Eddie Foy III and Jerry Franks are true veterans of Hollywood casting. With over seventy-five years of combined casting experience, the two joined forces in 1998 to work on the Fox series Beyond Belief. Foy began his casting career over forty years ago and worked on such notable shows as The Donna Reed Show, the Planet of the Apes films, Barney Miller, the landmark Roots and Masada. More recently he’s been casting network specials and mini-series including Super Bloopers, Deep Family Secrets, When Stars Were Kids and, most significantly, the old Jerry Lewis telethons.
Franks began casting on Barney Miller and went on to work on such series as The Fall Guy, Fame, the daytime series Capitol and several features, including Bagdad Cafe for which he, along with his former partner, Al Onorato, won an Artios Award. Additionally, Franks, who has three Emmy nominations for television films, has held several executive casting positions (executive in charge of talent and casting, 20th Century Fox; daytime consultant at ABC, CBS and NBC) and has twice been elected to serve as president of the Casting Society of America (CSA). Like Foy, Franks is very involved in fund-raising for charitable causes and is particularly proud of the work he’s done for Cedars-Sinai Thalians Mental Health Unit.
Since this interview, the two have amicably dissolved their partnership. Both continue to cast independently.
FOY: Yes, my grandfather was Eddie Foy and, of the Seven Little Foys, my father was sixth. He’s the one that stayed in the business. Then I started acting on Broadway at the age of ten or eleven, in 19—(laughing).
FOY: What do I care; I’ll give a date. I’m sixty-three. Some people call me old-fashioned—I say it’s experience. Anyway, acting became secondary because I realized that what I really wanted to be was the middleweight boxing champion of the world. So for years my life was boxing. Theatre had little or nothing to do with it. To this day, I’m on the board of directors for the World Boxing Hall of Fame. Theatre and casting are my hobbies. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be doing it.
FOY: Since 1961. I actually quit for awhile and moved to Vegas with my daughter. I was the entertainment director at the Sahara until I was lured back here ten years ago.
FRANKS: I was never an actor. I started out at Universal as a casting assistant in the ‘70s. I hopped around until 1981 when I joined Al Onorato—one of the most honorable human beings in Hollywood—from ‘81 to ‘91. Al, like Eddie and myself, just loves actors and we closed our company so he could work with them more closely as a manager. I continued casting.
FOY: Of everything that I’ve done, the one thing that sticks in my mind more than anything else is The Jerry Lewis Easter Seal Telethon. I did that every year. I did it for the kids. They make me believe in life. I’m involved with three things very seriously: muscular dystrophy, cancer research and my family.
FRANKS: And I’m very involved with mental health care and AIDS research. It’s very interesting because Eddie is doing his fund raising on one end of the office and I’m doing mine on the other! We kind of swap ideas because it’s very, very hard work trying to get celebrities to appear for nothing. They’re asked twenty times a day to give their time and there is only so much they can give.
FOY: Every single one.
FOY: The first thing that I look at is the background. I look for training. I look to see where their college education has taken them. I look to see the directors they have worked with. Finally, when I’m done with that, I will turn the résumé over and look at the picture. The agent is the last thing I look at. I’m not interested in all of the actor baggage.
FOY: I call all of the “stuff” that actors carry outside of their talent “baggage.” For instance, being worried about whether or not they should have a manager, if their agent is any good, are they dressed right, are they in the right workshop, etc. They have so much stuff going on that they forget that all we care about is seeing them do good work.
FRANKS: Within the last five to ten years we seem to be dealing with more and more actors who are less serious about their profession. This is not a hobby, it’s a profession, just like being an attorney or a physician. Actors who are serious about the profession have got to learn their craft. I’ve been quoted before as saying that I prefer New York actors to Los Angeles actors because in New York, actors learn their craft. They’re always in classes, be it acting, dance or voice, and they’re always honing their gifts. Many actors in Los Angeles don’t seem to care about that.
FOY: I hate auditions.
FRANKS: Eddie has taught me a whole new way of casting – working off tape without having met the actor first.
FOY: I started working this way after a conversation with Ron Stephenson who told me about how he cast Murder, She Wrote. He used tape, which I found interesting. About three months later, I was working on a film directed by and starring Beau Bridges. I tried the method of ordering tape instead of reading tons of actors. I’d make selections for Beau to watch and then we’d call in a few people for him to meet and that was it. I also used that method for a Dick Clark show, Trial By Jury, where we didn’t have time to read people.
FRANKS: No, those are the worst. Usually the material isn’t right; the quality isn’t right. It’s amateurish and could be a big disservice to the actor. What we really want to see is the actor in a professional situation.
FOY: Your most recent work should always be the first thing on the tape.
FOY: At the end. It’s okay to include them but first let us see what you look like now, not what you looked like twenty years ago.
FRANKS: It’s the same for a résumé. Your most recent credits should come first. But that doesn’t mean your older credits shouldn’t be there if they’re credits that are prominent and you’re proud of them. What’s sad is that many casting directors have no relationship to the past. The newer casting directors don’t know the actors or shows of yesterday and it makes it very difficult.
FOY: Often, the younger actors don’t know anything either. It’s pretty scary that they don’t know anything about the history of film and what show business is all about.
FOY: They’re wrong. If you’re going in to meet Jerry Franks or Eddie Foy, you sure as hell better know what Eddie Foy and what Jerry Franks have cast separately and together. If you’re going in to meet Mike Fenton, you better know what he likes and dislikes. If you’re going up to meet a producer or a director, you better know what that director or producer has done. You better do some research. Find out who and what we are. That’s your job. Be a professional.
Actors also have to learn how to act and stop being politicians. All they seem to want to do is network these days. For instance, they should work harder at getting into plays. I don’t care if you’ve got to go out to a place in Thousand Oaks and act in a twenty-seat theatre - get in a play. And get into a class! But the actor has to be very careful about who their acting coach is. Too many acting teachers and coaches are bad actors who can’t get work, so unfortunately, they teach the actor bad habits. Make sure you research your acting teacher. Ask your friends about their teachers and who they advise.
FRANKS: From the casting director side, there is nothing more exciting, nothing that makes your heart pound faster then when an actor opens his mouth and knows what he’s doing. It’s such a rush. It must be the same kind of rush that an actor gets when they know they’ve given a good performance. It’s an inexplicable high. Someone has taken words and transformed them into a living thing.
Eddie Foy III Casting
951.870.6059
11380 Foxglove Ln. Corona, CA 92880
Jerold Franks Productions
540.525.9191