The Phil Donahue Show: Jane Fonda [fragment]

The Phil Donahue Show: Jane Fonda [fragment]
Syndicated
September 1972
Talk Show
VHS
B

Phil's hosting has improved in the couple years since the previous episodes and this feels overall more balanced, politically and otherwise.  "Hanoi Jane" would still be controversial 45 years later, but even the woman in the studio audience who thinks that the Communists are going to take over the world recognizes that Fonda is earnest and sincere.  Jane also looks impossibly young at 35 and she does come across as naive, although many of her points, particularly about Nixon, are valid.  (She references Watergate and gets little response.)  This is the 500th B I've given to a TV show.

The Phil Donahue Show: Rev. Bob Harrington and Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The Phil Donahue Show: Rev. Bob Harrington and Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Syndicated
March 1970
Talk Show
VHS
B-

"The Chaplain of Bourbon Street" debates "the most hated woman in America."  It may be just my own biases, but Harrington comes across as smarmy and O'Hair as likable.  As in the Jerry Rubin episode, Phil is an awkward host, at one point facepalming over a simple phone call.  This is an edited together version of two episodes, one with a surprisingly good-natured one-on-one conversation between the two guests, and the other with the callers and studio audience.  Harrington is still a believer (he has a Facebook account); O'Hair was murdered, along with a son and grandson, in 1995, by a typesetter who worked for her organization, American Atheists.

This is the 1000th program I've reviewed from the 1970s!  And it won't even be the last.  But I promise I will get back to the '90s soon.

The Phil Donahue Show: Jerry Rubin

The Phil Donahue Show: Jerry Rubin
Syndicated
April 1970 (see below)
Talk Show
VHS
C+

As Phil himself says in the end, this is disappointing and could've been an interesting discussion.  This re-aired in 1988 as part of a "Golden Oldies" week, but, except for a brief introduction, the episode is basically intact from eighteen years earlier.  Rubin, a few years before he would indeed take the advice to cut his hair and put on a suit (he eventually became a multimillionaire and a Republican), spends most of his time ranting and not listening to other people.  It's clear this is a performance piece, and Phil, a relative newcomer, doesn't know how to balance the guest, the studio audience, and the callers.  The irony that Rubin sees Donahue as "plastic" is rich in retrospect of course, and certainly Phil by '88 had more left-of-center cred than Jerry did.