Yes, Franchot was a man of many moods and had a wide variety of interests and yes, he was a Phil Beta Kappa graduated of Cornell with a background in literature and Romance languages. Tone wasn't a horror guy but he did one of the better late Hitchcock hours in the final, heavily horror focused season. The title is Final Performance, and Tone's as good as in anything I've ever seem in, broadly playing a garrulous ex-vaudevillian. It's not the best Hitchcock hour horror ep but it's one of the best acted. Tone is a revelation, giving a performance that's stylistically like a cross between Jack Carson, Lloyd Nolan and Robert Armstrong,--and it works like a charm!

On a local digital channel (The Works?) tonight they showed the brutal 1955 crime picture Big House, USA, one of those Schenk and Koch Bel-Air indies, and a good one, with a tough guy cast to die for: Broderick Crawford, Ralph Meeker, Charles Bronson, Chaney the Younger, Charlie Bronson, William Talman and as as FBI agent (what else). The violence, implicit and explicit, is still shocking after all these years. I recommend it highly. Some interesting connections between some of the players: old pals Brod and Lon, together again, and the same year in which they were in another, bigger budgeted film, Not As a Stranger. I believe That Reed Hadley and park ranger Roy Roberts were both in Guadalcanal Diary, or maybe Hadley just narrated that one. Twelve years later Hadley and Meeker would appear together in Roger Corman's St. Valentine's Day Massacre.