Arlene Francis - actress and TV pioneer

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Here is an article from San-Francisco Chronicle

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Actress Arlene Francis -- famous for her 25-year role on the television game show "What's My Line?" -- died Thursday in San Francisco after a long illness. She was 93.

 

Ms. Francis died at Kaiser Hospital, where she was attended by her son, Peter Gabel, 54. She had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

 

"My mother was a wonderful, loving woman who was able to communicate her warmth and vitality to millions of people as well as to my father and me," said her son, who is president of New College of California.

 

Ms. Francis was born Arlene Francis Kazanjian on Oct. 20, 1907, in Boston. Her father, Aram Kazanjian, was an Armenian refugee from the Turkish massacres of 1905-06 who became a successful painter and photographer. Her mother, Leah Davis, was the daughter of actor Alfred Davis and instilled in her daughter a love of performing that came to shape her life.

 

Ms. Francis attended school at Mount St. Vincent Convent and later Finch's Finishing School in New York. She resisted her father's attempts to guide her away from acting and became a star on radio soap operas in the early 1930s. About the same time, she won her first film role in the Bela Lugosi production of Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue."

 

In the early 1930s, she was a member of Orson Welles' experimental Mercury Theater and over the course of her career starred in many Broadway plays, including "The Women," "Once More With Feeling" (with Joseph Cotten), "Tchin- Tchin" and "Mrs. Dally Has a Lover."

 

Her radio work continued into the 1940s, even as her career grew in film and stage.

 

Ms. Francis starred or co-starred in a number of well-known movies, including Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" (with Edward G. Robinson), Billy Wilder's "One, Two, Three" (with James Cagney) and "The Thrill of It All" (with James Garner and Doris Day).

 

In 1946, she married Broadway stage actor Martin Gabel. They lived together in Manhattan until his death in 1986.

 

Ms. Francis was a pioneer for women on television, serving as editor in chief and host of the 1950s morning television show "Home," which was the predecessor of all the daytime talk and news shows on television.

 

But to millions of Americans, she was best known for her role as a panelist on "What's My Line?" which began in 1950 and ran until 1975.

 

During the 1950s, Newsweek declared Ms. Francis to be the third most famous woman in America during television's golden age of the 1950s.

 

From the early 1960s until 1990, Ms. Francis was host of a daily interview show on WOR radio in New York City.

 

She moved to San Francisco eight years ago to be closer to her family.

 

In addition to her son, she is survived by her grandson, Sam Jaicks Gabel.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...2/MNL216881.DTL