Music, Risqué jokes keep "Frantic Fran" young
by Gary Turner, Herald Writer, August 29, 1999

Frantic Fran has opinions on everything from homelessness to Howard Stern.

Regarding the former: "They have to see how it is to have a job and not be on welfare."

Regarding the latter: "He helps people, like young women who want to get boob jobs but can't afford it."

Frances Lilienfeld, who introduces herself as "Frantic Fran," is here to give a wake up call to all those senior citizens who think they're too old to try something new.

For the past five months, Fran has had a gig on Supertalk 940 WINZ, calling disc jockey Brooke Daniels once a week to deliver a penis joke.

"This 84-year-old woman call me, borderline hysterical, borderline nuts," Daniels said. "That very first day she had a joke I had to bleep and right then I knew she was my gal."

The station asked Fran to continue -- even coming up with a special jingle for Fran's segment. "I envy her," Daniels said. "She doesn't care what anybody thinks."

That's not exactly true. Fran does care what boyfriend Curt Kelley thinks.

Fran, a longtime piano player/social commentator, stopped telling dirty jokes for a long time after Kelley asked her to, according to daughter Linda Lilienfeld.

But it never offended me," Linda said. "[Her jokes] have an elegant context with the kind of person she is."

Born in Brooklyn, Fran is the daughter of European immigrants who came to America to start a new life. Her father owned a candy store, Cheap Abe's, where Fran learned to run the family business and schmooze with the local clientele. The family's lodgings were right above the confectionery. In 1921, when she was 6, she discovered her love of song.

"Every Friday night after eating the Sabbath meal I would get up and sing," Fran recalls. "My family would clap and that encouraged me. Then I would go downstairs to watch the store. I would sell cigarettes, which were about 15 cents a pack back then, work the register, and get to know the people who came in."

Her attention was also drawn to a toy piano in the store that fascinated her. "In the candy store we had one of these two-feet little pianos that we sold and would start to plunk out My Count 'Tis of Thee. One day my father came down and said 'we're gonna have to get you a big piano.'" Soon, Fran was sitting at the keys of a real piano. She stuck with it, learning to play by ear and eventually taking her talent to resort hotels around the Catskills, Long Island and Miami Beach. But getting her foot in the door wasn't easy.

After knocking on the doors of several hotels, Fran hit upon the one where she would work for the next 27 years, the Fairmont in Lakewood, N.J. "The last hotel had a lot of steps to go up and I said I'm going to go up those steps and they're gonna say no but I told myself I would make the effort and I went up there and I got the job."

At 23 she married her now deceased husband Jack Lilienfeld, a dentist and aspiring comedian. With his stand-up shtick and her piano playing and singing, they were a force to be reckoned with. Jack would visit her at the Fairmont on weekends and together they would entertain guests. Her husband died in 1969, but she kept the show going.

After years of honing her craft, Fran has developed her own style, which is as varied and eclectic as her wardrobe.

I play a thousand songs by ear. I play Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Hebrew songs," she said. Her act also came to include dirty jokes and Bible readings.

For a long time, she had a business card that read Bible readings and penis jokes," daughter Linda said. "She is a very religious person and she takes the Bible very seriously -- she has a deep respect for God and for life. And dirty jokes are a part of life."

After establishing herself up North, Fran brought her act to Miami Beach during winters where she performed for the same type of audience -- guests at swanky resort hotels.

After her husband died, Fran decided to explore another medium: television. With her own cable access show, Jews for Jews, Fran delivered her own brand of quirky comedy to viewers interspliced with social commentary and her views on religion.

Not everyone liked the show and Fran received her fair share of irate callers, but she also had her fans. "We were in New York looking through a department store window," Linda said, "and this young handsome guy turned to her and said 'Aren't you Frantic Fran? I love your show.'"

Throughout the years Fran has kept busy writing songs and jokes and buying ads like the one she took out in her hometown of Beach Haven, N.J., which reads "One woman show at piano. Audience participation. Bible reading and dirty jokes. Age 62, ugly." The ad was meant to find her work but instead got responses ranging from interest to indignation. One person was upset she had mentioned Bible readings and dirty jokes in the same sentence but Fran is quick to point out that she never mixes the two.

Fran still enjoys tickling the ivories and the funny bone, and is always ready with a quip or two.

But Fran also has a serious side. She is concerned with social issues like anti-Semitism, homelessness and aging.

"Most older people are like tombstones," Fran said. "They're plastered in mud and set in their ways. People could be old, but if they have a talent they should share it."

One of Fran's ideas is to organize a group of senior citizens who can serve as an example of vitality and youthfulness in old age. "I want to start a group and have people who are in their 80s and 90s sing and dance and show people that we're not dead yet. We still have life." We still have life."