Background
The younger daughter of Francis "Frank" Marion Dee and his wife, the former Henriette Putnam, Frances Marion Dee was born in Los Angeles, California, where her father was working as a civil-service examiner.
The younger daughter of Francis "Frank" Marion Dee and his wife, the former Henriette Putnam, Frances Marion Dee was born in Los Angeles, California, where her father was working as a civil-service examiner.
She attended Shakespeare Grammar School and Hyde Park High School, where she went by the nickname of Frankie Dee.
She starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in the early talkie musical. She starred in the film in a role later recreated by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1951 retitled remake, A Place in the Sun. When Dee was 7 years old, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois.
After graduating from Hyde Park High in 1927, of which she was vice president of her senior class, as well as voted Belle of the Year, she spent two years at the University of Chicago, where she participated in dramatic activities, before returning to California.
She began working as a movie extra as a lark. Her big break came when, still an extra, she was offered the lead opposite Maurice Chevalier in Playboy of Paris.
The audience appeal established in two films opposite Paramount stars Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen, led to the co-starring role as Sondra Finchley, opposite Phillips Holmes and Sylvia Sidney, in Paramount Pictures"s prestigious, and controversial, production of An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Dee"s additional screen credits included June Moon, Little Women, Of Human Bondage, Becky Sharp, and Payment on Demand.
She co-starred with McCrea in the Western.
