Arlene Francis, James Cagney and Billy Wilder on the set of of the comedy film, One, Two, Three, 1961
Arlene Francis is remembered by most of us as a talk show host on WOR Radio and a game show panelist on CBS’s “What’s My Line.”
Yet Francis, who was born 115 years ago today, was a pioneer for women on television. She began her career as an actress. Active on Broadway, she acted in several films, debuting in the role of a prostitute in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), which had her falling prey to mad scientist, Bela Lugosi.
In the 1960s, Arlene Francis appeared as the wife of James Cagney in the comedy, One, Two, Three (1961), directed by Billy Wilder and filmed on location in Munich.
She also made The Thrill of It All (1963) and the television version of the play, Laura (1968), which she had played on stage several times.
In her earliest days, Francis worked on stage and on radio with Orson Welles. I did an audio documentary in the late 1980s with Leonard Maltin about actors who had worked with Welles.
In February, 1988, Francis gave me an interview and I visited her New York City apartment. She was a charming and very friendly lady. We talked in her living room.
Welles “was very imaginative and his manner of forcefulness in what he had to say was powerful. I mean you just had to pay attention and I think it was one of the first times radio had heard anybody with that kind of positive, able, brilliance in his introduction to a play or into his understanding of the part that he was playing. He was always Orson, I will say that. Very few people argued with Orson about anything, I noticed,” said Francis.
“I noticed mostly because I wouldn't have dared, but I mean mostly they just took his word for it, although he was always open to suggestions and talks and so forth....and I remember one time when his first wife, Virginia, said 'I don't happen to think that's the right way to do that.' And he said, 'But I do.'
And she had an ice cream soda in her hand in a container and she just threw it at him in front of the whole company. He just mopped it up and they went on working...” (laughter)
As the infamous "War of the Worlds" aired on radio on October 30, 1938, Francis was in rehearsals for Welles' stage production of "Danton's Death." She remembers Welles arriving at the theatre after the broadcast.
“And so we used to rehearse at the theatre until midnight or later and Orson came from that broadcast and he burst into....we were all waiting for him....he burst into the auditorium and said: 'I don't know what's going to happen. The police are gonna be after me. I know all hell has broken loose now because of the fact that I had this 'War of the Worlds' done so well that they really thought it was going on.
“And he couldn't believe the reaction to it....none of us could. But we all stayed there a long time and he was talking about it."
He said "it was nothing, they made such a big thing out of nothing. How could they do that? How are people so so silly as to believe the thing like that? In the first place, they hear my voice. They don't think I'm gonna be the one to announce the war between the worlds."
The rest, they say, is history.
Francis died at age 93 on May 31, 2001 in San Francisco. Her death was attributed to Alzheimer's disease and cancer.
Below, Arlene Francis on NBC’s Home, 1957