Her signature trademarks
were her blonde hair, smouldering good-looks, and a small beauty mark
just to the right of her lower lip and in 2005, TV Guide ranked
Francis # 18 on its "50 Sexiest Stars of All Time" list.
Anne Francis entered show
business at a young age to help her family during the Great
Depression She was born Ann Marvak on September 16th, 1930 in
Ossining, New York (which is near Sing Sing prison), the only child
of Phillip Marvak, a businessman/salesman, and the former Edith Francis.
Francis became a John
Robert Powers model at age 6 and swiftly moved into radio soap work
and television in New York.
By age 11, Francis was
making her stage debut on Broadway playing the child version of
Gertrude Lawrence in the star's 1941 hit vehicle "Lady in the
Dark". During this productive time, she attended New York's
Professional Children's School.
Francis was signed by 20th
Century-Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck after playing a seductive,
child-bearing juvenile delinquent in the low budget film So Young So
Bad (1950).
Anne soon starred in a
number of promising ingénue roles, including Elopement (1951),
Lydia Bailey (1952) and Dreamboat (1952) but she still could not seem
to rise above the starlet typecast.
At MGM, she found promising
leading lady work in a few noteworthy 1950s classics: Bad Day at
Black Rock (1955); Blackboard Jungle (1955); and the science fiction
cult classic Forbidden Planet (1956 below).
Francis found success in
television and was a frequent guest star in 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s
made-for-TV movies and series programs. She guest starred twice on
The Untouchables as a gangster's girlfriend and appeared twice in The
Twilight Zone, including the title character in "Jess-Belle"
and as Marsha White in "The After Hours". Francis appeared
in two episodes of the western series The Virginian and in the
episode "Incident of the Shambling Man" on the CBS western,
Rawhide. She was cast in an episode of Gene Kelly's ABC drama series,
Going My Way, based on a 1944 film of the same name. During 1964, she
guest starred in two episodes, "Hideout" and "Rachel's
Mother", of the short-lived CBS drama, The Reporter, and two
successive appearances the same year in NBC's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series.
Selected Anne Francis TVography
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
- The Trap (1965)
- Blood Bargain, 1963
- What Really Happened (1963)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
- Keep Me Company (1961)
- Hooked (1960)
Banacek
- Horse of a Slightly
Different Color (1974)
Barnaby Jones
- Theater of Fear (1975)
- Murder in the Doll's
House (1973)
Ben Casey
- A Bird in the Solitude
Singing (1964)
- With the Rich and Mighty,
Always a Little Patience (1963)
Burke's Law
- Who Killed Wade Walker? (1963)
- Who Killed the Jackpot?
as Honey West (1965)
Burke's Law
- Who Killed Nick Hazard? (1994)
Anne Francis who plays a
character named Honey Best in this episode, starred in the series
Honey West (1965), the pilot of which was in an episode of the
original Burke's Law.
Cannon
- Murder by Proxy (1973)
Charlie's Angels
- Angels of the Deep (1980)
- Pom Pom Angels (1978)
CHiPs
- In the Best of Families (1982)
Columbo
- A Stitch in Crime (1973)
-Short Fuse (1972)
Dallas
(1981)
Dan August
- Murder by Proxy (1970)
Death Valley Days
- The Last Stagecoach
Robbery (1964)
Dr. Kildare
- A Million Dollar Property (1961)
The Drew Carey Show
- Nicki's Wedding (1998)
- Nicki's Parents (1998)
Ellery Queen
- The Adventure of the
Lover's Leap (1975)
The F.B.I.
- Ransom (1973)
- Deadfall (1970)
Fantasy Island
- Man-Beast/Ole Island
Oprey (1981)
- The Swinger/Terrors of
the Mind (1980)
- The War Games/Queen of
the Boston Bruisers (1978)
Fantasy Island
- Heroes (1999)
This was a revival of the
popular 1970s television series with Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Roarke.
The Fugitive
- The One That Got Away
(1967 below left)
The Golden Girls
- Till Death Do We Volley
(1989 below right)
Gunsmoke
- Sarah (1972)
Hardcastle and McCormick
- The Long Ago Girl (1985)
Hawaii Five-O
- When Does a War End? (1978)
Home Improvement
- A Funny Valentine (1997)
Honey
West
- series star (1965)
The Invaders
- The Saucer (1967)
Ironside
- Class of '40 (1974)
- A Man Named Arno (1972)
Jake and the Fatman
- Fatal Attraction (1987)
Kung Fu
- Night of the Owls, Day of
the Doves (1974)
The Littlest Hobo
- Romiet and Julio (1980)
Love, American Style
- Love and the
Elopement/Love and the Visitor (1970)
The Love Boat
- Santa, Santa,
Santa/Another Dog Gone Christmas/Noel's Christmas Carol (1984)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
- The Giuoco Piano Affair (1964)
Matlock
- The Starlet (1989)
Mission: Impossible
- Double Circle (1969)
Murder, She Wrote
- The Big Show of 1965 (1990)
- Keep the Home Fries
Burning, The Murder of Sherlock Holmes (1984)
My Three Sons
(1971)
The Name of the Game
- Incident in Berlin (1968)
- The Garden (1970)
Quincy M.E.
- Physician, Heal Thyself (1979)
Police Woman
- Murder with Pretty People (1978)
- Broken Angels (1976)
Twilight Zone
- The After Hours (1960
above left)
- Jess-Belle (1963 above right)
Vega$
- Mother Mishkin (1978)
The Virginian
- Gun Quest (1970)
- All Nice and Legal (1964)
Wings
- The Lady Vanishes (1996)
Without a Trace
- Shadows (2004)
Wonder Woman
- Beauty on Parade (1976)
In
1965, Francis was cast as Honey West, a sexy private detective with
a pet ocelot; the character was initially introduced on the ABC
series, Burke's Law, and then spun-off in her own series Honey West
(1965–1966) which was the first TV series with a female
detective character's name in the title. She won a Golden Globe Award
and was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role.
Anne Francis received a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1611 Vine Street in Hollywood,
California on January 6, 2011.
In 1968, she played the
role of Georgia James in the feature film Funny Girl and one year
later played Nancy Ingersoll, the wife of Jerry Lewis' character in
the comedy Hook, Line and Sinker. She also co-starred in Impasse, an
adventure film starring Burt Reynolds.
At the start of the final
season in 1971 of CBS's My Three Sons, Francis played bowling alley
waitress Terri Dowling, who marries character Laird Fergus McBain
Douglas of Sithian Bridge, Scotland, and returned to his homeland as
royalty. (Fred MacMurray played the dual character roles of Steve
Douglas and Fergus McBain Douglas in this four-part story arc). She
was also a murder victim in the Columbo episode "A Stitch in
Crime", with guest star Leonard Nimoy. In 1977, she appeared as
Lt. Cmdr. Gladys Hope, the head nurse in two episodes of Robert
Conrad's World War II series Baa Baa Black Sheep.
During the 1980–1981
season of CBS's Dallas, Francis had a recurring role as Arliss
Cooper, the mother of Mitch and Afton Cooper. She later played
"Mama Jo" in the 1984 TV-detective series Riptide. She made
an appearance in Matlock, another popular detective series and in The
Golden Girls as Trudy McMann, Dorothy's friend from high school.
In 1989 and 1990, she
guest-starred in several episodes of Angela Lansbury's Murder, She
Wrote, returning to her full name of Anne Lloyd Francis in the show's
credits. She guest starred in 1998 as Kate Walsh's mom in a two-part
episode of The Drew Carey Show. Francis' final television acting role
came in a 2004 episode of the CBS series, Without a Trace.
Francis was married to
Bamlet Lawrence Price, Jr., from May 1952 through April 1955 and to
Robert Abeloff from 1960 through 1964; she never remarried after
divorcing Abeloff. She and Abeloff had one daughter together, Jane
Elizabeth Abeloff (Uemura), born on March 21, 1962, in Los Angeles.
Francis later adopted Margaret "Maggie" West in 1970, one
of the first adoptions granted to a single person in California. Anne
Francis was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007; she kept her fans
informed of her progress on her official website. She died on January
2nd, 2011, from complications due to pancreatic cancer at a
retirement home in Santa Barbara, California, a little more than a
month after the death of her Forbidden Planet co-star Leslie Nielsen.
She is survived by her two daughters and one grandchild.
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