Phil Donahue, the longtime host of The Phil Donahue Show, died yesterday, August 18 2024, at the age of 88 following a long illness.
Phil Donahue was born on December 21 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Our Lady of Angels Elementary School in Cleveland and then of St. Edward High School, an all-boys college preparatory Catholic private high school in Lakewood, Ohio.While still in college he he did early morning farm reports at WNDU-TV, in South Bend, Indiana, then an NBC affiliate owned by the University of Notre Dame. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.
After graduating from college, Phil Donahue got a job as a production assistant at KYW in Cleveland. At KYW he also temporarily replaced the announcer when the announcer was on vacation. After working at KYW, he moved to Alburquerque, New Mexico where he worked a bank teller. He eventually moved to Adrian, Michigan where he was the news director at the radio station WABJ. From there he went to WHIO in Dayton, Ohio, where he was the morning anchor. Some of his interviews there would be picked up by The CBS Evening News.
It was in 1963 that he began hosting the talk show Conversation Piece on the radio station WHIO (AM). Among the things that made Conversation Piece unique at the time is that people could actually call into the stations and ask interviewees questions, including such famous people as Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Ralph Nader, and Malcolm X.
The success of Conversation Piece would lead Phil Donahue to leave WHIO for WLWD in Dayton to host what was essentially a television version of his radio show, now titled The Phil Donahue Show. It debuted on November 7 1967. The Phil Donahue Show was filmed in front of a live audience, who would be allowed to ask questions of the guests on the show. Like Conversation Piece before it, people would call in ask questions of guests. The success of The Phil Donahue Show led to it entering national syndication in 1970. The Phil Donahue Show proved to be a success, inspiring many imitators. It ran for 29 years, the final episode airing on September 13 1996.
From 1979 to 1988 Phil Donahue was also a contributor to The Today Show on NBC. After The Phil Donahue Show ended, in 2002 he hosted the talk show Donahue on the cable channel MSNBC. Over the years he would be interviewed for several documentaries.
Phil Donahue also appeared as himself in several scripted televisions, including L.A.. Law, Blossom, The Bold and the Beautiful, Who's the Boss?, and Ellen. He was the voice of a caller to Frasier Crane's radio show on the sitcom Fraiser.
In May 1980 Phil Donahue married Marlo Thomas, who had been a guest on his show. The two of them hosted a podcast in 2021 titled Double Date with Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue, on which they talked about success in marriage.
Phil Donahue was certainly a pioneer when it came to television talk shows, and the format of The Phil Donahue Show has been imitated over and over again through the years. Over the years The Phil Donahue Show addressed many controversial issues, including abortion, alcoholism, artificial insemination, homosexuality, pedophilia in the Catholic Church, and much more. What is more, The Phil Donahue Show, Phil Donahue never engaged in the high degree of sensationalism that many of his imitators would. The Phil Donahue Show revolutionized American television and inspired countless other talk shows. And while many of the talk shows that followed it were the bottom of the barrel in television, The Phil Donahue Show was always quality television.
Donahue was an interesting cultural phenomenon. Along with Alan Alda, whom he probably never met, he epitomized a new form of masculinity (or sensitivity if we want to be accurate) in the 1970's that was sort of a counter weight to the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson stereotype that plastered American cinema for decades. His type was derided in the classic social satire book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche. That being said, he was a very talented interviewer. My two favoite shows were interviews with Milton Friedman, the free market guru and later with Vince McMahon and a group of wrestlers about homosexuality in the wrestling world. He also did a few shows on Catholicism that challenged reigning religious orthodoxies. He let his guests do the talking and then invited the audience to participate. I thought it was corny the way he would hold a woman's hand as she asked a question as if he was consoling her during an emotional crisis. In any event, he perfected the genre and was a positive force in American culture. RIP.
ReplyDeleteIt's important to note that he lost his job at MSNBC because of his opposition to the US war on Iraq. This was the last high profile television program that he would headline. It was also MSNBC's highest rated program at the time it was cancelled. He was a man of integrity.
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