Franaticism

Somewhere on a mellifluous timeline between the jazz, blues, and big band chanteuses of the Great American Songbook - Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Kay Starr, Doris Day, and Rosemary Clooney - and the misnomered "divas" of pop - Madonna, Mariah, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Christina, Adele, and Miley - you'll find a consummate song stylist who was praised for her "cosmopolitan sensuality." Her name was Fran Jeffries. She passed away on December 15, 2016, age 79.

Born Frances Ann Makris on May 18, 1937, Jeffries was the daughter of an immigrant barber from Greece who fulfilled his dream of opening a Greek restaurant in America. In childhood, she enjoyed listening to records by Doris Day and Kay Starr. Starr (pictured below) was a phenomenally successful pop, jazz - even country - singer in the 1940s and '50s. Billie Holiday, revered as the greatest jazz singer of all time, called Kay Starr "the only white woman who could sing the blues."

As a teenager, Fran won a local talent contest, the Del Courtney Amateur Hour, by performing the song "What Did I Do?" popularized by 1940s pinup model-actress Betty Grable. Her prizes included a Bulova wristwatch and a bag of groceries. She would recall, "I was on my way."

Fran Jeffries poses in an early publicity photo.

After high school, Jeffries began singing as part of a trio in San Francisco nightclubs. One night, she found herself on the same bill as Dick Haymes, a baritone balladeer who had risen to fame in the 1940s. Nearly two decades her senior, he had fallen on hard times in the '50s when he started performing with her. They were married in 1958 and for the next few years appeared together in nightclubs and Las Vegas casinos. Dick functioned as Fran's Svengali-like mentor, managing her dress and appearance, until his alcoholism affected the marriage. Life imitated art, like "A Star Is Born," as he witnessed her fame rise as his faded. Like her first marriage, the union with Haymes ended in divorce.

Dick Haymes was married six times. His former wives included actress Joanne Dru, known for (a.) her role as a pistol-packing tomboy in Howard Hawks' sagebrush version of Mutiny on the Bounty, "Red River," and for (b.) being the older sister of "The Hollywood Squares" host Peter Marshall; Nora Eddington, a minor actress briefly married to screen swashbuckler Errol Flynn; and auburn-haired screen icon (and onetime Mrs. Orson Welles) Rita Hayworth. Fran Jeffries recounted in an interview how Haymes admired his exes as "buddies" and "real broads."

Fran Jeffries made her film debut in a bit part as a Choctaw maiden named Cariba in the 1958 historical epic "The Buccaneer," starring Yul Brynner as French-American pirate Jean Lafitte and Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson, directed by Anthony Quinn (marking the only time the actor directed a motion picture), and produced by Quinn's father-in-the-law at the time, Cecil B. DeMille.

When Jeffries performed at a benefit for filmmaker Blake Edwards, well known at the time for "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Days of Wine and Roses," the director added a scene to showcase her talents in "The Pink Panther," the 1963 comedy that introduced Peter Sellers as bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

Dressed in an eye-catching black catsuit, she slinked provocatively around a ski chalet, performing, in Italian, a samba Henry Mancini and lyricists Franco Migliacci and Johnny Mercer specifically wrote for Jeffries titled "Meglio Stasera" ("It Had Better Be Tonight") as the bewitched cast, including David Niven, Robert Wagner, and Capucine (pictured above) looked on.

Off-camera and uncredited, Jeffries sang the Mancini-composed ballad "Shadows of Paris" for the sequel to "The Pink Panther," 1964's "A Shot in the Dark."

Fran Jeffries' third husband, actor-turned-director Richard Quine, was probably best known for his frequent collaborations with Jack Lemmon, including "Operation Mad Ball" and "Bell, Book and Candle." Quine cast Jeffries in two of his movies, notably 1964's "Sex and the Single Girl," a featherweight sex comedy starring Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, and Lauren Bacall.

Fran portrayed a nightclub singer named Gretchen who teases boyfriend and bookworm Tony Curtis with a seductive rendition of the title song (written by Neal Hefti and director Quine), treating the living room furniture as erotic gym apparatuses. Jeffries performed two other songs in the film, with Count Basie and His Orchestra, which led to the release of her 1964 album "Fran Sings of Sex and the Single Girl."

In 1969, Quine directed Jeffries in "A Talent for Loving," a curious, British-produced western comedy featuring Richard Widmark as a gambler who wins the deed for a Mexican ranch where he encounters a bevy of Aztec-cursed nymphomaniacs (pictured below). Producer Walter Shenson, who produced "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!", originally offered the film, released on video as "Gun Crazy," to The Beatles, who unanimously and wisely rejected the project.

In 1965, Fran Jeffries played a femme fatale named Aishah in the cheesy Elvis Presley musical comedy "Harum Scarum" (pictured below).

Elvis (as Johnny Tyronne) poses with Fran Jeffries and Mary Ann
Mobley (as Princess Shalimar) in a promotional photo for "Harum
Scarum." Golden Raspberry founder John Wilson included the film
in a list of the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad  Movies Ever Made.

Truth be told, Fran Jeffries' brief fling in motion pictures was a personal choice, as the the lithe, silky-voiced performer was more interested in a singing career. In that respect, she was not unlike such legendary predecessors as Billie Holiday. Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, and Rosemary Clooney, who only dabbled in films.

Fran Jeffries released her first album in 1960. Her third record,
following the "Sex and the Single Girl" album, was
1966's "This Is Fran Jeffries."

The writer for a July 14, 1964 article in Look magazine noted, "The familiar voice gleams with a high, brassy sheen, or darkens to bronze as she sways into a ballad. She is at home, singing with voice, face and body. Fran Jeffries is a performer, and everything leads up to the moment of possession, of being."

During the 1960s and early '70s, Jeffries toured Europe with Sammy Davis Jr. and Southeast Asia with Bob Hope.

Fran Jeffries accompanied Bob Hope and other guests on the
venerable comedian's final Christmas tour in Vietnam in 1972.

In 1971, 33-year-old Jeffries posed in Playboy magazine for a memorable pictorial (particularly indelible for adolescents such as ourselves) appropriately titled "Frantastic!"

"The magazine had asked me to pose many times before," she said in an interview at the time, "but I didn't think it was necessary. I hesitated a long while...before saying yes."

"I trusted the photographer," Jeffries noted, referring to Jay Arnold. "He had done some photos of me for a European magazine that were marvelous and tasteful. That was very important in my decision."

"My poor Greek father will flip when he sees it!" she remarked. "He'll say, 'What will I tell my friends? You show too much!'"

Eleven years later, Jeffries, now 45, graced the pages of Playboy again, in a 1982 pictorial called "Still Frantastic!"

Jeffries continued to perform in nightclubs, show rooms, supper clubs, cabarets, and resorts in the U.S., Europe, and Canada. Reviewing a performance in Las Vegas, one critic commented, "Miss Jeffries is of course an energetic and graceful dancer, moving about the Venetian Room stage with a feline charm...She is also a clever and appealing comedienne...And to her eternal credit, she has a gift for self-mockery that keeps her slickly professional act from slinking into theatricality. Fran obviously takes her work seriously - but she keeps a twinkle beneath those dark, long-lashed eyes."

Is she wearing...Oh, she is wearing pants."

Jeffries became a familiar presence on TV variety shows, including "The Joey Bishop Show," "The Smokey Robinson Show," and "This Is Tom Jones" (pictured below).

Fran Jeffries dressed down for her appearance as a guest kegler on a 1974 segment of "Celebrity Bowling," a syndicated series that pitted two pairs of celebrities in a "best ball" competition. Each team represented audience members and home viewers, who, based on the score of the winning duo, could win home appliance prizes. One of the series' most intriguing match-ups saw cowboy crooner Roy Rogers and "Get Smart" star Don Adams competing against former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman and Bob Newhart (pictured below).

Historically, the series, hosted by soap-opera actor Jed Allan, could be considered one of the first reality TV shows - shot live on videotape with less than a dozen edits made over 144 episodes. The program's highest scorers were "The Mod Squad" costars Michael Cole and Tige Andrews, who racked up 266, only 34 short of a perfect 300. In case you're interested, the all-time lowest score of 66 was bowled by "The Match Game" regular Charles Nelson Reilly and "Hogan's Heroes" costar Robert Clary (Corporal LeBeau).

Fran Jeffries was paired with William Shatner in a competition with Hugh O'Brian (best known as the star of the 1950s series "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp") and Michele Lee (best known for her costarring role on the prime-time soap opera "Knots Landing").

Michele Lee (left) and Fran Jeffries dress bowling-alley casual,
while teammates Hugh O'Brian and William Shatner look bored.
Don't even get us started on host Jed Allan's ensemble of shame.

Fran Jeffries' sole child, daughter Stephanie Haymes, was married to Bernie Taupin, Elton John's longtime lyricist, from 1995 to 1998 (pictured below). While their marriage lasted, they co-owned a trendy Los Angeles eatery called Cicada.

In 2000, Fran Jeffries recorded "All the Love," a collection of ballads and standards. Seven months before she succumbed to multiple myeloma (a cancer of plasma cells) in December 2016, journalist-music historian Marc Myers wrote on his blog titled "JazzWax," "She was a gifted vocalist and a cool, confident actress who knew how to charm live audiences and the camera. It's unfortunate she wasn't with a better label at the time and that she wasn't better managed. Or perhaps she was too mature in an age when the abundance of teen pop stars made anyone older than 25 over the hill. Regardless, Jeffries was a talented singer who should have recorded more. It remains a mystery...why she didn't."