*If you're in your 30s or 40s
and an occasional thought harkens back to those after
school years when Mike "made your day," you may have
wondered through the late 1980s and most of the '90s,
whatever happened to Mike Douglas? Did he still live in
Los Angeles? Did he still sing On a Wonderful Day
Like Today? Was he in some kind of forced exile? After
all, television has a way of being cruel to its pioneers
and its waypavers.
In late 1996, Warner Brothers Television announced
it would go against the grain of a decade of daytime
trash talk and signed comedienne Rosie O'Donnell to a
contract for a new daytime, entertainment-oriented hour
to begin in June 1997. Rosie made no bones about the role model
for her show. She used to go home after school and watch
Mike Douglas (Merv, too...but, clearly, Mike made her day).
Rosie didn't let her homage pass as merely lip service.
On the first week of The Rosie O'Donnell Show,
Rosie trotted out "the legendary Mike Douglas." For
many viewers, this was their first glance at Mike in
15 years. He looked a youthful 72 with distinctively
greying hair and a robust energy. The audience roared
and rose to their feet. Mike smelled a setup, saying:
"They don't know who I am."
Rosie fondly reminisced with Mike about his influence on
her career. As if he hadn't missed a beat, Mike took
Rosie center stage to sing, "You Make Me Feel So Young,"
as he would occasionally do on the old show. The pipes
were still intact, even on the high notes he used to
joke (on My Kind of Town) would make him believe
he was experiencing a hernia. Mike definitely made our
day.
In May 1998, Rosie brought back Mike yet again to another
deafening roar from the audience, on the same day she
was hosting the popular teen group Hanson. Mike talked
about how Group W had erased the 1963 episode in which
an unknown Barbra Streisand guested. He recalled receiving
a call from Elvis Presley, telling Mike he had always
enjoyed the Douglas show but just "blew up one day and
shot the TV set out because I just couldn't take any
more of that Robert Goulet singing." Said Rosie: "Does
Robert Goulet know this?" Mike: "He does now." Mike
brought down the house with a version of "Hello, Dolly,"
to the original lyrics "Hello, Rosie." Viewers are
anticipating a 1999 return for Mike.
So, the "old guy" can still do it. The humor is still
there. The talent remains. The songs are still as
smooth as they were when they were coming on the bandstand
with Kay Kyser in the 1940s.
Oddly enough, in the years when Mike was often dismissed
by critics, one of his public supporters was the legend
of sports, Howard Cosell. In his book, Cosell by Cosell,
Howard wrote of the depth of preparation Mike made for
Cosell's 1971 debut appearance on
the Philadelphia show. Mike went to the extent of asking
Howard why he refused to do the ball scores on the day
of Robert F. Kennedy's death. A pleasantly surprised
Cosell said: "Boy, Mike, you're prepared for this interview!"
In the medium's almost vulgar attention on the younger demographic,
the genuine talents of television's fun years have almost
been ostracized. We remember those years fondly because
they were a product of our innocence, a category young
people have far too little of at the end of this millenium.
We cherish the memories of those afternoons with Mike because he brought
on people who knew how to entertain us without uttering
four-letter words, injecting sexual innuendo or bodily-
function humor, or desensitizing our sense of shame or
shock. Mike was somewhat of a father figure for many
of us, only he was a father who could sing and converse
with a sense of humor. We find ourselves wistful that
our children will never experience those memories (though
Rosie is trying hard to fill the gap) because their world
of entertainment often revolves around the next sex joke.
The book Total Television suggests Mike was "one
of television's most durable talk show hosts." He was
far more than that. His albums never sold like Sinatra's.
His interviews were never rated alongside Cavett's or
Donahue's. He never had a chance to make it in prime
time. But Mike's time was prime time for us. If Tony
Bennett can become the darling of the MTV crowd, if swing
music can come back as "retroswing" and if Bob Barker
can continue into the new century, surely some cable
network, somewhere, can find a place for Mike Douglas.
He might just make our day one more time.
