Phil Donahue, Pioneering Talk Show Host, Dies at 88

Phil Donahue, whose pioneering talk show format established a lasting television genre that led to the success of Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, and many others, has passed away. He was 88 years old.

NBC’s “Today” show, citing family members, reported that Donahue died on Sunday following a prolonged illness.
Known as “the king of daytime talk,” Donahue was the first to incorporate audience participation in a talk show, typically during an hour-long segment with a single guest.

“Just one guest per show? No band?” he recalled being asked frequently in his 1979 memoir, “Donahue, my own story.”

The unique format of “The Phil Donahue Show” distinguished it from other interview programs of the 1960s and made it a trendsetter in daytime television, where it garnered immense popularity among female viewers.

Later renamed “Donahue,” the program debuted in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967. Donahue’s willingness to explore the pressing social issues of the day was evident from the very beginning, when he featured atheist

Madalyn Murray O’Hair as his first guest. He would later dedicate episodes to feminism, homosexuality, consumer protection, and civil rights, among hundreds of other topics.

The show achieved nationwide syndication in 1970 and aired on national television for the subsequent 26 years, accumulating 20 Emmy Awards for the program and for Donahue as its host, as well as a Peabody Award for Donahue in 1980. In May, President Joe Biden bestowed a Presidential Medal of Freedom upon Donahue, recognizing him as a pioneer of the daytime talk show.

The show included radio-style call-ins, which Donahue acknowledged with his signature phrase, “Is the caller there?”

The show’s final episode aired in 1996 in New York, where Donahue resided with his wife, actress Marlo Thomas. He met Thomas, the “That Girl” star of the 1960s who was a household name at the time and would later become a recurring character on “Friends,” when she appeared on his show in 1977.

He later revealed that it was love at first sight, and they made little effort to conceal their feelings on the air.

“You are really fascinating,” Donahue told Thomas, taking her hand. “You are wonderful,” Thomas replied. “You are loving and generous, and you like women and it’s a pleasure, and whoever the woman in your life is, is very lucky.”

The couple had been married since 1980. Donahue had five children, four sons and a daughter, from a previous marriage.

Donahue briefly returned to television in 2002, hosting another “Donahue” show on MSNBC. The station canceled it after six months, citing low viewership.

He was born Phillip John Donahue on December 21, 1935, into a middle-class Irish Catholic family in Cleveland. They relocated to Centerville, Ohio, when Donahue was a child, where he lived across the street from Erma Bombeck, the future humorist and syndicated columnist.

Donahue was among the first graduating class of St. Edward High School, a Catholic all-boys preparatory school in Lakewood, in 1953 and graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in business administration in 1957. He later distanced himself from, and left, the church, although he poignantly reflected in his book that “a little piece” of his faith would always remain with him.

After a series of early jobs in radio and television, Donahue was invited to move an earlier radio talk show to Dayton’s WLWD television station in 1967. It relocated in 1974 to Chicago, where it remained for years, before concluding its run in New York.

The show featured discussions with religious leaders, doctors, homemakers, activists, and entertainers or politicians who might be passing through town. He attributed the discovery of the show’s winning formula to a fortunate accident.

“It may have been a full three years before any of us began to understand that our program was something special,” Donahue wrote. “The show’s style had developed not by genius but by necessity. The familiar talk-show heads were not available to us in Dayton, Ohio. …The result was improvisation.”

That spontaneity instilled a sense of freedom in the show that persisted as it rose to the No. 1 position in its category.

With a friendly demeanor and a head of salt-and-pepper hair, Donahue engaged in boxing with Muhammed Ali. He played football with Alice Cooper. His guests offered cooking lessons, taught breakdancing, and, more controversially, discussed “mansharing,” being a mistress, lesbian motherhood, or — with the aid of collected video that led to the show being banned in some cities — how natural childbirth, abortion, or reverse vasectomies worked.

An appearance on “Donahue” became a must for influential politicians, activists, athletes, business leaders, and entertainers, ranging from Hubert Humphrey to Ronald Reagan, Gloria Steinem to Anita Bryant, Lee Iacocca to Ray Kroc, John Wayne to Farrah Fawcett.

Beyond his renowned talk show, Donahue pursued several other ventures.

He collaborated with Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner on 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, allowing studio audiences to 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 Academy Award.