TV Guide, Oct. 23-29, 1971

BRINGING 'MR. NOVAK' UP TO DATE (cover story)

By Leslie Raddatz

The name James Grover Franciscus absolutely rings with solidity; 
integrity, conservatism and dignity. And well it should, for its 
bearer-star of the new ABC series Longstreet is an actor possessed 
of all these sterling qualities, both on and off the screen But 
Jim Franciscus has a childhood nickname, "Goey" (his brother could 
not pronounce Grover). Rarely used any more, it fits the obverse 
side of Jim's personality. He is truly a goer, with a "devilish" 
streak that surfaces when he gets home of an evening or weekend, 
or sometimes "after a few grapes."

To the viewing public, he is best known as the upstanding Mr. 
Novak of a few seasons back. To his peers, he is "a professional 
right down the line," "a fine young actor," "an instinctive 
actor," "dedicated," "basically intellectual in an area that is 
not intellectual." On the personal side, his credentials are 
impeccable: top-drawer social and cultural background, educated at 
Eastern prep schools and Yale, an unsullied domestic life with his 
one and only wife and their two daughters, middle-of-the-road 
politically, his infrequent public appearances limited almost 
exclusively to celebrity tennis tournaments, which he usually 
wins.

But then there is the other Franciscus. Those close to him say 
... He's normal as blueberry pie, but crazy as a June bug when he 
gets home; When he's away from acting he's a very funny guy"; "He 
can be two absolutely different people"; "He's a complete wild man 
when he gets rolling"; "He's a different guy at parties, after a 
few martinis"; "He can be loud and raucous."

It is difficult to imagine Franciscus/Novak chasing his wife down 
the hall of a hotel in Rome throwing spaghetti at her, but "Goey" 
Franciscus did exactly that-all in fun, of course, but to the 
consternation of onlooking maids. "I don't know how it started," 
says the ebullient Kitty Franciscus, "but we were having this 
great spaghetti fight in the room. Finally I ran out into the 
hall, and Jimmy came after me, still throwing spaghetti. We really 
had a mess to clean up afterward." Franciscus's longtime friend 
Wendell Niles Jr. has known him since his "swinging bachelor days" 
in New York, when he was dating Jane Fonda. Niles says, "I could 
tell you stories about him you couldn't print. They're as wild as 
the things you hear about John Barrymore and Errol Flynn."

Few except family and close friends see this frivolous side of 
Franciscus. With the press, he is reserved to a fault, and he has 
been the recipient of the Hollywood Women's Press Club "Sour Apple 
Award" for uncooperative stars. ("He should always take me along 
on interviews," says his wife. "I'd change his image.") But 
Franciscus the workmanlike actor is on view to everyone on a set 
with him. Longstreet is an example.

After two seasons of Mr. Novak, anxious to get away from the 
"shirt and tie" image, Franciscus decided to Concentrate on 
feature motion pictures. I le made six in the past three years, 
but except for "Marooned" and "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," 
the experience was not rewarding. (His most recent effort, "Cat-
o'-Nine-Tails," made in Italy, scene of the spaghetti battle, was 
called "unfit for human consumption" by critic Judith Crist.) 
Franciscus says, "I don't like the type of pictures being made 
now, and I don't like traveling. I've been living like a gypsy, 
making movies in Italy, Norway and Spain. I missed my family." 
Since he did not have the choice of roles that, for instance, 
Steve McQueen has ("I'm obviously not in that class"), he decided 
to give television another try.

Longstreet was presented to him, and he liked it. "There was a 
challenge in playing a hero who's blind," he says. "Has it ever 
been done before?" Longstreet also meant a reunion with Stirling 
Silliphant, the talented writer/producer with whom he worked 
during the first season of Naked City, his first starring role on 
TV.

Although Franciscus was anxious to get back into television and 
wanted to do Longstreet, there was the matter of making a deal. 
And here Franciscus the businessman comes into focus. Dick 
Clayton, the actor's agent, says, "He wanted to do the show from 
the very start, but they had to take him on his own terms. There s 
no back-and-forth with him. Once he says something, he doesn't 
budge." Franciscus ended up owning a piece of Longstreet

With the contracts signed, the actor set about learning how to 
play a blind man. His father-in-law, the veteran director William 
Wellman, said he could do it only with dark glasses, but 
Franciscus did not agree. Eventually in the show he would 
sometimes wear glasses, sometimes use a radar-equipped cane. 
sometimes depend upon his dog. But first he went to the Foundation 
for the Junior Blind in Los Angeles and to the Guide Dog 
Foundation in San Raphael, Cal. He attended classes and followed 
blind persons about the streets as they learned to handle their 
dogs. (The dog he uses in Longstreet is not a guide dog. however, 
but an ~ actor dog playing a guide dog He even has a stand-in!) 
`.I had to learn more than just unfocusing my eyes," Jim says. 
"You have to have everything come in your ears. If that doesn't 
come across, you're lost."

Cecil Smith of the Los Angeles Times has dismissed Longstreet, 
with its blind insurance investigator, and Ironside, with its 
wheel-chair-bound detective, as "the gimmick-cop school of 
television." But Franciscus seeks another dimension in his role. 
"I want to play Longstreet as a guy coping, not selfpitying," he 
says. "I want to convince the audience that the blind are not 
truly handicapped."

Since Mr. Novak, Franciscus has not been content to concern 
himself entirely with acting. In partnership with Fred Brogger, he 
formed Omnibus Productions, which produced the TV specials 
"Heidi," "David Copperfield" and "Jane Eyre." In all three 
ventures, Jim's role was that of producer, rather than actor. In 
fact, according to a colleague, ''Where most actors would try to 
find vehicles they could appear in, he did just the opposite. He 
would say, 'I'd never hire me for this part.' He limited himself 
strictly to the preliminary work, then let Brogger and Delbert 
Mann take over." After only a few months on Longstreet, Stirling 
Silliphant said, "He's more than an actor-he's a creative partner. 
My relationship with him is as an executive, not an actor."

But acting has been the first love of James Franciscus since, at 
12, he appeared in a musical version of "Treasure Island at the 
Fenderson School in West Newton, Mass. "Right then, I knew I 
wanted to be an actor,' he says. He had moved East from Missouri 
(he was born in Clayton, Mo., Jan. 31, 1934) a year before, when 
his widowed mother remarried, The family was in the St Louis 
Social Register.

When Jim's mother married New York stockbroker Francis LaFarge, of 
the literary LaFarges, "Jim's Midwestern background was projected 
into the Eastern cultural scene," according to an old friend.

At Taf1 School in Watertown, Conn he starred in "Billy Budd" and 
"The Devil and Daniel Webster." His dram teacher there, Peter 
Candler, says ''The Devil was his favorite role. He would love to 
be the Devil. but he only gets pretty-boy parts." By the time Jinn 
got to Yale, Candler was manager of the famed Cape Playhouse at 
Newton, Mass., where Franciscus spent his summers doing everything 
there was to do around the theater-building sets and painting 
scenery, as well as acting with such unknowns as Jane Fonda and 
Joanne Woodward. He also had a tiny studio where he wrote plays, 
and at Yale had a "little cubbyhole" which he used for the same 
purpose. ("He has a mania for seclusion," says Candler.) Some of 
his plays won prizes. One was written in Elizabethan verse, 
another concerned a teacher. "He can still recite them,'' says 
Candler.

Jinn majored in English for his B.A. at Yale "I wanted to be 
educated a well as be an actor," he says. Although he received 
some recognition for hi writing, eventually he did not like the 
loneliness of the craft. "The old saying is that a writer sits 
alone on top of mountain and looks down at the people in the 
valley," he says. "I want to be down in the valley."

In his junior year at Yale he starred in a musical version of "The 
Great Gatsby."  Dick Cavett, who was in the same production, 
remembers him as "on the reserved side-mortified and terrified 
because he had to sing." But Cavett adds, "The rest of us knew that 
the movie scouts in the audience would be looking at Franciscus, 
with that blond hair and all those teeth." They were, too, and Jim 
got his first movie role in a thriller called "Four Boys and a 
Gun."

In 1960, Franciscus married Kitty Wellman. A friend says, "Kitty 
may be the best thing that ever happened to him." She has the 
ability to break through her husband's customary reserve, which, 
according to Silliphant, is not shyness but "a shield for a 
penetrating mind-he has total security." The Franciscus daughters, 
Jamie Allen and Kellie Allen, were both born on Dec. 4, one in 
1961, the other in 1963 ("It must have been the same vacation," 
says Jim). The family lives on an acre in North Hollywood, in a 
ranchy, 30-year-old house with green shingles and shutters, 
surrounded by fruit trees.

The duality of Franciscus's personality shows up in his off-camera 
pursuits. He enjoys such solitary pastimes as reading (philosophy, 
psychology, biography) and listening to recordings of everything 
from rock to Bach. But he has also gone in for such flamboyant 
hobbies as flying a jet plane and parachute-jumping He took up the 
latter because. he says. " I was always scared of heights." He 
plays tennis before packed stands in tournaments with Efrem 
Zimbalist Jr., Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston. But last year 
he paid an unpublicized visit to the Lawrenceville School in New 
Jersey, where his old friend and mentor, Peter Candler, now heads 
the drama and cinema department. There Franciscus taught CandlerÕs 
classes for three days.

When Candler and Franciscus write to each other, they begin their 
letters "Dear Snark" Lewis Carroll created the mythical snark - "a 
peculiar creature, that won't be caught in a conventional way." 
Perhaps the designation, insofar as James Franciscus is concerned, 
is not inappropriate.  END