The New York Times says Joe Franklin has died at the age of 88 and that's good enough for me.
Since I wasn't a New Yorker, I saw very little of Mr. Franklin's legendary TV show. It occasionally made it onto Los Angeles TV in brief spurts of unsuccessful syndication but I suspect more people saw the Billy Crystal parodies than saw the real program. It was a show where Franklin interviewed guests, usually all at once, jumping from guest to guest and therefore from topic to topic. He sometimes had on some Big Stars and when he couldn't get Big Stars, he got whoever he could get and treated them as Big Stars.
In 1983, my friend Marv Wolfman was booked on the show to promote a series of Teen Titans comics he'd written with an anti-drug theme. Franklin quizzed him a bit on the project, then asked some unrelated questions of an unrelated guest. Then he asked some unrelated questions to another unrelated guest. Then completely non sequitur, he turned back to Marv and said —
"Marv Wolfman! Eddie Cantor…any anecdotes?"
I didn't see that episode but when Marv told that to me, I laughed for about twenty minutes. It so perfectly encapsulated the Franklin style that I had witnessed.
I never met the man but I know a lot of people who did. They all said he was nice, caring and eager to help any talented person with any kind of problem. I hope he's remembered with the same enthusiasm that he gave to remembering the greats of show business before him.