Late Night Television Host Joe Franklin Dead At 88: New York Entertainment Giant Died Of Prostate Cancer [PHOTO]

This past Saturday, New York television and radio host Joe Franklin passed away due to prostate cancer. He was 88 years old. According to the New York Daily News, his late-night television show is still in the "Guinness World Records" as the longest continuously running talk show in TV history.

Franklin's show ran from 1950 to 1962 on WJZ, and then until 1993 on WOR. He loved to throw out numbers, and said he interviewed 300,000 guests over those 43 years, which would work out to about 140 guests a week. Famous celebrity guests included Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, and John F. Kennedy, among many others.

According to the New York Times, he hired two other young performers - Bette Midler and Barry Manilow - as his in-house singer and accompanist. He stated, "My show was often like a zoo... I'd mix Margaret Mead with the man who whistled through his nose, or Richard Nixon with the tap-dancing dentist."

He was also known not to ever pre-rehearse his shows. He stated, "I was the only guy who never had a preproduction meeting. You don't rehearse your dinner conversation. I'm not saying I was right, but I lasted 43 years."

It served him well. He somehow knew everyone in show biz, and always had the right phone number to call for an interview. He said of his fame, "When I started, there was nothing on TV like this... And I gotta tell ya, if I could have told somebody what it would become, they'd have thought I was crazy."

Besides his television show, Franklin hosted multiple radio programs, one of which presented golden-age classics on WOR.  He also wrote many books, and even opened a restaurant in Times Square.

His survivors include his son, Bradley Franklin; two grandchildren, Billy and Sara; a younger sister, Margaret Kestenbaum; and his longtime companion, Jodi Fritz.

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