Arlene Francis

At 93 years old, Arlene Francis has this physical status:

After attending Finch College, Francis began a varied career as an entertainer based in New York City. She became an accomplished stage actress, performing in many local theatre and off-Broadway plays and in 25 Broadway plays through 1975. In 1932, she made her film debut in Universal's Murders in the Rue Morgue. She appeared in films sporadically until the 1970s.

Francis became a well-known New York City radio personality, hosting several programs. In 1938 she became the female host of the radio game show What's My Name?. Although several men appeared as co-hosts over the years, Francis was the sole female host throughout the program's long run (on ABC, NBC, and Mutual networks) until it ended in 1949.

In 1940, Francis played Betty in Betty and Bob, an early radio soap opera broadcast.

In 1943, she began as host of a network radio game show, Blind Date, which she hosted also on ABC and NBC television from 1949 to 1952. She was a regular contributor to NBC Radio's Monitor in the 1950s and 1960s and hosted a long-running midday chat show on WOR-AM that ran from 1960 to 1984.

Francis was a panelist on the weekly game show What's My Line? from its second episode on CBS in 1950 until its network cancellation in 1967, and in its daily syndicated version from 1968 to 1975.

The original show, which featured guests whose occupation, or "line," the panelists were to guess, became one of the classic television game shows, noted for the urbanity of its host and panelists.

She appeared on other game shows, including Match Game, Password, To Tell the Truth, and other programs produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, including a short-lived hosting stint on the Goodson-Todman show By Popular Demand, replacing original host Robert Alda.

According to TV Guide, Francis was the highest-earning game show panelist in the 1950s, making $1,000 (equivalent to $7,806 in 2020) per show on the prime time version of What's My Line?. By contrast, the second-highest-paid panelists on TV, Dorothy Kilgallen and Faye Emerson, received $500 (equivalent to $3,903 in 2020) per appearance.

Francis was the emcee on the last episodes of The Comeback Story, a short-lived 1954 reality show on ABC in which mostly celebrities shared stories of having overcome adversity in their personal lives.

Francis was a pioneer for women on television, one of the first to host a program that was not musical or dramatic in nature. From 1954 to 1957, she was host and editor-in-chief of Home, NBC's hour-long daytime magazine program oriented toward women, which was conceived by network president Pat Weaver to complement the network's Today and Tonight programs. In 1954, she appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She hosted Talent Patrol in the mid 1950s. In 1962, Francis was one of numerous people recruited to guest host Tonight during an interval period before Johnny Carson took over as host from Jack Paar. This made her the first woman to host not only Tonight but a national late-night U.S. network talk show.

She acted in a few Hollywood films, debuting in the role of a streetwalker who falls prey to mad scientist Bela Lugosi in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). In her memoir, Francis said she was cast for the movie even though her only acting experience at the time was in a small Shakespearean production in a convent school she had attended. Some sixteen years later, she appeared in the film version of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons (1948) with Edward G. Robinson.

In the 1960s, Francis made three films: One, Two, Three (1961), directed by Billy Wilder and filmed in Munich, in which she played James Cagney's wife; The Thrill of It All (1963) with Doris Day and James Garner; and, in 1968, the television version of the play Laura, which she had played on stage several times. Her final film performance was in Wilder's Fedora (1978).

In 1978, Francis wrote her autobiography, Arlene Francis: A Memoir, with longtime friend Florence Rome. In 1960, she wrote That Certain Something: The Magic of Charm, and she published a cookbook, No Time for Cooking, in 1961. She was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1980–82. Francis also guested on television programs including Mrs. G. Goes to College in 1962 in the episode "The Mother Affair".

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