Joe
Franklin. I’m sure none of you out here
(or at least those who didn’t grow up in New York City) know who he was. He passed away recently at age 88. A New York television and radio fixture, he
sat in his chair on the set of his show and looked like a little Jewish Hobbit. When all the other talk shows had gone off
the air, you could still turn to WOR channel 9 (which usually ran things like
“Million Dollar Movie” – which today would be “Two Hundred Million Dollar
Movie” – and old cartoons – they actually aired cartoons from the silent era)
and there would be Joe. Good ol’ Joe,
who never seemed to age and who looked as comfortable as your uncle sitting on a
chair in your living room.
There
were other pretty amazing shows on local New York television in the early
60s. Sandy Becker had a strange kids
show with really bizarre characters he created like Norton Nork and
Hambone. Sonny Fox’s Wonderama had adult
humor that went way over the heads of us kids and he would also occasionally
interview people like Senator Robert Kennedy.
But
none could beat Joe. For a kid who’d
secretly stay up late with his older brother, sitting close to the old black
and white television set (in a Mahogany armoire-looking thing with doors, if
you can believe it) so as to keep the sound low and not wake the parents,
watching Joe was a treat. It made both
of us so ready for the late 60s because watching Joe’s show was somewhat like
having an LSD flashback (I wouldn’t know, of course – that’s what friends tell
me).
His
soothing, sonorous voice (or at least as sonorous as Joe could possibly be) would
slowly make you nod off, unless he had some third rate comedian on who suddenly
screamed the punch line to a joke.
And
his show went on and on, for years. Long
after all the other shows I used to watch faded away, unpreserved and one
feels, unmourned.
Come
the early 70s, I suddenly realized just how surreal Joe’s show was – he’d start
the show, surrounded by hundreds of mementos dating back decades and, in a very
serious, somber voice would say: “Our first guest is Janet Moscowitz and her
penguin troop. Just wonderful – the
penguin troop is currently appearing in the Central Park Children’s Zoo. They’re
truly, the best troop of penguins I’ve ever seen. And, a little later in the
show (pause as if trying to remember the names) John Lennon and Yoko Ono will
join us”.
In
1984, when he appeared in Ghostbusters playing himself, interviewing one of the
heroes, Dan Akroyd’s Stan, the New York audience at the Waverly Theater in
Greenwich Village went nuts and applauded.
And it was a brilliant scene – it was so true! Of course The Joe Franklin Show would be the
first talk show a Ghostbuster would appear on!
And naturally, Joe’s first question would be: “Have any of you seen
Elvis and is he well?”
The
other thing about Joe was, he was real.
He wasn’t a huge star. He was
just Joe and I saw him numerous times walking on the streets of Manhattan. New Yorkers, usually a people who can’t be
easily roused passing some famous person on the street, would see Joe and big
smiles would appear and hellos and hand waves would follow. And Joe would say, “Why hello! Good to see you!”
Franklin
is listed in the Guinness World Records as the longest running
continuous on-air TV talk show host.
From the time I was 12 years old until I was well into my forties and
would visit New York twice a year to see my parents, I would watch Joe. Joe, the nice somewhat odd uncle who was
always such a sweet man to all his guests, no matter who they were, whether
they were a mattress stuffer from the Bronx or Harvey Fierstein
According
to the New York Times obituary on Joe, “Franklin was a fixture on late-night
radio and TV in New York, working at WJZ and WOR, and recently at the Bloomberg
Radio Network”. Apparently the last two
weeks of his life was the only time he actually missed a broadcast in 60 years.
His
talk show was first on in 1950! Imagine,
four years before I was born. I’d never
realized that. Even in changing times,
Joe was a constant in New York. And,
again, I always marveled that he treated all guests with the same courtesy and
as if they were the most important people in the world. (“Thank you Joe Ferber for that fabulous
display of stringing pearls. Coming up
next we have (pause as if forgetting) Madonna.”)
According
to numerous accounts of Joe’s show, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbara
Streisand all got early exposure on his show.
He even interviewed Cary Grant once – at least, that’s what my mom told
me.
According
to Joe’s website:
“He
also interviewed offbeat characters who would give "The Joe Franklin
Show" a "great uniqueness. On any given night you might find a world
renowned artist sitting next to a balloon folder from New Jersey."
The
day the news of his passing hit, comedy writer Chris Regan tweeted:
"Before YouTube, Twitter, etc., the ambitious-but-not-necessarily-talented
had few options. Places like The Joe Franklin Show gave them voice."
And
now another person, not only from my childhood but from my teenaged years
through early middle age, is gone.
To
end my short piece on Joe, I’ll once again quote the Times’ obit:
He was remembered as a "NYC legend" and
"radio and TV icon who was the spirit of a hard-working New Yorker"
by fans on Twitter. Others said that his "accidental absurdism was like an
Ionesco play every night" and that "Joe Franklin was every New
Yorker's oddball, congenial neighbor."
Let’s
not quite end here – let’s end instead with a quote from Joe himself: “It's nice to be important, but it's even more important to
be nice”. What a sweet man.
Wonderful to hear about a New York TV program from our time.
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