Network Sabotage
at Frank’s Place
by Jamie Jobb
I was very angry, perhaps you can tell from my letter below? At the time, we had a top-shelf prime-time favorite tv show – “Frank’s Place” – and the network was moving it around from night-to-night,“shopping for an audience” in its first season. Meanwhile the audience continued to dwindle, it could not find the show from week-to-week.
Note that the first season of “Frank’s Place” was its only season. This was long before we could watch anything on line. The year was 1988. And I fired off a letter to Kim LeMasters, the Program Director of CBS, which aired the show starring Tim Reid and his wife Daphne Maxwell Reid. Let’s look at that letter:
“Yo Honkey:
I am white and have been that way all my life. I can’t help it. Presumably you're white too. (It’s hard to imagine a program director of an American network being anything but white. And male) You can't help that. But today I feel you are a discredit to our race, and aI1 the progress that white people have grudgingly made in the last 2O years of learning to live with (not Lord It over) people from other less privileged cultures.
Perhaps I'm putting too much blame on you personally. But I wrote you in May complaining about how your network has yanking around Frank’s Place (probably the only realistic look at black people ever aired on any network). You didn't write back.
CBS put Frank into so many different time slots that even TV Guide had trouble keeping up with where it was. No wonder the viewing audience ‘simply failed to respond to it.’ We couldn’t find it! Six different time slots, come on!
What kind of idiots do you think we are out here in land behind the Vast Wasteland? I don’t watch much commercial tv because it’s so stupid and insulting. Other shows about black people (including the Yuppie one on NBC) seem to depict a Fantasyland version of what it means to be black.
No offense. But this feels like a racist cancellation and I’m irked at you, your network and the dumb decision to drop Frankie while renewing six shows that had lower ratings.”
I signed the original letter and said I was from “Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Frank’s Place”. That was kinda true. My coworker, Minnie Williams, also was a devoted fan of the show. It made her hungry! It was set in a restaurant. In New Orleans. Many scenes happened in the kitchen. Or at the bar. It was a cozy show with outstanding characters. It deserved more attention than it got. Now it’s resigned to BET reruns, if it runs there at all. Tim Reid has moved on.
CBS wrote back a Dear Viewer letter, some mealy-mass memo about the show being cancelled because it couldn’t “find an audience”. The response was non-responsive, like most corporate speak. But the best note came from Tim Reid’s assistant Brenda Dawson who wrote:
“I don't care how gloomy, smoggy or depressing the day is, a letter from you always lights up the place. I have to tell you that the very thought of someone addressing the network president as ‘Yo Honkey’ thrills every single irreverent cell in my body – and I'm full of 'em.”
Her response made my effort worthwhile, although our Society could not save the show, which is a shame. The cast was stellar, with Reid as Frank and Daphne played Hannah Griffin, a professional mortician and his would-be partner. What made the show special were all the supporting characters:
Miss Marie (Frances E. Williams) was the waitress who never got up from her seat to serve strangers and a woman who knew where to get voodoo when she needed it. Sassy Anna-May (Francesca P. Roberts) served more than meals at the restaurant. Tiger Shepin (Charles Lampkin) tended bar with a keen ear and an eye on the door. The Reverend Tyrone Deal (Lincoln Kilpatrick) did most of his missionary work in Frank’s bar, and was often joined there by notorious NOLA solo barrister Bubba Weisberger (Robert Harper) who was just enough out of place in the South to feel right at home at Frank’s Place. Street-smart Bubba knew how to clean up Frank’s Crescent City troubles.
Big Arthur (Tony Burton) was Frank’s chief cook (NOT chef) who would go into a boxing ring to protect his secret recipes. Shorty the “assistant chef” (Don Yesso) would defend Frank and his Place from any of the outside world’s insults, many of which were aimed at Cool Charles (William Thomas, Jr.) the youngest member of Frank’s restaurant family. Indeed, the sanctity of Frank’s Place resonated through the screen and into the homes of those viewers like me who got hooked on the show. We were part of that family too.
The show was created by Hugh Wilson – a white guy! – and it toed a fine line between funny and deadly serious. The story starts in Boston where Frank is a university professor with a great life … until he inherits his father’s New Orleans restaurant. Frank intends to visit New Orleans and dispense with the property. Little does he know what awaits in his restaurant. Some might call it Frank’s Fate.
It’s a perfect setup for the show which ensued, and anyone who seeks out this program now will find it more than worth the effort.
“Frank’s Place” On Line
“Frank’s Place” is still difficult tv to find in good quality. Not much exists on line. And there’s no decent streaming choices for the show, although it’s played on BET before and does show up there in reruns.
Here are a few Frank’s Place links:
http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2011/10/we_still_know_what_it_means_to.html
Original “Frank’s Place” location:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092354/episodes
Complete “Frank’s Place” playlist on YouTube (low def picture):
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQQ4DpKtNIp8QYQ7q2IsKfy9hcY4jdUiJ
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