1960
[Roy Stark plans to remake One-Way Passage, but the project never materializes.]
1961
Summer. Kay breaks off her relationship with Dennis Allen. They spend the summer apart, and while Dennis is at Fire Island, Kay hears that he has met another woman, whom he married later that year. Dennis neither saw nor heard from Kay again.
1962
[Kay has dinner with Harold J. Kennedy, drinking so much it takes three men (Harold, the waiter, and the owner) to carry Kay out into their ride home. When a passer-by asked if that was Kay Francis, she half-opened her eyes and smiled, saying, “It used to be.”]
1963
[Around this year, Kay undergoes several surgeries, including two for a lung and kidney removal. She soon not only fractured her ankle, but also her back, which hampered her mobility.]
1964
[Kay battles breast cancer, though by the time the mastectomy is performed, the cancer has spread.]
February. James Robert Parish and Gene Ringgold co-write an article titled “Kay Francis’ Complete Career”, which is published in this month’s issue of Films in Review. Parish sends a copy of the piece to Kay, who thanks him for the article but notes that there were several errors in the piece. This was the first major article published as a retrospect on Kay’s career.
1965
[Ross Hunter contacts Kay about playing Lana Turner’s mother in Madame X. Because of health problems, Kay is forced to decline what was her final movie offer.]
1966
[Kay is confined to her bed because of poor health.]
1967
1968
August 26. Kay Francis dies.
August 27, 1968-On
1968
August 28. Kay’s will is made public. She leaves small divisions of her estate to friends, though at least $1,000,000 of her life fortune is left to The Seeing Eye of Morristown, New Jersey.
1976
[Author George Eells’ Ginger, Loretta, and Irene Who? is published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The book, which gives biographies and photographs of stars from Kay’s generation of Hollywood, is well-researched but gives a dreary look into Kay’s personal life and retirement. Eells writes Kay off as a sell-out and bitter recluse, still angry with her “great struggle” with Warner Bros.]
1991
[Trouble in Paradise (1932) is added to the National Film Registry.]
1994
April 14. Turner Classic Movies debuts with Gone With the Wind (1939, a film which Kay was considered as a possible lead) as first film on schedule. Through TCM Lynn Kear, Mick LaSalle, myself, and millions of others are introduced to Kay Francis.
2004
January 13. In honor of Kay’s birthday, TCM feautres an “all-day” marathon of Kay Francis movies.
2006
[Two biographies on Kay—Scott O’Brien’s Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten and Lynn Kear and John Rossman’s Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career—are published.]
2008
January. Lynn Kear and John Rossman’s The Complete Kay Francis Career Record is published.
September. Kay is featured as Turner Classic Movies’ “Star of the Month.”
2010
January 1. This website is launched!!!
2013: By this year, the Warner Bros. Archive collection releases several of Kay’s movies on DVD (most for the first time as a home-video release). Man Wanted, Street of Women, Jewel Robbery, One Way Passage, Stranded, Mandalay, Wonder Bar, British Agent, The Goose and the Gander, Living on Velvet, Give Me Your Heart, Stolen Holiday, King of the Underworld, In Name Only, and Playgirl all have DVD availability.