Pioneering daytime talk show host Phil Donahue dies

Phil Donahue, whose pioneering daytime talk show launched an unforgettable television genre that brought success to Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams, Ellen DeGeneres and many others, has died.

NBC’s “Today” show, citing family members, said Donahue died Sunday after a long illness.

Dubbed “the king of the daytime talk show”, Donahue was the first to incorporate audience participation into a talk show, typically for a full hour with a single guest.

“Only one guest per show? No bands?” he recalls being routinely asked in his 1979 memoir, “Donahue, My Own Story.”

The format set “The Phil Donahue Show” apart from other talk shows of the 1960s and made it a trendsetter on daytime television, where it was particularly popular with female audiences.

Later renamed “Donahue”, the program was launched in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967.

Donahue’s willingness to explore the most controversial social issues of the day was immediately apparent when he welcomed atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair as his first guest.

He would later broadcast programs on feminism, homosexuality, consumer protection, and civil rights, among hundreds of other topics.

The show began airing in 1970 and ran on national television for the next 26 years, garnering 20 Emmy Awards for the show and 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 has been cited as a pioneer of the daytime talk show.

The program included radio calls, which Donahue received with his signature: “Is the caller there?”

The series’ final episode aired in 1996 in New York City, where Donahue lived with his wife, actress Marlo Thomas.

He met Thomas, the 1960s “That Girl” star who was a household name at the time and would later become a regular on “Friends” when he appeared on his show in 1977.

He later said it was love at first sight, and that they did a terrible job of hiding it on air.

“You’re really fascinating,” Donahue told Thomas, taking her hand.

“You’re wonderful,” Thomas replied.

“You are loving and generous, you like women and that is a pleasure, and whoever the woman in your life is, she is very lucky.”

The two had been married since 1980.

Donahue had five children, four boys and one girl, from a previous marriage.

Donahue briefly returned to television in 2002, hosting another “Donahue” show on MSNBC.

The network canceled the show after six months, citing ratings — though a leaked email later showed it was about politics.

He was born Phillip John Donahue on December 21, 1935, part of a middle-class Irish Catholic family in Cleveland.

Donahue was in the first graduating class of St. Edward High School, an all-boys Catholic preparatory school in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, in 1953.

He graduated with a degree in business administration from the University of Notre Dame in 1957.

He later rebelled and left the church, although he sadly recalled in his book that “a little piece” of his faith would always be with him.

After a series of early radio and TV jobs, Donahue was invited to move a radio talk show to Dayton television station WLWD in 1967.

In 1974, he moved to Chicago, where he remained for years, and then ended his stint in New York.

The program featured debates with spiritual leaders, doctors, housewives, activists, artists or politicians who were passing through the city.

A frequent guest was her neighbor, Erma Bombeck, a humorist and syndicated columnist.

He said discovering the show’s winning formula was a happy accident.

“It may have been three full years before any of us began to understand that our program was something special,” Donahue wrote.

“The style of the program did not develop out of genius, but out of necessity. The well-known talk-show heads were not available to us in Dayton, Ohio. … The result was improvisation.”

This gave the program a freedom that persisted as it grew to number 1 status in its category.

With a gentle style and gray hair, Donahue boxed with Muhammad Ali.

He played football with Alice Cooper.

Her guests gave cooking lessons, taught break dancing and, more controversially, described mansharing, being a mistress, lesbian motherhood or — with the help of collected videos that got the shows banned in some cities — how natural childbirth, abortion or reverse vasectomy worked.

A stop at “Donahue” has become mandatory for important politicians, activists, athletes, business leaders and artists, from Hubert Humphrey to Ronald Reagan, from Gloria Steinem to Anita Bryant, from Lee Iacocca to Ray Kroc, from John Wayne to Farrah Fawcett.

In addition to his famous talk show, Donahue has developed several other projects.

He teamed up with Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner for a groundbreaking Cold War television debate series in the 1980s.

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 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 Academy Award.