Gary Franklin, the Los Angeles television and radio entertainment critic and reporter who became a household name in the 1980s critiquing movies and TV shows on "the Franklin Scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best," has died. He was 79.
Franklin died Tuesday at his home in Chatsworth, said his daughter, Daryle Esswein. Although the cause of death was unknown, he had suffered four strokes in recent years.
The German-born Franklin first came to the attention of Southern Californians in the 1970s as the roving nightside radio reporter for all-news radio station KFWB-AM, where he signed off in "Dragnet"-like style: "Gary Franklin, Car 98, out!"
While at KFWB, Franklin occasionally filled in as a movie reviewer, and in 1981 he replaced David Sheehan as the entertainment critic at KNXT-TV Channel 2 (now KCBS-TV).
Five years later, Franklin moved to KABC-TV Channel 7, where he remained until 1991.
With his memorable "Franklin Scale," his often acerbic comments and his regular attacks on exploitative violence and sex in movies, Franklin was considered a breakthrough local TV news personality.
"Bobbing his bald, conical head vigorously, he rates films with the arch, over-enunciated manner of a schoolmarm lecturing a sixth-grade science class," The Times' Patrick Goldstein wrote in 1983.
While noting that it may be hard for some people to take seriously a critic who "scores movies as if they were earthquakes," Goldstein wrote, Franklin was "the talk of the town."
Indeed, people had begun rating their food at restaurants on a 1-to-10 scale. Gary Franklin impressions turned up on answering machines. And a local newspaper used a Franklin sound-alike in its radio ads promoting the newspaper's TV section. Franklin, who relished the attention, tooled around L.A. in a car whose license plate read: "ONE 2 TEN."
"Prior to Gary, you had David Sheehan doing movie reviews at Channel 2, and even though he was a good reviewer, he didn't have a shtick. Gary had a gimmick," Jeff Wald, then-news director at KCOP-TV Channel 13, told The Times in 1991.
Wald, who hired Franklin as an entertainment reporter at KCOP in 1992, praised Franklin on Wednesday for being a critic who "understood the movie business and did his homework."
"He was a real character -- his style, his persona on the air -- and yet, it was genuinely him," Wald said. "If he was excited about a movie, you could feel the exuberance."
