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(Sound of phones ringing and general hubbub in Joe Franklin's.)

DAVE ISAY: On the sixth floor of an old Times Square building, Joe Franklin's cramped office looks tornado stricken. It's permeated with the musty, Lysol-tinged smells rising from the multiplex sex emporium that occupies the floors below.

There are stacks of old coffee cups, moldy half-eaten bagels, and shopping bags full of yellow newspaper clippings everywhere. And of course there is the architect of it all -- Joe Franklin, sitting at the front of the office all day, working his two rotary phones.

(Phone rings.)

JOE FRANKLIN (on phone): Hello?

ISAY: He says he gets about a thousand calls a day from hopefuls trying to land a spot on his nightly talk show. He fields each one with that Joe Franklin flair.

FRANKLIN (on phone): Richard, I want to tell you something. I got so many surprises for you. Let's talk tonight at 7: 00. Promise? It's critical!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (On phone): Dan I need you maniacally, pathologically!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (on phone): Tell him that things are concretizing. Things are coming together. They're coagulating!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (on phone): Very important, Rosalyn!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (on phone): Put it on the critical list, critical!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (on phone): Give me a hint! Give me a clue!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (on phone): Tell him give me one more day to think!

(Slam)

FRANKLIN (on phone): Call back in a half hour!

(Slam. Slam. Slam.)

FRANKLIN: Once or twice a year the phone actually explodes, like an artery, like a heart attack. There might be 900 people trying to get through at one time. It actually gets a stroke and the dial blows out. Believe it or not.

ISAY: There's a lot that's hard to believe about Joe Franklin. From the fact that this is his new office -- he just moved in two months ago, although it looks like he's been here for decades -- to the fact that he's hosted something like 28,000 episodes of his talk show over the past 40 years.

In that time Joe Franklin says he's interviewed 150,000 guests. Some of them famous -- like Elvis Presley, John Wayne, and Bing Crosby. Most of them not so famous . . .

FRANKLIN: I've had dancing dentists, singing lawyers, people who play the piano standing on their heads, cabdrivers who do handwriting analysis . . .. You name it, I've had it. And if I haven't had it, I'll create it.

FRANKLIN (on phone): Yeah, yeah, Fred, let me play it now. Give me a buzz on Friday morning -- I'll make you happy. God bless you!

(Slam)

ISAY: Joe Franklin started working in broadcasting at the age of 17. By the age of 20, he was hosting his own New York radio show, Vaudeville Isn't Dead. When he was 22 -- that was forty years ago -- Joe Franklin says he invented the television talk show when a local New York station offered him a daily slot and asked him how he wanted to fill it.

FRANKLIN: I said, "Well, how about if I do a show of people talking – nose-to-nose, eyeball-to-eyeball, face-to-face, toe-to-toe." They said, "Joe, who's gonna watch people talking? The word is television. You got to give them vision. Got to give them seltzer bottles, pratfalls, got to give them movement!" I defied them and I did the first TV talk show. And look what it is today.

SHOW TECHNICIAN: Cameras, headsets.

ISAY: Joe tapes a weeks worth of programs every Thursday afternoon at WOR.-TV in Seacaucus, New Jersey, on a generic looking talk show set. In the moments just before air, Joe sits comfortably behind his host desk, his feet not quite touching the floor, perusing some notes, paying a couple of bills, looking every bit the part of a man who has done this tens of thousands of times before.

(Fade up on the Joe Franklin Show theme song.)

SHOW DIRECTOR: Theme under, dissolve into one and cue Joe.

(Theme song ends.)

FRANKLIN (Hosting show): Once again I say good morning. I am with you wandering through memory lane and the excitement is mounting. The excitement is mushrooming and skyrocketing and snow balling and escalating. Because everybody says, "Joe, is she really here? The Rock and Roll Madame?" This lady's voice . . .

(Show fades out.)

ISAY: This is vintage Joe Franklin, hosting in his trademark style -- giving his guests the sorts of introductions they'll never get anywhere else.

FRANKLIN (hosting show): Today, one of the foremost young actresses of modern times or previous times or future times . . .

(Fades into next introduction.)

They are the top comedy team of their time or anytime . . .

(Fades into next introduction.)

'Cause everyone wants to chat with America's best known, best loved . . .

(Fades into next introduction.)

We've got one of the most famed of all the plastic surgeons, a man who's all over the headlines all the time . . .

(Speaking on top of his introductions.)

I go out of my way to give them a really, really loquacious buildup.

ISAY: How far will you go?

FRANKLIN: Until it gets ludicrous. And if it gets ludicrous, I'll still keep it in the tape.

(Introducing another guest)

I want to do a moment with a man who's a very hot radio and TV guest -- Mr. Richard Dardus, a most respected biotechnologist who talks about the healing powers of the ocean. For example, sea cucumbers bring arthritis relief.

(Show fades.)

ISAY: Joe's show is unfailingly entertaining, always offering up an incredible mix of odd characters and unpredictable situations -- although Joe never makes fun of his guests, and never talks down to his audience. This, he says, is the key to his longevity in the talk-show field.

FRANKLIN: I think I'm the last one who's organic or from the bones. I'm not plastic. I try to look in the guests' eyes, not their nose or their bellybutton.

ISAY: Despite the fact that many of Joe's guests are making the one and only television appearance of their lifetime, Joe somehow seems to make them all feel comfortable. If they've got something to sell, he pushes it with gusto. If they've got a clip, he runs it. Needless to say, they are not the sorts of fancy movie trailers or music videos you're likely to find on other talk shows.

FRANKLIN (to guest): Bob, set the scene please.

GUEST: Yes, the name of the video is called "Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock to the Beat Bop."

FRANKLIN: And it goes exactly like this.

(Sound of music video: "Let's go girls, do the beat bop. Kind of like it wasn't the hop. We'll make this dance hall shake, shake, shake.")

ISAY: Joe Franklin says that his popularity is now at an all-time high thanks to the 2,500 cable systems which carry his show nation-wide. Despite 40 years of hosting this daily program, Joe says that he has no plans of retiring. And that his audience can look forward to thousands and thousands of more shows just like this one.

FRANKLIN (to guest): You got to be the new Elvis. Got to be . . . you're a late bloomer, right.

GUEST: Yes, I am.

FRANKLIN: I hope it sells a million cassettes, and I've been hearing it's doing quite well around town, right?

GUEST: Yes. And thank you for saying that.

FRANKLIN: We shall return in about twenty-three and one-half hours. Meanwhile, have a good everything . . .

(Closing theme of the Joe Franklin Show begins.)

ISAY: At the end of the day, after hours and hours of taping and dozens of guests – a routine which would leave most mortals gasping for air -- Joe just looks invigorated. He hops up from his host desk and crumples up the day's worth of notes.

ISAY: So what did you think of the shows?

FRANKLIN: I would say they were superb. On a scale of one to ten: eleven. That's my informed appraisal, my educated assessment. That's my considered opinion.

ISAY: Happy Anniversary, Joe.

FRANKLIN: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Producer: David Isay / Mix engineer: David Goren / Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Photograph by Harvey Wang.

"Joe Franklin" premiered September 8, 1991, on All Things Considered. Copyright © 1991 Sound Portraits Productions. All Rights Reserved.

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This piece is available in the following audio formats [8:06 min]:
		28.8 kbps Real Audio
		56 kbps Real Audio
		ISDN Real Audio

		intro
		transcript

		Holding On, a book with an oral history based on this documentary
		Joe Franklin's Web site
		"The Conversation," an outtake recorded in Joe Franklin's office [RealAudio file]

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