Arlene Francis played a key role in television's first decades as performer, talk show host, and guest star, appearing on many shows and proving herself to be one of the medium's most durable personalities. At the height of her popularity in the mid-1950s, she was rated the third-most-recognized woman in the United States.

     Francis had a diverse and successful career on television, preceded by a versatile career as "emcee," actress, and radio performer. Her film career began in 1932 with Murders on the Rue Morgue. In the collection of the Museum of the Television and Radio in New York, one can listen to her work as an actress on radio as early as 1936 on the Columbia Radio Workshop. During World War II she was the "emcee" of a radio show called Blind Date, a forerunner of The Dating Game. She was the first female game show host on ABC. During this time she also worked regularly as a featured actress on the Broadway stage, before coming to television in the early 1950s. She appeared in a simulcast version of Blind Date from 1949 to 1952, and also on such shows as By Popular Demand and Price Performance, but it was as a regular panelist on the popular quiz show What's My Line? that Francis became a household name on television. Known for her elegance and good humor, Francis would trade repartee each week with such figures as columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, publisher Bennet Cerf, and poet Louis Untermeyer.

Although What's My Line? was her bread-and­ butter show over the next 25 years, versatility continued to mark Francis's career. In September 1950, shortly after she joined the panel of that word-and-wit show, she became the first "mistress" of ceremonies for NBC's Saturday Night Revue: Your Show of Shows, and she appeared frequently on other television shows in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Francis also made a major contribution to the history of television talk as host and managing editor of NBC's Home show. Home was the afternoon show teamed with Today and Tonight in NBC president Sylvester "Pat" Weaver's trilogy of daily talk on NBC in the 1950s, each show anchored by a "communicator." Network executives knew that women represented a major part of the daytime audience and were key decision makers on consumer purchases. Home was NBC's attempt to capture that audience. To quote from the 1954 film On the Waterfront, Francis "coulda been a contender" as a titan of television talk had she continued on Home. She was certainly one of the foremost talk show hosts on television in the 1950s, and if her show had continued into the 1960s, her national status as a major talk show host would have been assured. But Home, despite great popularity among its audience, was canceled after three and a half years when Weaver was forced out of NBC by network founder David Sarnoff. Ultimately, Francis's career as a national talk show host was a casualty of forces that were moving network television away from strong women hosts, serious topics, sustaining shows, and public service, and toward immediate bottom-line profits-the same forces that drove Edward R. Mur­ row from the air at CBS.

     As host of Home, Francis established patterns of daytime talk that are still with us today. This daytime talk "magazine" of the air was designed to provide intelligent conversation and up-to-date information for a largely female audience, although men were in the audience as well. Indeed, from 1954 to 1957, Francis was, along with Arthur Godfrey, Murrow, Dave Garroway, and Jack Paar, one of the founders of television talk. It was not until Phil Donahue rose to national syndication prominence two decades later that another national talk show host would make a similar appeal to women audiences. With more support from NBC management, or if Weaver had been able to continue as president, the Home show might have continued to build an audience and sustained itself as Today and Tonight did. As it is, the story of Francis's role on Home reveals the limitations placed on women talk show hosts in the male­ dominated world of 1950s television.

     The tensions placed on Francis's life as the managing editor and "boss" of her show were reflected in a 1957 Mike Wallace Interview on ABC. Wallace began his interview with Francis by saying that a lot was being said and written about "career women" in the United States. "What," he asked her, "is it that happens to so many career women that makes them so brittle? That makes them almost a kind of third sex?" Francis replied:Well, what happens to some of [the women] who have these qualities you've just spoken of, is that I suppose they feel a very competitive thing with men and they talk from a masculine viewpoint and forget primarily that they are women… Instead, they become aggressive and opinionated. While men do it, it is part of the makeup of a man, a man has always done it all his life. I do not think it is a woman’s position to dominate. 

     Yet when NBC came to Francis toward the end of Dave Garroway's long reign to ask her to co-host Today with Hugh Downs, but not host her own show, she refused. Unresolved issues of power, issues that Barbara Walters was to struggle with and resolve in the 1960s and 1970s, limited Francis’s opinions in the mid-1950s. By the end of her life, Francis was considerably more reflective about her dilemma. In her autobiography, she wrote that she had come to realize "how deeply my inability to express myself without becoming apprehensive about what 'they' might think had affected me. In short, my 'don't make waves' philosophy had inhibited my life to an incalculable extent   I had forgot­ then a few waves are necessary to keep the water from becoming stagnant."

     In the later 1960s and I 970s, it was Francis's friend Walters, the person who did take the co-host position with Downs on the Today show, who became the preeminent national woman host of public affairs and news talk on television. 

     When Arlene Francis died on May 31, 2001, the tributes and accolades from family, friends, colleagues, and fans poured in. One of the most useful and fitting memorials was a beautifully designed web­site (www.arlenefrancis.com) containing biographical highlights, tributes, a timeline with photographic illustrations of her remarkable and prolific career, and much other valuable information.