The Peculiar Truth about the First Lady of Late Night TV

• October 1949: CBS TV broadcasting was underway, although it couldn’t yet match radio for audience share because few Americans had television sets.

• Even so, long before the Tonight Show with Steve Allen and Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, there was The Faye Emerson Show.

• Emerson was a Warner Brothers contract actor during the 1940s and an accomplished Broadway star.

• During WWII, Howard Hughes introduced Faye to FDR’s son Elliott. She later married into the Roosevelt family and for a time lived with her new husband at Hyde Park.

• The attractive blonde was approaching middle age when she broke into the new medium of television.

• At the same time she was beginning her new career, she was so distraught over her failed marriage that she attempted suicide. Faye and Elliott divorced in 1950.

• She then married bandleader Skitch Henderson.

• None of that was discussed on her talk show.

• The live program often aired for only fifteen minutes around 11 pm. For the first six months, her show aired on CBS and NBC at the same time.

• Her show had no comedy monologue, as would become the late night custom thereafter. Instead, Emerson often discussed weighty topics: politics, equal rights for women, design, and culture.

• Her guests included Tennessee Williams, Edith Piaf, Frank Lloyd Wright, and other dignitaries, as well as athletes and accomplished women from the U.S. military. One of her early guests was Steve Allen, who went on to host the Tonight Show.

• Emerson was an intellectual, yet the news media focused on her seductive good looks and low-cut, revealing dresses. One night, she supposedly had a wardrobe malfunction and exposed herself on camera.

• Her program went off the air after less than two years because the sponsor, Pepsi Cola, preferred a recorded show. Or so they claimed.

• She then starred on Faye Emerson’s Wonderful Town from 1951-52, a prime time variety program that featured many musicians including Rosemary Clooney, Benny Goodman, Mel Torme, Margaret Whiting, and WC Handy.

• Faye Emerson continued to appear in films and on television game shows throughout the 1950s, including as a recurring panelist on What’s My Line? and I’ve Got a Secret.

• In 1957, she divorced Skitch Henderson who had been fired as musical director of the Tonight Show after a scandal involving teenage girls.

• In 1963, Emerson disappeared to Europe where she spent the remainder of her life.

• Faye Emerson has a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Her name is misspelled.