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Joseph P. Earley, 80, TV figure

One morning toward the start of the 1950s, Joe Earley found himself holding onto a rope as he swung from one side of a Philadelphia TV studio stage to the other.

One morning toward the start of the 1950s, Joe Earley found himself holding onto a rope as he swung from one side of a Philadelphia TV studio stage to the other.

But the timing of a commercial was late, so, as an actor knowing that the show must on, he had to keep swinging at the end of the rope, back and forth, back and forth.

To put it mildly, Ernie Kovacs' show on Channel 3 was not well rehearsed. Well, not rehearsed at all.

Learning the ropes, so to speak, was good training for a man who spent most of his life on Philadelphia stages and in front of Philadelphia cameras.

On Tuesday, Joseph P. Earley, 80, died of metastatic renal carcinoma at home in Plymouth Meeting.

In later years, Mr. Earley became known for his portrayals of Benjamin Franklin and other historical characters.

His early work was zanier.

Mr. Earley told Inquirer reporter John Corr in a 1987 interview that he was the straight man on Kovacs' daily morning show, 3 to Get Ready, which ran from November 1950 to March 1952. The comedian then ran off to Manhattan to become a national celebrity.

"We didn't rehearse," Mr. Earley said in the interview. "Ernie would say, 'Now we do the ladder bit,' and we would do that.

"But if he thought the ladder bit wasn't going over, wasn't being funny, he might turn the ladder sideways and become a condemned man looking out through the prison bars.

"And you had to follow," he said.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Earley graduated from La Salle College High School in 1947, earned a bachelor's degree in English from what is now LaSalle University in 1951, and taught briefly at Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia.

Mr. Earley played a mechanical man named Mr. Rivets on four different Channel 3 morning programs in the 1950s, according to the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Web site.

In 1965, Mr. Earley became a writer, director, and producer on the radio and television staff of the Franklin Institute.

When he married Kathleen Tarras in 1969, he was appearing on the daily Gene London Show on Channel 10 and occasionally on a Boston TV show with Dave Garroway.

In fall 1975, Mr. Earley played two historical figures on two Channel 10 television specials - Babe Ruth on Tom Brookshier's Special Inning and President Theodore Roosevelt in The Roosevelts of Sagamore Hill.

Earlier that year, he had done more.

In April, he portrayed Alexander Graham Bell on a Saturday-morning TV show and then, during every 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. local news program, he portrayed Benjamin Franklin and William Penn, accompanying an announcer walking along Philadelphia streets in segments titled "If They Could See It Now."

In 1976, Spring Garden College, then in Chestnut Hill, awarded him an honorary doctorate, but because he was in character as Franklin at the commencement, he turned it over to the Franklin Institute.

Mr. Earley started his historical portraits in 1967, a newspaper reviewer reported, on a Channel 12 special, Will the Real Ben Franklin Please Stand Up?

His daughter, Christine Earley, said yesterday that, for awhile in the 1970s, Mr. Earley would fly to California to offer his historical characters on the Steve Allen show Meeting of Minds.

Among his awards were Emmys from the Philadelphia chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1983 and 1987.

Besides his daughter, Mr. Earley is survived by his wife, Kathleen; a sister; a niece; and a nephew.

A viewing was scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m. today at the Moore & Snear Funeral Home, 300 Fayette St., Conshohocken, and from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Philip Neri Church, 437 Ridge Pike, Lafayette Hill, followed by a Funeral Mass there at 10:30. Burial will be in Calvary Cemetery, West Conshohocken.

Contributions may be sent to the American Cancer Society, 700 Horizon Circle, Chalfont, Pa. 18914.