He interviewed presidents and married Hollywood royalty, but he never forgot his Ohio roots: Talk show pioneer Phil Donahue has died at 88.
A graduate of the inaugural class of Lakewood’s St. Edward High School in 1953, Donahue began his career in Dayton after graduating from Notre Dame.
“I don’t think I would have hired me in 1957,” he said during a 1979 visit to the Front Row Theater. “I was one of a lot of people who were going from lobby to lobby at radio and television stations trying to get work. Many of the people who watch our show will not be surprised when I tell you there was really nothing to distinguish me from the others who were looking for work at that time.”
There were 100,000 ticket requests for the week of shows he taped at the unique theater-in-the-round in Highland Heights in 1979. The venue held just 3,200 people.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than coming home to your own hometown,” he told WEWS at the time.
A 'king' is born in Cleveland
Donahue was born into an Irish Catholic family on Dec. 21, 1935. He grew up on Southland Avenue in West Park, according to a remembrance shared by Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne on Monday. After several years in radio and television, his talk show began in 1967 at what’s now WDTN-TV in Dayton. He took over “The Johnny Gilbert Show,” hosted by the man who has been the announcer for “Jeopardy!” since 1984.
Donahue’s first guest was atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who had worked to remove prayer in schools. Over the next 29 years, the "king of daytime talk" would tackle controversial topics ranging from abortion to rap lyrics to white supremacy — eschewing sensationalism for a symposium.
In 1971, he presented shows from the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. Yet his program would also host guests ranging from Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela, Sammy Davis Jr. to Gloria Steinem.
One guest in 1977 was actress Marlo Thomas, daughter of Toledo native and television star Danny Thomas. Phil and Marlo married in 1980. In a social media post, she recalled their first meeting as “instant chemistry.”
Another frequent guest was humorist Erma Bombeck. She and Donahue grew up in the same neighborhood when the latter’s family lived in Centerville.
“She was brave,” Donahue told WDTN in 2014. “She didn't like pretense. She was the first to say that maybe being a mother is not always a religious experience. She was fabulous.”
Eventually renamed “Donahue,” his was the first national program to regularly allow audience members to ask questions. The show moved to Chicago in 1974 and New York City in 1985. The host soon became a favorite guest of David Letterman and was even parodied on “Saturday Night Live,” both shows being his neighbors at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. By the mid-1990s, though, tabloid programs such as the ones hosted by Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer had taken over the airwaves. The final “Donahue” program aired in 1996.
Donahue himself won a Peabody Award in 1980 and the program was honored with 20 Emmys. In 2002, his show was named one of the 50 greatest of all time by TV Guide, ahead of Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," "Bonanza" and even "The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Outside of his famous talk show, Donahue pursued several other projects.
He partnered with Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner for a groundbreaking television discussion series during the Cold War in the 1980s. The U.S.-Soviet Bridge featured simultaneous broadcasts from the United States and the Soviet Union, where studio audiences could ask questions of one another. Donahue and Posner also co-hosted a weekly issues roundtable, Posner/Donahue, on CNBC in the 1990s.
Donahue also co-directed the 2006 documentary “Body of War,” which was nominated for an Oscar.
Earlier this year, President Biden awarded Donahue the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A 'trailblazer' who remembered his roots
"He was a trailblazer in a lot of ways over the course of his life," KC McKenna, president of St. Ed's, said of Donahue. "For us ... he was a trailblazer because he was one of the first students to walk through our doors."
McKenna was a student in the late ‘90s when he first met Donahue. The talk show host was visiting his alma mater, and the two discovered that they both grew up in the same neighborhood. Over the years, McKenna found that Donahue retained “a tremendous fondness for St. Ed’s.”
“I don't think he ever lost that," he said. “He and Marlo Thomas were always incredibly generous to the school. For our last capital campaign, he was an honorary chair. When he produced that documentary in 2006, he invited students from St. Ed's to come, and he spoke to all of us at that point. And so, he had this great connectivity ... from sharing a common experience.”
McKenna said that experience, of being in the inaugural class, has been an important link to the history of St. Ed’s.
“They all walked into a situation that was completely brand new,” he said. “Their parents really put a lot of faith in the Brothers of Holy Cross, who founded the school. Any great work that we're doing on behalf of a student now is because that first group of students had the courage to come to a place that was completely new.”
Donahue's family, including five children from a previous marriage, has requested donations be made to the Phil Donahue/Notre Dame Scholarship Fund or to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which was founded by Danny Thomas.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
