MARCH 12 • 2020 | 55

An Interviewer Both 
Sympathetic and Probing — 
with Detroit Roots

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
W

hen I turned the 
tables on famed 
show business 
interviewer James Lipton, 
he revealed his Detroit con-
nections. 
Lipton, who died of blad-
der cancer March 
2, 2020, at age 93, 
freely answered 
questions about 
hosting the 
Emmy-winning 
program Inside 
the Actors Studio, 
other profession-
al experiences 
and his Detroit 
upbringing in 
2007, the year he 
released his memoir Inside 
Inside.
“You cannot teach talent, 
but you can teach tech-
nique,” Lipton said in that 
interview. “The purpose 
of technique is to free the 
talent.” 
Inside the Actors Studio, 
which originally aired on 
Bravo and then Ovation, 
reached some 94 million 
American homes between 
1994 and 2018. 
Long before celebrities, 
from comedian Andy 
Cohen to actor-writer-direc-
tor Jeff Daniels, could tweet 
about how much they liked 
being on his show, Lipton 
revealed his work routine to 
the JN. He said he took two 
weeks to prepare for each 

interview, being prompted 
by notations on cards and 
intending to keep discus-
sions focused on craft. He 
had a knack for getting 
celebrities to reveal personal 
revelations.
Lipton had 
demonstrated 
abilities in read-
ing and creative 
writing before 
attending Detroit 
schools. He was 
encouraged 
by his parents, 
Lawrence Lipton, 
a beat poet who 
wrote for the Jewish 
Daily Forward, and 
Betty Weinberg Lipton, a 
teacher in Highland Park — 
although father Lawrence 
walked out on the family 
when James was a child.
“When I was a child, I 
would walk to the Fisher 
Theatre every Saturday 
afternoon and watch a 
movie,” he said about 
the venue that became 
the starting point for the 
Nederlander theater net-
work. “I didn’
t know the 
Nederlander family then, 
but I got to know some of 
the family members very 
well in New York. I told 
them what a profound 
influence the family had on 
my life.”
Lipton, who attended 
Central High School and 

Wayne State University, 
had his first major acting 
job on The Lone Ranger 
radio program produced in 
Michigan. After moving to 
New York, he studied acting 
with Stella Adler, became a 
soap opera actor and pro-
duced television projects.
Venturing into writing for 
the stage, Lipton collaborat-
ed on the musical Sherry! 
with Central High friend 
Laurence Rosenthal, who 
married his melodies with 
Lipton’
s lyrics and book. As 
dean of the Pace University 
Actors Studio Drama School 
in New York City, Lipton 
helped develop a master’
s 
degree initiative with a sem-
inar that morphed into the 
TV series.
The successes in Lipton’
s 
life contrast with early 
struggles caused by his 
father’
s departure. 
“I don’
t know why my 
parents distanced them-
selves from Judaism, but 
they were both atheists,” he 
said. “I’
ve always been like 
my parents [in that way]. 
I hope that doesn’
t offend 
anyone. I know so many 
people who are religious 
and do many good things 
and for whom I have the 
deepest respect.”
Lipton is survived by his 
wife, former model and real 
estate executive Kedakai 
Turner Lipton. 

James Lipton

KARNI W. 
FRANK, M.D. 
(née Spitz) died 
Feb. 27, 2020, at 
Union Memorial 
Hospital following 
emergency cardiovascular sur-
gery. She was 83 years old. 
She and her husband, Dr. 
Robert N. Frank, had been 
visiting Baltimore from 
Bloomfield Hills, where they 
lived, to visit their daughter.
Dr. Frank was an accom-
plished physician and the 
daughter of a remarkable fam-
ily. Her parents, Drs. Siegfried 
and Anna Spitz, fled Germany 
in the early days of Nazi rule 
with their son, Werner, and 
joined other Jewish settlers 
in what was then Palestine, 
where her father rebuilt his 
medical practice, treating Jews 
and Arabs alike. 
Karni, who was born in 
1936, often found the children 
of Palestinian patients playing 
on her bed while her father 
treated their parents. In the 
1950s, after the re-establish-
ment of a democratic West 
Germany, the family returned, 
settling in Frankfurt am Main.
There, Dr. Frank attended 
medical school alongside 
her mother at the Johannes 
Gutenberg School of Medicine 
and later received a research 
degree from Johann Wolfgang 
Goethe University. She trained 
in pathology at the University 
of Maryland, Baltimore and 
then in ophthalmic pathology 
at the Armed Forces Institute 
of Pathology in Washington, 
D.C. It was there that she 
met Dr. Robert Frank, who 
was completing a residen-
cy in ophthalmology at the 
Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns 
Hopkins. (It was, ironically, 
a blind date.) They were wed 

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