ian Hunter. When she is visited by a mysterious man on opening night of what could be her greatest hit, Stella vanishes with her young daughter and companion, hiding in disguise and eventually befriending the suspicious Hunter. When the truth comes out, she becomes a temporary headline freak and makes a drastic decision to protect the young moppet, Sybil Jason.Francis shares the acting honors with vinegary Jessie Ralph, delightful as her tough but loving companion. Lukas and Hunter are decent, and while Jason can be cloying at times, something tells me that she had the women's audiences in tears. In fact, the film opens with Jason singing a cute little ditty imitating animal sounds that either had the audiences in hysterics, cooing over how adorable she was, or cringing over how cute they assumed she thought that she was. The play within the movie is set in Caligula's Rome and was almost concurrent with the unfinished "I Claudius". Unbilled Barton MacLane's voice is heard as the unseen mysterious man but instantly recognized. Certainly, there are some plot defects, but that doesn't seem to matter under Kay's emotional performance and the direction of Mervyn LeRoy. This was a huge smash for Kay, only surpassed just two years later by the emotional brilliance of " Confession". While some audiences might find it hard to believe that Kay could be considered a great star of the stage, that's exactly where she got her training and exactly where she returned to when her film career began to dry up. The conclusion has the emotional power of Vicki Lester's final line in "A Star is Born".

jarrodmcdonald-1 I Found Stella Parish masterfully engages the viewer. It is very stylized hokum, but yet it is sincere and rather poignant. Kay Francis plays an actress with a secret past that involves having given birth to a child out of wedlock. Taking a break from her stage career, she decides to focus on her role as a mother and travels incognito with her daughter, played by Sybil Jason. It's a nice bit of casting, and their performances nicely complement each other.Three years later, Warners would reunite Francis and Jason on screen in Comet Over Broadway. Once again, they are mother and daughter, and once again Miss Francis is an actress.

John Seal Considering Mervyn Leroy directed this film, it has to rank as a disappointment. Kay Francis sleepwalks her way through a ridiculous plot about an actress whose career is threatened by blackmail. Casey Robinson's hastily written screenplay was probably an afterthought while he worked on Captain Blood, but there's no excuse for a film set (partly) in Britain to include constant references to people's 'apartments' and feature cars with left hand drives! Ludicrous Cockney accents we can overlook, but these details distracted me throughout the film. Everything about Stella Parish looks like a rush job, and Ms. Francis seems particularly anxious to call it a day. Not a complete disaster, but edging close to it.