The Deputy - "Mother and Son" (1960)

In this episode of the Western drama, The Deputy, Marshal Simon Fry (Henry Fonda) paroles the brains behind an outlaw gang so that the young man can visit with his mother, who is unaware of the man's criminal activities. Franciscus plays the son (and gang leader) of the episode's title, William Stanhope. Interestingly, this is one of the episodes of this series in which Fonda played a substantial role (in most of the show's episodes, Fonda only appeared briefly in the start and end, although he narrated all of them), convincing Stanhope to turn on his own gang.

Also of note is Fonda's relationship with Franciscus - who might well have been Fonda's own "son" (-in-law) had Jane Fonda agreed to marry Franciscus when he proposed to her (as told in "James and Jane", March, 2011).

James + Jane

In her autobiography, My Life So Far, Jane Fonda writes about her first great romance, which occurred the summer after she started college. Her family was vacationing on Cape Cod, and Jane enrolled as an apprentice at a nearby summer theater, The Dennis Playhouse. Here, she met and fell head over heels in love with a young man working there:

On the first day of the program, we were introduced to the stage manager, James Franciscus, whom everyone called Goey, and the moment I saw him the complexion of the summer changed. He was blond, blue-eyed, and movie-star handsome... I was smitten. My previous inarticulate philanderings had not prepared me for true romance, and I was very shy with him.

James Franciscus and Jane Fonda on the French Riviera, 1957.

James too was shy, but he was very interested in Jane, as well. Jane grew more intrigued by the young theater hand the more she spoke with him, and learned there was a lot more to him than she first supposed:

I discovered there were things about Goey to like beyond his looks and the fact that he went to Yale: he was smart and literate; he had a sense of humor, lived in New York City, and was a preppy (only by virtue of Yale), but didn't belong to a fraternity. His family wasn't rich... and he had a passion. Other boys I'd liked had hobbies but no passion.

James's passion was an epic drama he was writing. (Franciscus was later to choose between writing and acting and opted for acting as he thought it was a more sociable, less lonely, profession, but he would later famously rewrite scripts, notably Beneath the Planet of the Apes and his dialogue in Good Guys Wear Black, as Chuck Norris recounted in his own memoir.)

James finally asked her out, taking her to dinner and later driving her out to "the pier at the end of the Kennedy compound." There he gave her a memorable kiss:

When our lips parted I stepped back and had to sit down, plunk. Everything was swirling: the sea, the sky... It was my first swoon and while it wouldn't be my last, there's something special about that first swoon - and the boy who caused it. Goey and I became an item... It was the best summer of my so-far life.

Jane was 18; James was 20. The two spent every waking moment together for the rest of the summer and then saw each other for the next year and a half. Jane was to lose her virginity to James, and they dated throughout the time she spent at Vassar. James joined the family on vacation on the French Riviera, which he himself recalled in an interview, reminiscing about running with the bulls at Pamplona while he was there, and remembering Jane fondly as "a fine girl."

It was during their time on the Riviera that Jane first became bored with the relationship but couldn't quite end it. A year later, James proposed and Jane turned him down. Jane had never been interested in marrying right out of college as her friends were all doing, but she implies it still seemed to come as something of a shock to James.

... it became impossible for us to continue seeing each other as friends, and my first real love affair came to a whimpering end after a year and a half.

Biography of James Franciscus

James Grover Franciscus was born in Clayton, Missouri, on January 31, 1934, the younger of two boys born to John and Loraine Franciscus. In interviews he described his early childhood in a small town in Mark Twain's home state as being something out of Tom Sawyer. However, this changed abruptly when his father, a volunteer with the British Air Force in WWII prior to America's entry into the war, was killed in action and his mother remarried a New York investor. The family moved to Manhattan and Franciscus attended prep schools in New England before going to Yale.

While at Yale he was friends with Dick Cavett and appeared in a movie, Four Boys and a Gun, as a junior, which was shot during the summer break before his senior year. He was offered a studio contract but he stayed at Yale to obtain his degree. Franciscus graduated from Yale in 1957. In the summer after his senior year, while working in a summer stock theater, he met and had a romantic relationship with Jane Fonda, who writes in her autobiography that Franciscus was her first lover. Franciscus went on vacation with the family in Spain, where he ran with the bulls in Pamplona. He proposed marriage to Fonda, but she turned him down.

Franciscus won his first major role as Jimmy O'Halloran in the classic police drama "Naked City", in 1958. The show was canceled but later unexpectedly revived, at which time it changed from a 30-minute to one hour format. When the show went back on the air, Franciscus had other commitments, probably either the movie "The Outsider" with Tony Curtis, or the TV show "The Investigators", both of which were released in 1961.

Franciscus married Kathleen "Kitty" Wellman, daughter of director William Wellman, in 1960 and the couple had four daughters. Unusual for actors at the time, Franciscus tried to always put his home life first, and went out of his way to make time to be with his family. He had his contracts written to allow him to be home for dinner and on weekends. When he and Kitty separated in the late 1970s, he put family ahead of his career, and, almost unheard of at the time, and certainly in Hollywood, it was he who took custody of all four girls, raising them as a single father. Later, the amicably divorced couple split child-rearing duties, and Kitty raised the two younger girls while the two older girls stayed with their father.

Franciscus was the first choice to play the lead in "Dr. Kildare", but again his prior commitments prevented him from taking the role and it went instead to Richard Chamberlain. Instead, Franciscus was chosen for the lead in the high school drama "Mr. Novak", about an idealistic poor boy who becomes a suburban English teacher, which also starred Dean Jagger, Burgess Meredith, and many well known and highly regarded co-stars and guest stars. The show lasted two seasons.

When Warren Beatty turned down the lead role in Herman Wouk's "Youngblood Hawke" (and almost ended his career - it was supposed to be a huge hit), Franciscus won the role from a field of 200 other actors (and almost ended his career - it was a disaster). He recovered from "Hawke" and went on to work constantly, appearing in science fiction movies such as "Marooned", Ray Harryhausen's "Valley of Gwangi", and "Beneath the Planet of the Apes"; the war movie "Hell Boats"; Dario Argento's spaghetti slasher "Cat O' Nine Tails"; and many TV guest shots and made-for-TV movies.

In 1971 Franciscus returned to a full-time television show in one of his signature roles as blind insurance investigator Mike Longstreet. Notable for Franciscus's realistic portrayal of a blind man as well as for co-stars Bruce Lee and seeing eye dog Pax, the show nevertheless only lasted a single season. Franciscus went on to other series ("Doc Elliott", "Hunter") and many more TV and movie appearances, including his first villain roles.

Franciscus was also a noted producer, bringing several classics such as "Kidnapped", "The Red Pony", and "Heidi" to the screen, and as a writer on projects like "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" and "29th Street".

Despite his athleticism and youthfulness, Franciscus never kicked a 4-pack-a-day cigarette habit. He died of emphysema in 1991 at the age of 57.