Comments on: Was Bonnie Franklin A Smoker? https://thecount.com/2013/03/02/did-bonnie-franklin-smoke-cigarettes/ You Heard About It On TheCount.com! Sun, 07 Jun 2015 10:20:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: RivkahChaya https://thecount.com/2013/03/02/did-bonnie-franklin-smoke-cigarettes/#comment-285448 Sun, 07 Jun 2015 10:20:00 +0000 http://thecount.com/?p=107202#comment-285448 She may have smoked once– she was born in 1944, after all, long before people knew how really dangerous it was. But I am guessing she quit, if she ever did smoke, because she narrated a PSA that was shown in health classes around the country on the dangers of smoking. I doubt the producers would choose a celebrity who was known to be a smoker for that. She also maintained a very youthful-sounding voice until the end, and that suggests that if she smoked, ever, she probably quit at some point. She did a lot of musical theater, and may have wanted to preserve her voice.

The kind of rapidly progressing pancreatic cancer she had is more common among Ashkenazic Jews, which she was, albeit, she doesn’t look it, and the fact isn’t well known, but she was an Ashkenazi Jew on both sides of her family. My father was Jewish, and not even fully Ashkenazic, but he died of the same thing in a very similar way. At 67, in November, he was diagnosed, and died in the middle of the following March, back in 1998.

Michael Landon was also Jewish, FWIW, although I don;t know for sure whether he was Ashkenazic.

]]> By: BJ Jones https://thecount.com/2013/03/02/did-bonnie-franklin-smoke-cigarettes/#comment-156070 Sat, 02 Mar 2013 14:38:59 +0000 http://thecount.com/?p=107202#comment-156070 Yes, she was a tobacco addict, yes it caused her death. Just asked Michael Landon, who also smoker. No, wait, you can't because he ALSO died of pancreatic cancer at an early age!

BAN THE ILLEGAL TOBACCO DRUG, NOW!

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