Early life
Franklin was born Joseph Fortgang to Austrian Jewish immigrant parents, Anna (Heller) and Martin Fortgang, in the Bronx, New York.1 As a teenager he was captivated by the era's great entertainers, particularly Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. He parlayed that obsession into early professional work: by his early teens he was writing comedy material and selling jokes to Eddie Cantor, and he eventually produced Cantor's Carnegie Hall show.1 At sixteen he landed a position as a record picker on Martin Block's nationally syndicated radio program "Make Believe Ballroom" on WNEW, earning him the tongue-in-cheek nickname "The Young Wreck with the Old Records."1 At fourteen he had already begun writing skits for "The Kate Smith Hour."1 He was drafted into the U.S. Army at eighteen and served during World War II. After the war he briefly attended Columbia University before leaving to pursue broadcasting full time.1
Career
Franklin launched his television show in January 1951 on WJZ-TV in New York (which subsequently became WABC-TV), making it one of the earliest regularly scheduled interview programs on American television.1 The show moved to WOR-TV (later WWOR-TV) in 1962 and continued broadcasting there until 1993, a run of more than forty years.1 The Guinness Book of World Records recognized Franklin as the longest running continuous on-air television talk show host, a tenure more than a decade longer than Johnny Carson's time on The Tonight Show.1 Franklin claimed to have interviewed more than 300,000 guests across his career, a figure that was never independently verified in full but was not seriously disputed as an approximate order of magnitude.1
He styled himself "The King of Nostalgia" and "The Wizard of Was" for his emphasis on early twentieth-century show business and the entertainers of the Tin Pan Alley, vaudeville, and Golden Age of Hollywood eras.1 That focus made his show an unusually welcoming launching pad for young performers who did not fit mainstream network tastes. Among the artists who received early television exposure on his program were Woody Allen, Andy Kaufman, Liza Minnelli, Julia Roberts, Bruce Springsteen, Robin Williams, John Belushi, Richard Pryor, and They Might Be Giants.1 For a period Bette Midler served as the show's in-house singer, with a young Barry Manilow accompanying her on piano.1
Franklin was a prolific author. His books included The Marilyn Monroe Story (1953), Classics of the Silent Screen (1959), and his memoir Up Late with Joe Franklin (2001), among approximately twelve titles in total.1 In 1999 he opened Joe Franklin's Memory Lane Restaurant on West 45th Street in Manhattan, which later became Joe Franklin's Comedy Club; the club closed in 2005.1
His cultural footprint extended into comedy and parody: Billy Crystal built a recurring impression of Franklin on Saturday Night Live during the 1984-85 season,1 and Franklin appeared on the inaugural episode of This American Life in 1995, advising host Ira Glass on his on-air persona.3
Beyond talk television, Franklin took occasional acting roles, nearly always playing himself. He appeared in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and in 29th Street (1991), as well as in Troma Entertainment's Terror Firmer (1999).4
Ghostbusters
Franklin appeared as himself in Ghostbusters (1984), in the sequence (Chapter 14: "Welcome Aboard") in which the newly celebrated Ghostbusters are shown to have become a media sensation following their successful containment of the Slimer incident at the Sedgewick Hotel.2 Ray Stantz sits across from Franklin on the set of The Joe Franklin Show, and Franklin asks Ray the film's memorably absurd question: "How is Elvis, and have you seen him lately?"2
The scene went through notable revisions during scripting. In the August 5 and September 30, 1983 drafts of the screenplay, the interview segment did not feature Franklin at all: instead, it was Diane Sawyer conducting an interview with Ray on the CBS Morning News. By the October 7, 1983 final shooting script, the setting had shifted to Franklin's show. In that version of the scene, Franklin tells Ray that the Ghostbusters remind him of the old Bob Hope film, prompting Ray to correct him: the Hope film was The Ghost Breakers, and Ray proceeds to rattle off a list of similarly named pictures including Ghost Catchers, Hold That Ghost, Spook Busters, Spook Chasers, and several others.5 The Elvis question was apparently added or sharpened in production; in one of the takes recorded on set, Dan Aykroyd ad-libbed the answer, "He's lost a lot of weight."
Franklin's casting reflected director Ivan Reitman's and writers Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis's deliberate anchoring of the film in New York City's specific media geography. A real New York talk show host, not a fictional stand-in, gave the scene an authenticity that would resonate with local and nationally aware audiences.
Personal life
Franklin married Lois Meriden, a former performer in Sally Rand's fan dance troupe. They had one son, Bradley. Later in life his longtime companion was Jodi Fritz.1
Death
Joe Franklin died on January 24, 2015, at the Mary Manning Walsh Hospice Center in Manhattan. He was 88 years old. The cause of death was prostate cancer.1 Obituaries in major outlets noted his unique place in broadcasting history as the man who essentially invented the television talk show format, and tributes came from across the entertainment world.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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"Joe Franklin," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Franklin
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Ghostbusters (1984), Chapter 14: "Welcome Aboard." Columbia Pictures. Director: Ivan Reitman.
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"New Beginnings," This American Life, Episode 1, November 17, 1995. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/1/new-beginnings
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"Joe Franklin," IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0291460/, accessed 2026-06-13.
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Spook Central, "Ghostbusters Movie Script - October 7, 1983," https://www.spookcentral.tk/sclib/ghostbusters-script-october-7-1983.html. Joe Franklin: "Ray, every time I hear about your company, I can't help thinking about the old Bob Hope movie." Ray Stantz: "Actually, Joe, the title of that film was 'Ghostbreakers,' and Olsen and Johnson did one called 'Ghost Catchers'..."
