American actor who appeared in only four Hollywood films, all with military themes, before his career and life were cut short at the age of 25 in the crash of a small airplane he was piloting.
Francis took a keen interest in aviation in his early twenties, and it was this passion that brought him to the attention of Howard Hughes. The two men frequently went flying together, with Francis most likely to be at the controls of Hughes’ planes.
Francis’ motion picture debut was also his most significant role, that of Ensign Willie Keith in The Caine Mutiny (1954), alongside Humphrey Bogart, Fred MacMurray, Van Johnson and José Ferrer. The film involved a romantic subplot opposite May Wynn.
Capitalizing on his rising star, Francis was cast in They Rode West, followed by The Bamboo Prison and John Ford’s The Long Gray Line. Francis was then supposed to appear in Tribute to a Bad Man and was scheduled to travel to the film location in Wyoming to begin filming, a journey he would never make.
On 31 July 1955, a little more than a week before his planned departure for the Tribute to a Bad Man film set, Francis piloted a Beechcraft Bonanza belonging to fellow actor Joe Kirkwood, Jr. Also on board were Kirkwood’s business partner, George Meyer, 38, a commercial pilot who had flown B-29 bombers in WWII, and starlet Ann Russell, 24. Immediately after a 5:00 p.m. takeoff (which eyewitnesses called a “poor takeoff”) from Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, the plane’s engine began to splutter and then lost power over Restland Cemetery. Francis managed to avoid crashing into a crowd at nearby Valhalla Memorial Park, but the aircraft stalled and crashed in a parking lot where it burst into flames, killing all occupants.

Link to Wikipedia biography