Phil Donahue, RIP
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.”
[Snip]
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.
[Snip]
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.
[Snip]
His usually genial demeanor did not, however, mean that Donahue avoided hot-button issues. Quite the contrary. Carrying a hand-held mic and nearly running from one audience member to another, Donahue helped open up daytime talk to a wide swath of issues and personalities who were controversial then and, in many instances, remain so today. He gave voice to gay rights activists, anti-war protestors, abortion rights supporters and opponents, the Ku Klux Klan, atheists, pedophilia within the Catholic Church clergy, 1990s Club Kids, and feminists and anti-feminists.
[Snip]
Later projects include the 2007 documentary Body of War, and, with wife Thomas, the 2020 book What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life.