Kay Francis is a prime example what film studios did during the Golden Age of Hollywood when they wanted to cut loose highly-paid actors and actresses they felt were over the hill and no longer contributed to their bottom line. Just as Warner Brothers did to her in January 1939's "King of the Underworld," studios would aim straight at actors' giant egos to persuade them to buy out their rich contracts without having to pay exorbitant termination fees. Except Kay Francis didn't bend. The Warners viewed the veteran actress and her $200,000 annual salary a liability, and felt slotting her in a low-budget gangster film would do the trick.
The movie is centered around a female doctor who has to prove she wasn't associated with the gangsters her husband doctor was treating before he got shot and killed during a police raid. The film's premise, reshaped from Paul Muni's 1935 "Dr. Socrates" and based on a short story by W. R. Burnett (author of "Little Caesar"), was reworked to slot Francis in the unglamorous role of the widowed physician. Once one of cinema's highest paid actresses who made the transition from Broadway in the early 1930s and who appeared in such classics as Ernst Lubitsch's 1932 "Trouble in Paradise," Francis saw her popularity sink with every picture she was in after her peak years in the mid-1930s. Her boss, Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, decided to cast her in a gritty crime low-budget picture. Adding salt to her wound, he assigned contract player Humphrey Bogart to "King of the Underworld," and billed him above Francis in the credits. Kay, although stung, took the 'demotion' in stride, claiming, "As long as they pay me my salary, I'll sweep the stages if they give me a broom."
Bogart played Joe Gurney, the leader of the gang who pays Dr. Niles Nelson (John Eldredge), husband of Dr. Carole Nelson (Francis), to operate on his underlings if and whenever they get shot. The actor was privately miffed that Kay, whom he highly respected, was treated by the Warners in such an indignant manner.
FIlm reviewer Laura Grieve's appreciated the melding of a "woman's picture" by Francis' feminine presence in a gangster movie, writing, "mashing the two styles together leads to a surprisingly effective film. The climax, in which Francis uses her medical skills to engineer the gang's capture, was a great deal of fun." "King of the Underworld" was originally titled "Lady Doctor," but Warner Brothers beefed up Bogart's part by filming additional scenes of his character while diminishing Kay's. The film is typical of the roles Bogie played in the next two years before he rose to prominence in 1941's "High Sierra." The studio kept him busy, with seven film appearances in 1939 alone. Although not outwardly complaining, he was disdainful of the types of roles he was assigned to, very rarely watching his movies and attending very few of their premiers.
As for Kay Francis, Warner Brothers finally bought out her contract and was released later in 1939. She turned to free-lancing, but her Hollywood career, interrupted by World War Two, never again gained traction. She returned to the stage before an accidental overdose of pills in the late 1940s, where she passed out on a scathing hot radiator, burning her severely. She promptly retired at 43. Dying of cancer at 63 in 1966, she wished never to be remembered, prohibiting a memorial service or a grave marker. She willed her ashes to be disposed by the undertaker in whatever way the funeral home saw fit.
