He appeared as a guest star in episodes of several golden age television series, including The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour while continuing to act and produce in the theater and movies throughout the 1960s.
He joined the Theatre Guild and played Curly in their production of Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), where Tone sang, which later became the basis for the musical Oklahoma!
[9] Robert Benchley of The New Yorker said that "Tone made lyrical love to [co-star] Walker" between the Sammy Lee chorus routines of the play.
[9] The Lynn Riggs play received mixed reviews, mostly favorable, and was a popular success lasting 64 performances on Broadway in addition to its roa was also a founding member of the Group Theatre, when the Theater Guild disbanded, along with other former guild members Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Clifford Odets.
Starting in 1933 with a support role in the romantic WWI drama Today We Live, written by William Faulkner in collaboration with director Howard Hawks.
[27] The last of the sequence of films was Dancing Lady, with an on-screen love triangle with his future wife Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, which was a "lavishly staged spectacle" with a solid performance by Tone.
[30] After The Girl from Missouri (1934) with Harlow,[31] MGM finally gave Tone top billing in Straight Is the Way (1934), although it was considered a "B" film, one which didn't have a high publicity or production cost.
He supported Crawford and Robert Montgomery in No More Ladies (1935) and had another box-office success with Mutiny on the Bounty, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with co-stars Clark Gable and Charles Laughton.
After a lead role in Exclusive Story (1935), he was again paired with friend Loretta Young in The Unguarded Hour (1936), and also starred with Grace Moore in Columbia's The King Steps Out (1936), notable for the debut of an eleven-year-old Gwen Verdon.
[31] The film was popular with audiences, but reviews were less than kind with The New York Times negatively comparing it to other recent WWI movies calling it "balderdash", but thanked "Mr.
"[34] He then filmed The Gorgeous Hussy (1936) with Crawford, Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore with co-star Beulah Bondi earning an Academy Award nomination for the Andrew Jackson period piece.
He had the lead in Between Two Women (1937) and co-starred for the final time with Crawford in The Bride Wore Red (1937), then joined Myrna Loy in Man-Proof (1938) and Gladys George in Love Is a Headache (1938).
In Three Comrades (1938) Tone was teamed with Robert Taylor and Margaret Sullavan in a film about disillusioned soldiers returning to Germany after World War I.
He made Three Loves Has Nancy (1938) with Janet Gaynor and Robert Montgomery and co-starred with Franciska Gaal in The Girl Downstairs (1938), a Cinderella type story.
He then starred in a "B" picture with Ann Sothern in Fast and Furious (1939) as married crime sleuths, the third movie in a series with different sets of actors in each, that were marketed towards the Thin Man films audiences.
[38] After his contract ended, Tone left MGM in 1939 to act on Broadway in a return to his stage roots, often working with "the Group's" members of its formative years, and playwrights such as Eugene O'Neill.
Tone signed a contract with Universal, starring in his first Western there, Trail of the Vigilantes (1940), where he more than earns his spurs alongside the likes of Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine.
Tone also signed a multi-picture deal with Columbia, where he made two films with Joan Bennett, She Knew All the Answers (1941) and The Wife Takes a Flyer (1942).
He had one of his best roles in Universal's Phantom Lady (1944) directed by Robert Siodmak, an early film noir picture and a villainous part for Tone.
[50] Back on the small screen, Tone was in Lights Out, Tales of Tomorrow, Hollywood Opening Night, The Revlon Mirror Theater, and The Philip Morris Playhouse.
[53] His performance as the Russian country doctor with "ennui" was praised and the preserving of the stage production to film only varied by the addition of then-wife Dolores Dorn.
[58] He had roles in Otto Preminger's film In Harm's Way (1965) in which he portrayed Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Arthur Penn's Mickey One (1965), and an episode of Run for Your Life.
[59] He appeared off-Broadway in Beyond Desire (1967) and his last roles were in Shadow Over Elveron (1968) and Nobody Runs Forever (1968), a British film originally titled The High Commissioner.
[70][71] He was cremated and his ashes kept on a shelf in his son's library, surrounded by the works of Shakespeare,[72] until July 24, 2022, when they were interred in the Point Comfort Cemetery of Quebec, Canada.