In Memoriam: Mike Douglas

Mike Douglas (nee Michael Delaney Dowd) died on August 11, 2006. His passing was well covered by the media, as it deserved to be. He was a rare celebrity, one whose fame and fortune came not so much from exceptional talent, but from exceptional ordinariness.

Mike Douglas had a daytime talk show from 1961 to 1982. He once said he knew the end of his show was near when the Chicago affiliate that aired the show moved it from around 3 PM to around 3 AM, and the number of people watching increased. When there are fewer people who want to watch your show in mid-afternoon than when it’s time to milk the cows, the end is nigh.

The Mike Douglas Show was one of the more notable shows in TV history, even though no one noticed at the time. It was the first syndicated talk show; it was the first syndicated daytime talk show to win an Emmy; Douglas was the first talk show host to earn over a million dollars a year. The face of television today is significantly different because of what Mike Douglas hath wrought.

The key to Douglas’ success was that he seemed like a typical guy meeting the vast array of celebrities that passed through his studio set. Because of his non-confrontational style, he was able to attract every kind of celebrity - from Richard Nixon to John Lennon, from George Carlin to Charo. A three-year old Tiger Woods appeared on the show in 1978. Mike Douglas may have been a pro-establishment square, but guests included Jerry Rubin and Ralph Nader. The show featured musical acts such as KISS and The Rolling Stones, everything from ABBA to Zappa.

I don’t mean to say that Douglas was a no-talent. He was a successful crooner with the Kay Kyser band, and he had some comedic talent (I recall being amused by a bespectacled character he played regularly called Tuttle, I think). Douglas certainly had more talent than many of today’s talk show hosts, some of whome are solely interested in yelling louder than their guests or telling them to shut up.

But that’s not what made The Mike Douglas Show great. He wasn’t as incisive an interviewer as Johnny Carson, or as probing as Mike Wallace, but he made average Americans feel as though they had access to important people, and that someone was asking the questions they wanted to ask.

Sometimes you read a celebrity obituary and you are surprised that the person’s passing affects you as much as it does. I watched a great deal of The Mike Douglas Show growing up, and news of his death saddened me more than I would have expected. I wonder if the first thing he does when he gets to heaven is ask God to be his co-host?