Phil Donahue obit

Phil Donahue Dies: Groundbreaking TV Talk Show Host Was 88

 

He was not the list.

Phil Donahue, the longtime host of the trend-setting TV talk show The Phil Donahue Show, died Sunday evening following a long illness, surrounded by family including his longtime wife, actor Marlo Thomas.. He was 88.

His death was announced on The Today Show this morning. Today shared a statement from Donahue’s family. See the announcement below.

Calling Donahue “a daytime staple” who pioneered a format that had been replicated by others, Today hosts noted that Donahue had been presented a Medal of Honor by President Joe Biden just this summer.

Donahue was married to Thomas for more than 40 years, having met when the That Girl star met Donahue when she was a guest on his talk show.

The family statement reads, “Groundbreaking TV talk show journalist Phil Donahue died Sunday night at home surrounded by his wife of 44 years Marlo Thomas, his sister, his children, grandchildren and his beloved Golden Retriever Charlie. Donahue was 88 years old and passed away peacefully following a long illness.”

Donahue was born December 21, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, and in the late 1950s embarked on a career as a radio journalist at first in his hometown and then Adrian, Michigan.

But it was his TV work in Dayton, Ohio, that truly launched not only Donahue’s career but what would become a novel and highly influential style of daytime talk TV. In 1959, he was hired as a TV reporter at Dayton’s WHIO, where his empathetic style of interview was first noticed by the public and his bosses. Within four years, he also had a radio call-in show called Conversation Piece for WHIO’s affiliated radio station.

Within several more years, he had taken his talk endeavor to TV, hosting a business show and co-anchoring the evening news. In 1967, he was scooped up by a competing Dayton station, WLWD, who offered him a daytime morning interview show with a studio audience.

With a studio audience that was treated by Donahue with respect – the host would make his way through the seats and hand over the mic to audience members with questions for guests – The Phil Donahue Show became a Dayton-area staple and favorite. Donahue is regarded as an early advocate for women, giving his largely female audience the opportunity to speak and ask questions on serious topics rather than the home ec subjects that so many daytime talkers focused on.

Unlike Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and numerous other daytime talkers, The Phil Donahue Show typically featured one guest per episode, the better to delve into serious issues with considerable depth. Among his earliest, most frequent and most controversial guests was atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who provoked the midwestern audiences with her anti-religion opinions.

By 1969, the show branched out from Dayton to syndicate in other Midwestern markets, and by ’71 was airing in more than 30 cities.

In the 1980s, during the Cold War period of openness by the USSR, Donahue and Soviet journalist Vladimir Posner co-hosted a series of televised discussions, known as the U.S.–Soviet Space Bridge, among everyday citizens of the Soviet Union and the United States. It was the first event of its kind in broadcasting history: Donahue hosted an audience in an American city while Posner hosted an audience in a Soviet city, all on one television program. Members of both audiences asked each other questions about both nations. While the governments of both nations were preparing for the possibility of nuclear war, Donahue said: "We reached out instead of lashed out". From 1991 to 1994 Donahue and Posner co-hosted Posner/Donahue, a weekly, issues-oriented roundtable program, which aired both on CNBC and in syndication. His wife Marlo Thomas created a children's version in 1988 entitled Free to Be... A Family. Donahue and Posner have been friends ever since.

In July 2002, Phil Donahue returned to television after seven years of retirement to host a show called Donahue on MSNBC. On February 25, 2003, MSNBC canceled the show. Soon after the show's cancellation, an internal MSNBC memo was leaked to the press stating that Donahue should be fired because he opposed the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq and that he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war" and that his program could be "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda". Donahue commented in 2007 that the management of MSNBC, owned at the time by General Electric, a major defense contractor, required that "we have two conservative (guests) for every liberal. I was counted as two liberals"

In 2006, Donahue served as co-director with independent filmmaker Ellen Spiro for the feature documentary film Body of War. The film tells the story of Tomas Young, a severely disabled Iraq War veteran and his turbulent postwar adjustments. In November 2007 the film was named as one of fifteen documentaries to be in consideration for an Oscar nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In June 2013, Donahue and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning.

Donahue was interviewed for the documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier (2013), about the posthumously recognized American street photographer of that name, an acquaintance of his from the 1970s.

On May 24 and May 25, 2016, Donahue spoke at Ralph Nader's "Breaking Through Power" conference, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Donahue's 1958 marriage to Margaret Cooney produced five children—Michael, Kevin, Daniel, Mary Rose, and James—but ended in divorce in 1975. She returned to her native New Mexico, remarried, and retired from public view. The family had lived in Centerville, Ohio, across the street from Erma Bombeck, a humorist who would become one of his contemporaries as a national voice in the 1970s and 1980s. For a brief period in the 1970s, Donahue employed Vivian Maier, an American street photographer, as a nanny for his children.

Donahue married actress Marlo Thomas on May 21, 1980. He and Thomas do not have any children together.

In 2014, Phil Donahue's youngest son, James Donahue, died suddenly at the age of 51 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm.

Actor

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Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Peri Gilpin, and Jane Leeves in Frasier (1993)

Frasier

8.2

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1999

3 episodes

 

Ellen DeGeneres, Joely Fisher, and Clea Lewis in Ellen (1994)

Ellen

6.1

TV Series

Phil Donahue (uncredited)

1998

1 episode

 

Alyssa Milano, Tony Danza, Katherine Helmond, Danny Pintauro, and Judith Light in Who's the Boss? (1984)

Who's the Boss?

6.6

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Phil Donahue

1992

1 episode

 

Heather Tom, Thorsten Kaye, and Katherine Kelly Lang in The Bold and the Beautiful (1987)

The Bold and the Beautiful

3.4

TV Series

TV Host

1991

1 episode

 

Jenna von Oÿ, Joey Lawrence, Mayim Bialik, Michael Stoyanov, and Ted Wass in Blossom (1990)

Blossom

6.1

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1991

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L.A. Law (1986)

L.A. Law

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Phil Donahue

1991

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Danny Thomas: Young & Foolish

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1978

 

Producer

Body of War (2007)

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executive producer

producer

2007

 

Director

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Body of War

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Director

2007