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The road
taken: Canton High School alum Marianne Franco finds calling in
Hollywood
By Kelsey Oates
Special to the Citizen
There are
three signs that reveal a Hollywood executive’s Canton roots: a
daily habit of Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee, memories of Richard
“Doc” Staiti at Canton High, and a fondness for Patriots Drive.
Marianne
Franco, camera department head at Paramount Pictures, exhibits
every one.
 Franco’s
passion for film and television had not yet emerged when she
attended Canton High School. Instead, she viewed her four years
at CHS as a social experience, and admits that she “did not take
high school seriously.”
It was
hairdressing that first caught her attention, after she
successfully corrected a friend’s poor haircut. Upon her
graduation in 1983, Franco became a hair stylist at John
Dellaria Salon. But the enjoyment of her job could not suppress
the nagging feeling of a certain emptiness, and by age 20, she
found herself wondering how she was going to “break away.”
Franco said
she really began to question the path that she was on after one
of her clients, who happened to be a popular Boston radio host,
professed disbelief that the young woman cutting her hair could
be settled so soon in life.
Ironically,
it was a chance-fall down the stairs just a week later that
ultimately gave Franco the motivation she needed to change her
life. She had broken her elbow and was suddenly unemployed,
which, at the time, did not go over well with her family. “My
grandmother, who was 90 at the time, cried in her soup as I
stood in her basil kitchen with my father and broke the news.”
she recalled.
But when she
spoke to an enthusiastic high school senior about his college of
choice, Franco knew she had found her new path; and after a
summer on Cape Cod, she began her first semester at Emerson
College. Between the time she had spent away from school and the
fact that she was paying her own tuition, she said she finally
began to understand the value of her education.
Through hard
work, Franco completed her degree at Emerson with great success,
earning several awards at the end of her college career,
including the Student Award of Distinction.
Having
already spent four months in Los Angeles for a junior-year
exchange program, Franco visited LA once more her senior year to
work on “a segment on Emerson Alum” for the Evvy’s, Emerson’s
version of the Emmys.
An interview
with Rod Parker, a three-time Emmy nominee for producing
Maude and The Jackie Gleason Show, gave her the
connection she needed. She later reached out to Parker after
finishing school, and ended up landing a job as an assistant to
Parker and Maude director Hal Cooper, himself a two-time
Emmy nominee.
Franco then
continued to work her way up in the entertainment industry,
until she reached her current position at Paramount.
Franco’s responsibilities are many and vary widely, from mother
to manager and auditor, to controller, laborer, and marketer. A
typical day for her, if there is such a thing, may include
dropping her 2 and 3 year olds off at daycare, an early staff
meeting, handling an emergency film order, receiving film from
Kodak, getting a camera ready to shoot, being notified by the
daycare that a biting epidemic has broken out, dealing with
invoices from Kodak, preparing for the 100th anniversary
of Paramount’s creation of VistaVision, more meetings, and
ending with a 7 p.m. shoot at the Grove.
Franco said
her workday runs at a pace that she “must be able to handle.”
She said she is fueled by her “passion for life” and her morning
iced coffee. In fact, she is so dedicated to Dunkin’ Donuts
coffee that she actually has friends send it to her; otherwise,
the hectic schedule might become overpowering.
Upon
reflection, Franco stressed the importance of being an “active
participant in life,” and said she firmly supports the belief
that dreams can really happen.
When Franco
thinks of Canton today, she is struck by the many changes that
have taken place. Some have come with a bit of shock and
sadness, like the disappearance of Jim’s Variety and the
invasion of condominiums; others, she said, have been positive.
“I wish to
god I had an Ed McDonough,” added Franco, commending the current
TV Productions teacher for instilling “life skills through the
medium of film and TV.”
This past
year, she gave back to CHS by speaking to a group of McDonough’s
students who were in California on a class trip. McDonough
described Franco as a “great resource for our students,” while
also reporting that “she bleeds green, both for her hometown and
the Celtics.”
It has been
a transformative journey for Ms. Franco, from social butterfly
and hair stylist, to Hollywood career woman and mother. She said
she does not regret her early days, though, and insists that
people need “to know what’s bad, so [they] can know what’s
good.”
She said her
experiences are what helped her to figure out the direction that
she wanted to go in life; and she would urge today’s students to
take time off to “find out how [their] own compass works.”
Judging from
Franco’s successes, it is advice that is certainly worth
considering.
July 3, 2008
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