But Wendell Wilkie `73, a high school friend and college roommate, says it is Franken’s “big heart” that not only makes him a great comedian, but also a great person.
“He’s smart and he’s serious and probably unlike a lot of people in the
industry he has a lot of common sense,” Wilkie says. “If you were in a small crowd it’s not as if he is the wise-cracking, smart allecky life of the party.”
More than anything, though, Franken’s friends say that he is a good friend, as well as husband and father.
Wilkie and Griffin say they keep in touch with Franken by telephone and whenever Franken is in Minneapolis, the three get together.
“He’s very true to Minnesota, to his roots and his friends,” Wilkie says. “He’s maintained his ties to the Twin Cities in a remarkable way.”
Franken met his wife, Frannie, at a Simmons-Harvard mixer the first weekend of his freshman year—and they have been together ever since.
“The first girl he asked to dance was his future wife,” Griffin says. “He’s really a very trustworthy mate and friend. He’s also a very sincere person.”
Franken says his children are the most important part of his life.
“Being a father is the thing that I’m sort of most proud of,” Franken says. “You have a lot of responsibilities in your life...but your primary responsibility in your life if you have kids is to be a good parent,” he says.
With a Grain of Salt
Currently, Franken is promoting his latest book, Oh, the Things I Know, which gives advice to graduating seniors.
Franken says he decided on the project after picking up some books offering graduates advice, including Anna Quindlen’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life, and they made him “want to throw up.”
He recounts in a mockingly serious voice how Quindlen writes of an encounter with a wise homeless man who tells her to “look at the view, young lady.’”
“It was like ‘Oh Jesus,’” Franken says. “The guy really didn’t say look at the view. He said, ‘Feed me.’”
Franken says the graduating seniors should not buy into the “fraudulence of success” that some advice books preach.
And while Franken would not share the details of his Class Day speech, he is no stranger to the Class Day podium.
He spoke as a graduating senior at the event nearly 30 years ago, and according to friends, managed to mix in Marilyn Monroe jokes and a jab at the Class Day speaker that year, playwrite Arthur Miller.
Most likely, Franken’s speech this year will be a combination of the earnest seriousness and satire that characterized him even then—mixed with a healthy dose of the parental advice and worldly wisdom he has gained since the last time he held the spotlight in Tercentenary Theater.
—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu.