Frances Starr on AllMovie

Under contract to legendary impresario David Belasco for 16 years, a record in stage annals, Frances Starr fully lived up to her name as the original Rose of the Rancho. That was back in 1906 and she later starred for two seasons in The Easiest Way. Starr made three talkies in the early '30s, but only Five Star Final (1931), in which she played a socialite driven to suicide by yellow journalism, was worthy of her talents. Following her brief detour in films, Starr returned to Broadway and enjoyed renewed fame in such plays as Claudia (1941), opposite Dorothy McGuire, and Dorothy Parker's Ladies of the Corridor (1953), opposite a young Walter Matthau.