Phil Donahue, talk show pioneer and ‘lapsed Catholic’ who courted controversy, dies at 88

CNA Staff, Aug 19, 2024 / 17:20 pm

Phil Donahue, a self-described “lapsed Catholic” who reinvented the daytime television talk-show format beginning in the 1960s, died Sunday at his home in New York at age 88. 

Born in Cleveland in 1935 and raised in a Catholic family, Donahue attended an all-boys Catholic high school and the University of Notre Dame. He later dismissed the Church as “‘sexist,’ ‘racist,’ and ‘unnecessarily destructive,’ feelings that imbued many of his shows,” his New York Times obituary notes.

When “The Phil Donahue Show” debuted in 1967 on a Dayton, Ohio, TV station, Donahue encouraged audience participation in his interviews and discussions, an unusual practice at the time that was later copied by numerous other shows.

In nearly 30 years on the air and 6,000 episodes, Donahue frequently courted controversy, both in his choice of guests and in the topics he covered.

He was often critical of the Catholic Church into which he was baptized, especially amid the sexual abuse crisis. He first dealt with the sex abuse scandal in a 1988 episode and revisited it in later seasons of his show, Reuters reported.

In a 2002 interview with Oprah Winfrey — who has cited Donahue as a major influence on her — Donahue described an infamous episode of his show where he aired footage of an abortion procedure.

“If you look up outrage in the dictionary, there’s a picture of me. We once even filmed an abortion,” he said. 

“Then we called the Archdiocese of Chicago, the pro-life people, and the pro-choice people, sat them in a room, and played the tape before going anywhere near the air with it. When I walked into the room after they’d seen it, half the people were crying,” he continued. 

“The major grievance of the pro-life and Catholic Church folks was that the tape made abortion look easy. I said, ‘Well, that’s the procedure — 15 minutes.’ Their fear was that if we aired this, everybody would run out and get abortions. I said, ‘Look, this issue is splitting families. It’s at the center of America’s agenda.’ Somehow, we got to air that,” he recalled.

A self-described feminist, Donahue also supported same-sex marriage.

In a 2002 New York Times interview, Donahue said he still saw himself “as a Catholic. I will always be a Catholic.”

Donahue’s show was canceled in 1996 amid falling ratings, and an attempted revival of the show in 2002 was canceled after just six months. In 2024 President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic, awarded Donahue the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Despite their many differences, Catholic League President Bill Donohue has fond memories of the legendary Irish-American television personality.

“I was a guest on Phil Donahue’s show for many years and I thoroughly enjoyed mixing it up with him,” Donohue recalled. “He told his producers on several occasions that he loved having me on even though we usually clashed. That made him unusual — he was not afraid of confronting a conservative. He was a real man. And I always appreciated his kindness. May he rest in peace.”