Arlene Francis

Arlene Francis, born Arline Francis Kazanjian on October 20, 1907, in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American actress, radio personality, television host, and game show panelist. She died on May 31, 2001. Her father, Aram Kazanjian, was an Armenian immigrant who had been studying art in Paris as a teenager when he learned that both his parents had perished in the Hamidian massacres carried out by the Ottoman government between 1894 and 1896. He subsequently emigrated to the United States, established himself as a portrait photographer with a studio in Boston, and later painted nature scenes that he sold at auction in New York. Her mother was Leah, née Davis. When Francis was seven, the family relocated from Boston to Washington Heights, Manhattan, where her father believed opportunities were greater. She remained a New York resident until 1993, when she entered a nursing home in San Francisco.

Francis attended Finch College before launching her career as an entertainer in New York City. Her Broadway career spanned from 1928 to 1987 and encompassed more than two dozen productions. Among her stage credits were the comedy Once More, With Feeling, the play The French Touch, Happy Birthday, Mr. Abbott!, Don't Call Back, and Dinner at Eight. She also performed in the play Laura on multiple occasions. In 1932, she made her film debut in Universal's Murders in the Rue Morgue, playing a streetwalker who falls prey to the mad scientist portrayed by Bela Lugosi. In her 1978 autobiography, she noted that her only prior acting experience at the time of that casting was a small Shakespearean production at a convent school. Approximately sixteen years later, she appeared in the film adaptation of Arthur Miller's All My Sons alongside Edward G. Robinson. During the 1960s she appeared in three additional films: One, Two, Three, directed by Billy Wilder and filmed in Munich, in which she played the wife of James Cagney's character; The Thrill of It All with Doris Day and James Garner; and a television adaptation of Laura in 1968. Her final film role came in Wilder's Fedora in 1978.

Francis built a substantial radio career alongside her stage work. In 1938 she became the female host of the radio game show What's My Name?, serving as its sole female host across its run on the ABC, NBC, and Mutual networks until the program ended in 1949. In 1940 she played Betty in the early radio soap opera Betty and Bob. Beginning in 1943, she hosted the network radio game show Blind Date, a role she extended to ABC and NBC television from 1949 to 1952. She was a regular contributor to NBC Radio's Monitor during the 1950s and 1960s and hosted a midday chat program on WOR-AM from 1960 to 1984.

Her most prominent television association was with the CBS game show What's My Line?, on which she served as a panelist from the program's second episode in 1950 through its network cancellation in 1967, and then in its daily syndicated version from 1968 to 1975. According to TV Guide, Francis was the highest-earning game show panelist in the 1950s, receiving $1,000 per appearance on the prime-time version of the program, compared to $500 per appearance for the second-highest-paid panelists, Dorothy Kilgallen and Faye Emerson. She also appeared on other Goodson-Todman productions including Match Game, Password, To Tell the Truth, and By Popular Demand, the last of which she hosted briefly, replacing original host Robert Alda. In 1954 she served as emcee on the final episodes of The Comeback Story, a short-lived ABC reality program in which celebrities recounted overcoming personal adversity.

From 1954 to 1957, Francis was host and editor-in-chief of Home, NBC's hour-long daytime magazine program for women, conceived by network president Pat Weaver as a companion to the Today and Tonight programs. She also hosted Talent Patrol in the mid-1950s and appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1954. From 1952 to 1961 she served as a regular substitute for Dave Garroway on the Today Show. In November 1961 she hosted The Price Is Right while regular host Bill Cullen was on vacation. In 1962 she was among the guest hosts of Tonight during the transitional period before Johnny Carson assumed the role from Jack Paar, making her the first woman to host that program and the first to host a national late-night network talk show in the United States. That same year she also guest-starred in an episode of Mrs. G. Goes to College. Francis made sporadic television appearances through the 1980s, with her final appearances occurring at Mark Goodson's birthday party and on The Howard Stern Show with Robin Quivers and Kitty Carlisle in 1991.

Francis published three books: That Certain Something: The Magic of Charm in 1960, a cookbook titled No Time for Cooking in 1961, and her autobiography, Arlene Francis: A Memoir, co-written with Florence Rome, in 1978. She served on the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1980 to 1982.

Francis was married twice. Her first marriage, to Paramount Pictures executive Neil Agnew, lasted from 1935 to 1945. In her autobiography she wrote that she had never been in love with Agnew and that during the marriage she met and fell in love with producer and actor Martin Gabel, whose encouragement to seek a divorce created tension with her parents, who had regarded Agnew as a son. Francis and Gabel married in 1946 and remained together until his death in 1986. Gabel appeared frequently as a guest panelist on What's My Line?, and the couple regularly exchanged endearments on the program. Their son, Peter Gabel, was born on January 28, 1947. Peter became a legal scholar associated with New College of California in San Francisco and served as an associate editor of Tikkun, a Jewish-community commentary magazine. While working as a tour guide at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Peter appeared as a contestant on What's My Line?, surprising his mother. In 1962, Francis and her husband paid $185,000 to settle a lawsuit arising from an incident in which a dumbbell used by the family maid to prop open a window became dislodged and caused a fatality.