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Phil Donahue, whose pioneering daytime talk show launched an indelible television genre that brought success to Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams, Ellen DeGeneres and many others, has died. He was 88.
NBC’s “Today” show, citing family members, said Donahue died Sunday after a long illness.
Known as the “King of Daytime Talk”, Donahue was the first to incorporate audience participation on a talk show, usually lasting a full hour with one guest.
“Just one guest per show? No band?” he recalled being asked often in his 1979 memoir, “Donahue, My Own Story.”
This format distinguished “The Phil Donahue Show” from other interview shows of the 1960s and made it a trendsetter in daytime television, where it was especially popular with female viewers.
Later renamed “Donahue,” the program began in 1967 in Dayton, Ohio. Donahue’s desire to highlight hot social issues of the day was immediately evident when he introduced atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair as his first guest. He later broadcast shows on feminism, homosexuality, consumer protection and civil rights, as well as hundreds of other topics.
Talk show host Phil Donahue appears with former first lady Nancy Reagan during a recording of his show to promote his book “My Turn” in Burbank on November 6, 1989. | Photo credit: AP
The show aired in 1970 and was broadcast on national television for the next 26 years, earning 20 Emmy Awards for the show and for Donahue as host, as well as a Peabody for Donahue in 1980. In May, President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Donahue, who was cited as a pioneer of the daytime talk show.
The show included radio-style call-ins, which Donahue greeted with his signature question, “Is the caller there?”
The show’s last episode aired in 1996 in New York, where Donahue was living with his wife, actor Marlo Thomas. He met Thomas, the 1960s “That Girl” star who was a well-known name at the time and later became a regular on “Friends” when she appeared on his show in 1977.
He later said it was love at first sight, and he did a very poor job of hiding it.
“You’re really attractive,” Donahue told Thomas, holding his hand. “You’re wonderful,” Thomas responded. “You’re loving and generous, and you love women and that’s a joy, and any woman who is in your life is very lucky.”
The two had been married since 1980. Donahue had five children from a previous marriage, four sons and a daughter.
Donahue returned to television briefly in 2002, hosting another “Donahue” show on MSNBC. The network canceled it six months later, citing ratings — though leaked emails later revealed it was about politics.
He was born Philip John Donahue on December 21, 1935, into a middle-class Irish Catholic family in Cleveland.
Oprah Winfrey kisses Phil Donahue as he is presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 23rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in New York on May 22, 1996. File. | Photo credit: AP
Donahue was in the first graduating class of St. Edward High School in 1953, a Catholic boys’ preparatory school in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1957 with a degree in business administration. He later rebelled against the church and left it, though he poignantly recalled in his book that “a little piece” of his faith would always remain with him.
After several early jobs in radio and TV, Donahue was invited to move an oldies radio talk show to Dayton’s WLWD television station in 1967. It moved to Chicago in 1974, where it remained for several years, then ended its broadcast run in New York.
The show featured discussions with spiritual leaders, doctors, homemakers, activists, and entertainers or politicians who passed through town. His neighbor, humorist and syndicated columnist Erma Bombeck, was a frequent guest.
He said finding the show’s winning formula was a happy accident.
“It took us three full years to realize that our program was something special,” Donahue wrote. “The show’s style evolved not from talent but from necessity. Familiar talk-show heads were not available to us in Dayton, Ohio. … The result was urgency.”
This gave the show an independence that lasted, and it rose to the No. 1 spot in its category.
With an affable style and salt-and-pepper hair, Donahue boxed with Muhammad Ali. He played football with Alice Cooper. His guests gave cooking lessons, taught breakdancing and, more controversially, described “mansharing,” having a mistress, gay motherhood or — with the help of collected videos that got the show banned in some cities — how natural childbirth, abortion or reverse sterilization works.
Stopping at “Donahue” became mandatory for important politicians, activists, athletes, business leaders, and entertainers, from Hubert Humphrey to Ronald Reagan, Gloria Steinem to Anita Bryant, Lee Iacocca to Ray Kroc, John Wayne to Farrah Fawcett.
In addition to his famous talk show, Donahue also worked on several other projects.
He partnered with Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner in the 1980s for a groundbreaking television discussion series during the Cold War. The US-Soviet Bridge featured simultaneous broadcasts from the United States and the Soviet Union, where the studio audience could ask each other questions. Donahue and Posner also co-hosted Posner/Donahue, a weekly issues roundtable on CNBC in the 1990s.
Donahue also co-directed the 2006 documentary “Body of War,” which was nominated for an Oscar.
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