There was never a late-late-night TV talk show quite like the Joe Franklin Show.
It aired at 1:30 am on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, which was a UHF station, meaning the signal didn’t reach far. No one could view it, for instance, in Boston or Buffalo, only in the Metro New York area.
Only night owls and insomniacs watched with any regularity, and few viewers watched to the end of the program. Either the late hour, the peculiar conversations, or Joe Franklin’s monotone would put people to sleep.
Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane aired in 1950 and ran for 12 years. But then it became simply the Joe Franklin Show.
Franklin claimed to have invented the talk show.
Short and doughy with narrow eyes, a comb-over, and always in a bargain basement suit and tie, Joe Franklin looked more like a linoleum salesman than a TV talk show host.
He was born Joseph Fortgang in the Bronx. His neighborhood pal from childhood was actor Tony Curtis. He appeared on Joe’s show in 1977 and they reminisced about the old days.
Everything about the show was old-timey and low-rent, a notch better than cable access programming. The opening credits showed pictures of Joe throughout the years with various stars of the past, like a wall of celebrity photos inside a Times Square deli. A vaudeville piano ditty played over that.
He never had a live audience. There wasn’t room in the studio. Any reactions came from the skeleton crew.
His tiny set — adorned with nothing more than a desk, a chair, and a sofa — was adjacent to the set for the children’s show Romper Room, which was just a few feet away.
Nostalgia was Franklin’s stock in trade. Joe could call forth trivial information about crooners from the 1940s or stars from the silent film era — even if his guests were discussing a completely different topic.
Franklin always listened and endeavored to put his guests at ease, and he never seemed flustered or embarrassed, even when things got weird.
He never rehearsed and never used cue cards. That was apparent sometimes. Like when he couldn’t recall his guests’ names.
On most talk shows, guests are interviewed one at a time. Franklin’s concept was to recreate a dinner party atmosphere where everyone appeared together and were asked questions randomly.
His questions and conversations could be so stilted and awkward at times that they could be unintentionally hilarious. But since there was never a studio audience, nobody laughed. Except those of us watching at home.
No talent was too big, too small, or too awful to appear on the Joe Franklin Show, a hodgepodge of has-beens, wanna-bes, and never-will-bes.
On any given program, the guest list might include an aged Hollywood legend like Faye Wray from the original King Kong film as well as an unknown chanteuse appearing at a Greenwich Village cabaret, a New Jersey psychic, and a hack ventriloquist.
The next show might feature legitimate celebrities somewhat past their prime like Bing Crosby, Debbie Reynolds, Rudy Vallee, or Jimmy Durante.
Or unknowns getting their first TV exposure like a young Barbara Streisand, young Jay Leno, teenage Julia Roberts, Harvey Fierstein, or the Ramones. (Yes, the Ramones appeared on the Joe Franklin Show.)
He treated every guest with an equal amount of lavish, gushing praise whether they deserved it or not.
Joe always performed commercials himself live — if he had sponsors. Ads were never prerecorded, and he always winged it. He hawked products from cereal to gefilte fish.
Franklin’s office in the heart of Times Square (where else?) was like his show and his mind — cluttered, chaotic, and crammed with needless trivia.
He had no secretaries and a bare-bones TV crew. He booked all the guests himself.
Joe Franklin was on television for 43 straight years — 21,425 shows — one of the longest runs in TV history. He never missed a single episode.
The program went off the air in 1993 when the TV station discovered they could make more revenue from infomercials.
Franklin then took a Saturday night spot on WOR AM radio playing nostalgic music from the past.
Joe Franklin died in 2015 at age 88.
Throughout much of the 20th Century, he was a beloved symbol of New York City’s showbiz nostalgia and its eccentricities.
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