It is time for a separate post of a topic in depth, and of course it would be an obituary of somebody prominent. Today noted the death of daytime talk show pioneer Phil Donahue, who died at the age of 88. . He recently received the Medal of Freedom from President Biden, and he was very frail and in a wheelchair. I hadn't seen him in years, so it was a shock to see him like that, just as it was a shock tonight to see Jesse Jackson at the Democratic National Convention also in a wheelchair, though Jackson looked less frail than Donahue. (Jackson has battled Parkinson's disease for several years.) People get old, and shit happens. Not many, especially men, are as well preserved as my 88-year-old sister, who looks about 15 years younger and gets around very well. It is all the luck of the draw.
Donahue was originally based in Ohio before moving to Chicago where he stayed around a decade, and then I believe he moved to New York. He started his talk show back in 1967, and it ran for decades. His first guest was noted atheist and publicity hound Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Unfortunately, she, her son Garth, and her granddaughter (but adopted as her daughter) Robin, were murdered before Donahue could get her for his last episode. That is what he had wanted, but it was not to be.
Donahue, with his prematurely white hair, thrived having controversial guests, and then after interviewing them, he would go to the audience and they would ask the guests questions. His shows were both entertaining and thought-provoking, and overall they were not the sensationalist shows others did in the 1980s, such as the late Jerry Springer, and especially Geraldo Rivera, whose heart always belonged to sleaze.
He had been married once before and had five children before marrying Marlo Thomas back in 1980.
Donahue died yesterday. No cause of death was given.
Born Philip John Donahue in Cleveland, Ohio, he graduated from the University of Notre Dame and worked for a radio station in a small town in Michigan. “I could stop the Mayor of Adrian, Michigan in the hallway,” he told NPR in 2021. “I was, like 21 – I may have looked 16 – and it was kind of a first-grade lesson in the power of journalism.”
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His mix of hot-button topics with earnest discussion was so successful that it was eventually emulated by everyone from Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer, and Morton Downey Jr. to Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey said as much while handing Donahue a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Daytime Emmy Awards in 1996, noting, “Had there not been a Phil Donahue, I don’t think there could have been an Oprah.”
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