Arlene Francis

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Arlene Francis
Born Arlene Francis Kazanjian
October 20, 1907(1907-10-20)
Boston, Massachusetts
Died May 31, 2001 (aged 93)
San Francisco, California

Arlene Francis (born Arline Francis Kazanjian October 20, 1907 - May 31, 2001) was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist. She is known for her long-standing role as a panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, on which she regularly appeared for twenty-five years, from 1950 through the mid-1970s. Always dressed and coiffed meticulously, Arlene invariably wore her trademark simple gold necklace with heart pendant.

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[edit] Heritage and early life

Arlene Francis was born on October 20, 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her Armenian father was studying art in Paris at age 16 when he learned that both his parents were dead in one of the Hamidian massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia between 1894 and 1896. (Genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire was unknown to many Americans for nearly a century.) Aram Kazanjian then immigrated to the United States and became a portrait photographer, opening his own studio in Boston in the early 20th century. He was an early practitioner of body paint, often photographing young women after painting on them. Later in life, when his daughter was at the height of her fame, Mr. Kazanjian painted canvasses of dogwoods, "rabbits in flight" and other forces of nature, selling them at auction in New York. [1]

"I think I was about seven years old," Arlene, an only child, wrote in her 1978 autobiography, "when Father decided that New York offered greater opportunities for success, and we moved from Boston into that flat [in Washington Heights, Manhattan]. It was a good move professionally, and when he decided to specialize in children's photographs, he became very successful indeed, one of the best known in his field." [2] Except for sojourns in the Los Angeles area, Arlene remained a New Yorker after she "was about seven years old" until her son moved her to a San Francisco nursing home in 1993. [3]

[edit] Career

After attending Finch College, Francis had a broad and varied career as an entertainer. She was an accomplished actress with 25 Broadway plays to her credit, from La Gringa in 1928 to Don't Call Back in 1975. She also performed in many local theatre and off-Broadway plays.

Francis was a well known New York City radio personality, having hosted several radio programs, including a long-running midday chat show on WOR-AM. In the 1940s, she emceed a network radio game show, Blind Date, which she also hosted on television from 1949 to 1952. She was one of the regular contributors to NBC Radio's Monitor in the 1950s and 1960s.

Francis was a regular panelist on the game show What's My Line? throughout almost its entire network run on CBS from 1950 to 1967, and she also appeared in the show's revival as a syndicated show the following year. She joined the original show on its second episode in 1950 and remained a panelist until the end of the syndicated version of the program in 1975. The original show, which featured guests whose occupation, or "line," the panelists were to guess, became one of the classic television game shows, noted for the urbanity of its host and panelists. Francis also appeared on many other game shows, including Match Game, Password and other programs produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman.

Francis was a pioneer for women on television, one of the first women to host a program that was not musical or dramatic. From 1954 to 1957 she was host and editor-in-chief of Home, NBC's ambitious hour-long daytime magazine program oriented toward women, which was conceived by network president Pat Weaver as a complement to the network's Today and Tonight programs. Newsweek magazine put her on its cover as "the first lady of television." She also hosted Talent Patrol in the mid 1950s.

She acted in several films, debuting in the role of a prostitute in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). (She got that role after traveling to Los Angeles with her mother, who had a friend who knew David Selznick very well. Francis' only acting experience at that point was in a small Shakespearean production in the convent school from which she had recently graduated. Her La Gringa on Broadway might have preceded that first trip to Hollywood, but she omitted this theatrical "debut" from her autobiography entirely. [4])

In the 1960s, Arlene Francis appeared in One, Two, Three (1961), directed by Billy Wilder and filmed on location in Munich, The Thrill of It All (1963), and in the television version of the play Laura (1968), which she had played on stage several times. Her final film performance was in the Billy Wilder film Fedora (1978).

Francis wrote an autobiography in 1978 entitled Arlene Francis: A Memoir with help from a longtime friend, Florence Rome. She also wrote That Certain Something: The Magic of Charm in 1960 and a book/cookbook, No Time for Cooking, in 1961.

She died on May 31, 2001 in San Francisco at the age of 93 after a long bout with Alzheimer's disease and cancer.

[edit] Personal life

Francis was married twice, first to Neil Agnew from 1935 to 1945. He worked in the Sales Department of Paramount Pictures, which necessitated frequent business trips during which Francis stayed home alone. According to the Los Angeles Times obituary of Francis (6/02/01), that marriage ended in divorce. In her 1978 autobiography, she writes poignantly of this experience. "Having made the actual physical break, it was easier for me than I had thought to explain to Neil some of what I felt, what I had been feeling for so long a time. Not all, of course. There were areas which I couldn't discuss even then, which would be too hurtful to him, I felt. I saw him fairly often, and he courted me as though we had just met, but I was building up strengths which enabled me to resist not only his blandishments (including a lovely little house which he bought in New York as an enticement to get me to change my mind) but those of my parents, who also would have given anything to see me go back to the status which had been quo." [5]

Francis' second marriage was to actor/producer Martin Gabel from 1946 until his death on May 22, 1986, of a heart attack. He was a frequent guest panelist on What's My Line?. The couple, who often exchanged endearments on the show, had a son, Peter Gabel, born January 28, 1947, who is currently a law professor at the New College of California in San Francisco. He was at his mother's side when she died.

Francis had a relationship with Jess Stearn, who was a chronicler of psychic phenomena and a Newsweek associate editor, for many years. They shared an interest in yoga, which was unusual for Americans of their generation. Francis omitted his name entirely from her autobiography despite her putting in the index many friends whose names appear nowhere else in the book. Her connection with Stearn has been verified, however, by a longtime Malibu, California neighbor of his who has taught documentary filmmaking at UCLA. [6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Pages 11 to 13 in Arlene Francis: A Memoir by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
  2. ^ Page 14 in Arlene Francis: A Memoir by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
  3. ^ Liz Smith reported Arlene's cross-country move in Liz's New York Newsday column in 1993.
  4. ^ Pages 18 - 19 in Arlene Francis: A Memoir by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
  5. ^ Page 59 of Arlene Francis: A Memoir by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
  6. ^ This bio of Suzanne Bauman lists several institutions, including UCLA, where she can be contacted and queried about her conversations with Jess Stearn.

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