In 1978, Joe Franken had a day job consulting for the Johnson Printing Company of Minneapolis. He also moonlighted as an actor, a model, and a copy writer. Back in the seventies and eighties, his work in TV commercials made him a familiar face to many Twin Citizens.
Before he got into advertising and printing, however, Franken worked in his father-in-law’s textile business. Originally based in New York, the company, Simon Kunst and Co., moved to Albert Lea in the early sixties. When the company pulled up stakes, it brought along the Franken family: Joe and Phoebe and their two young sons, Al and Owen.
Albert Lea was a nice town, but Joe and Phoebe Franken were unhappy there. Back in New York, they’d been passionate about theater. Joe had performed in high school, college, and community theater, and Phoebe had been a professional actress. I spoke with Joe in 1978, and he ruefully remembered that Albert Lea’s dramatic offerings didn’t qualify even as off-off-Broadway. “The only theaters they had were two movie houses, which only played on weekends. One played Ma and Pa Kettle and the other … cowboy movies.”
The slaughterhouse town in southern Minnesota represented quite a culture shock for Joe and Phoebe. They kept their interest alive by subscribing to the American Theater Guild and traveling to the Twin Cities whenever the troupe came to perform. “Every time we came,” Joe said, “there was a snowstorm.”
The perils of attending the theater and being caught in a blizzard one hundred miles from home ended when Mr. Kunst, Joe’s father-in-law, moved the business to St. Paul. Joe was pleased with the new location, but the business was beginning to wear on him. “I still didn’t like it,” he said, “so I finally quit.”
He enjoyed being a Minnesotan, though, and his new job at Johnson Printing. Most of all he liked the culture scene of the Twin Cities.
Some of their friends tried to interest the Frankens in Theatre in the Round, but when Joe heard it was community theater, he said, “Oh, that means amateur. I want no part of it.”
You couldn’t blame their friends for tricking them into seeing their first performance at that community playhouse. Then as now, Theatre in the Round’s reputation was superb.
“We enjoyed it so much that during intermission we signed up as season members. We were hooked, both of us,” said Joe. The Frankens not only graced the theater’s auditorium, they went on to perform on its stage. The entire Franken family was cast in a 1963 production of Life with Mother.
Joe played dozens of roles. One performance inspired an ad man named Sid Rich to cast him in his first television commercial, riding a Toro lawn mower. From riding mowers he went on to describe the virtues of Home brand peanut butter. Joe Franken was especially good at portraying clerks, insurance men, accountants, and bank presidents. He had a broad forehead, kind eyes, and a sonorous, deep voice with just a trace of a New York accent. “A lot of people are afraid that a low voice like mine is hard to understand,” he told me, “and other people think it’s just fine.” Joe said the slight New York accent was liked by some and disliked by others. “The funny thing is, when I go back to New York, they say, ‘Oh, you sound like a dumb Midwesterner.’ ”
Joe Franken’s face was just as expressive as his voice, and he became a popular model among print advertisers. He portrayed a miserly landlord in an ad for condominiums (“Instead of paying the landlord, pay yourself!”). In an ad for a commercial photo printer called Pako, he played an old codger in a rocking chair, illustrating their motto, “You don’t grow old waiting for Pako.”
Owen Franken eventually became a photographer and lives today in France. His work has appeared in such publications as Time magazine and the New York Times. Everyone knows what became of Al. At the time I interviewed his father, twenty-five years ago, Al was writing and performing with the original cast of Saturday Night Live.
Through the seventies, Joe and Phoebe never missed their son’s performances. They often invited friends into their St. Louis Park home to watch Saturday Night Live. In December of 1977, they traveled to New York and became part of the act. In a classic SNL moment, Al sang a song to them and presented each with a photograph, signed, “To my greatest fans.” When Al asked them how they felt, Phoebe said she hadn’t been so nervous since his eighth-grade teacher called to tell her he’d wet his pants. Joe Franken died in December 1993. Ten years later, Phoebe Franken passed away.
—Dean Potter
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