Which one of the three people pictured above once played quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles?

Right off the bat, you can eliminate the woman on the right. Other than Helen Hunt – who played quarterback for Minnville High in the 1983 movie Quarterback Princess – I don’t know of any other female quarterbacks.

Next, you can eliminate the guy on the left. That’s Frank Sinatra, and I’m pretty sure Old Blue Eyes never played football for anybody.

That only leaves the guy in the middle – the guy with the glasses. If you picked the guy in the middle, you’re right. He was once an Eagles QB – but unless you’re close to collecting Social Security, you probably never heard of him.

Digressing, on Saturday afternoon I was listening to Rob Charry and Hollis Thomas on WIP – I catch Rob and Hollis just about every Saturday and Sunday. When they got into Hollis’s Calendar segment, I’m pretty sure I heard Hollis mention that it was the anniversary of The Tonight Show – which reminded me that a former Eagles quarterback once hosted The Tonight Show.

His name is Irv Kupcinet.

At 6-1 and 190 pounds, Irv Kupcinet earned a scholarship to play football at Northwestern. But he got into a scuffle and was kicked out of school. He then transfered to North Dakota to finish his college career.

After graduating from North Dakota in 1935, he signed as a free agent with the Philadelphia Eagles. He played in only two games at quarterback during his rookie season. Making one start, he went 1-for-5 for six yards – with no touchdowns and one interception – before suffering a career-ending injury to his throwing shoulder and retiring from football.

After football, Kupcinet landed a job as a sportswriter with the Chicago Daily Times and also provided color commentary for Chicago Bears games on the radio.

Eventually, he switched from sports to gossip. His column caught on and he became internationally syndicated. In 1953, he broke into television and became a pioneer talk-show host. In fact, he hosted The Tonight Show on a temporary basis in between Steve Allen and Jack Paar. He won 15 Emmy Awards and one Peabody throughout his TV career.

So hurting his throwing arm wound up being the best thing that ever happened to Irv Kupcinet. The worst thing that ever happened to him was having his daughter’s nude body found lying on the couch of her West Hollywood apartment ─ murdered.

Karyn Kupcinet was a 22-year-old aspiring actress and her body was discovered six days after the assassination of JFK in 1963. Her death was ruled a homicide by strangulation and the case remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

Gossip circulated that her murder was a mob hit.

In the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, an Associated Press wire service story stated that an anonymous phone call had been placed from Oxnard, California, twenty minutes prior to the shooting of Kennedy in Dallas. The unidentified caller was a female informing police that Kennedy was going to be shot. It was believed that Karyn Kupcinet had placed that phone call.

According to rumors, Karyn’s father Irv had been Jack Ruby’s friend for more than twenty years and the rumors said that Ruby had informed Irv Kupcinet about the impending assassination of JFK. Supposedly, Irv Kupcinet mentioned the assassination plot to his daughter Karyn, and she was trying to blow the whistle in an attempt to prevent the killing.

The rumors said the mob murdered Karyn Kupcinet to silence her.

Two books were written about the possibility:

– Forgive My Grief II by Penn Jones, Jr.

– Crime Wave by well-respected crime-writer James Ellroy.

Right up until his death at age 91 in 2003, Irv Kupcinet denied all such allegations and called them “an atrocious outrage.” He also attacked Oliver Stone and the conspiracy theories Stone presented in the movie JFK.

Much of the material contained in this article was taken from a book I wrote entitled 12 Best Eagles QBs.

L to R – Frank Sinatra, Irv Kupcinet, and Kupcinet’s wife Essee.

Barry Bowe is the author of Born to Be Wild and 1964 – The Year the Phillies Blew the Pennant.