Every afternoon between 4:30PM and 6PM, I should have been doing my homework. Or maybe I was. But, whatever was occupying this youngster's time, I was probably doing it with "The Mike Douglas Show" on the TV at the same time.
At the time, "The Mike Douglas Show" provided me with my first glimpses of the show business world. Everything was wonderful. All the movie and TV stars were nice people. Everybody loved everybody else. They were all regular people, who could be singing a song or telling a joke one minute and then cooking up some beef goulash the next.
I swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker. And it was terrific.
Mike Douglas was unique back in the day. As a contrast to the late night shows anchored by Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, Mike was on during the day and geared to mothers and kids. It's the only TV show that I remember being tuned to on both floors of my childhood house. My grandmother had pretty much finished her early bird dinner on the first floor by the time Mike came onto Channel 9 in NY. Meanwhile, upstairs, my mom was trying to figure out what to heat up for my supper as I wrapped up some book report for school. The Mike Douglas soundtrack echoed throughout. And I was glued. Totie Fields trying to crawl up on a stool. Milton Berle "being funny" by slapping Marty Allen in the face. William F. Buckley playing charades. It was all so weird, but delightful.
What made Mike Douglas' show so interesting was his daily broadcast always featured a weekly co-host. Totally ingenious, because, by the end of the week, you felt like that particular star was a member of your family. I remember my grandmother (and me) becoming a huge fan of Pearl Bailey after she spent a week squeezed into those goofy white plastic chairs situated amid a sea of those big asterisks. My grandmother said she wished Pearl could come over for dinner and that was a big deal in those days for my family, because it was specific that Pearl could eat the meal with us and not be the one serving it. That's the way it was with "The Mike Douglas Show." It oozed this personal touch and Mike Douglas was the ultimate nice guy sharing his friends with you. And he mixed and matched them with abandon. You could watch Moe Howard teaching Ted Knight how to take a custard pie to the face. Or a three-year-old Tiger Woods showing Bob Hope how to putt. Or, in this clip, Judy Garland just chatting away with Mike and co-host Peter Lawford.
At one point, I was so enamored by the utopic world that Mike Douglas was offering that I briefly started a fan club devoted to the show. My hope was that we would be of some interest to the show's producers and that we might be invited one week to visit the Philadelphia studio and meet Mike and that week's co-host Vivian Vance. That never happened. I was still home most weeks. Doing my math homework and waiting for a Swanson's frozen dinner.
Years and years later, it rankled me to death when fat ass Rosie O'Donnell did her own daytime TV show and dedicated it to all those years when she was fat and depressed and inhaling Drake's Cakes on the sofa while watching Mike Douglas. In my humble opinion, she took "The Mike Douglas Show" and made it all about her deep-seeded mental issues which have still gone untreated to this day. For me, "The Mike Douglas Show" was something a little more basic. A little more personal. And a snapshot into a world I craved to be part of. I wasn't watching because I was crazy or depressed or fat or starved for attention. I was tuned in because these were nice people. Pure and simple. And, for 90 minutes a day, they were in my home.
There will be nothing like it again. And, to this day, I am still dying to sample Rip Taylor's Famous Cole Slaw.
Dinner last night: Sicilian pizza from CPK.
2 comments:
Mike's show was must-see TV in my house too, including November 9, 1965 while we were eating dinner. The eleven-inch BW screen started to shrink, the lights started to dim, and before you knew it, WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?
On that day, however, I was not watching Mike Douglas. Instead, Buck Pirates with Bud and Lou was on the 430PM Movie. I was reading the Journal American's obit on Dorothy Kilgallen. And then....
WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?????
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