It’s not exactly surprising to learn that over the course of one week in 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hosted a series of one-hour seminars with guests including folk singers, activists, New Age doctors and a counterculture comedian, among others, or that John performed “Imagine” on the last day of the gathering, while Yoko created some experimental art involving the audience letting out a primal scream, and also a broken teacup that was pieced together, one day at a time. That’s who they were.
What IS remarkable, and kind of awesome, is that these confabs were beamed directly into the living rooms of some 40 million Americans via a rather unlikely platform: “The Mike Douglas Show,” a pleasant and mainstream daytime program aimed primarily at what we used to call housewives.
In the fascinating documentary “Daytime Revolution,” the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and frequent Werner Herzog collaborator Erik Nelson blends archival footage from each of the five shows with interviews with an associate producer and a number of original guests. (We’re also given valuable context via newscast clips, including an American soldier in Vietnam telling an interviewer the war is far from over; President Richard Nixon preparing to visit the People’s Republic of China; California Gov. Ronald Reagan voicing his support for the death penalty; and protests over busing.)
The Chicago-born Mike Douglas, once a staff singer at WMAQ-TV aka NBC5, during the Big Band era, segued from middle-of-the-road crooner to talk show host in the 1960s, first as a local host in Cleveland, and then headlining the nationally syndicated “The Mike Douglas Show.” The 51-year-old Douglas was an affable sort with wide appeal to middle America — think of him as the Ryan Seacrest of his time — but he wasn’t averse to welcoming controversial and provocative guests, and he was a skilled interviewer with the confidence to give discussions room to breathe without making it all about him.
In February of 1972, Douglas and his producers invited John Lennon and Yoko Ono to co-host a week’s worth of shows, with John and Yoko choosing the guests and planning various segments. E.V. Di Massa, who was a 24-year-old associate producer on the show, notes that the shows were taped in the evenings in a basement studio on Walnut Street in Philadelphia, and recalled John telling him the venue reminded him of the Cavern Club in Liverpool where the Beatles first gained popularity.
In the first episode, Douglas establishes a warm and welcoming presence as John says they want to explore “love, peace, communication, women’s lib, racism [and] war,” among other topics, and Yoko takes out a blank canvas and says she and John and Mike and all the guests that week will sign it, and they’ll auction it off for charity. Ralph Nader, who was a guest on the first show, recalls seeing a young producer and PR guy named Roger Ailes: “I watched this guy in the back … constantly absorbing the details of the television experience …”
The folk singer Nobuko Miyamoto talks of how she received a call from Yoko to appear on the show, where (over the protests of a concerned producer) she and Chris Iijima sang the powerful anthem “We Are the Children,” with lyrics such as We are the children of the migrant worker, we are the offspring of the concentration camp, sons and daughters of the railroad builder, who leave their stamp on America. …
Time and again, Douglas proves to be an open-minded host, whether participating in a demonstration of biofeedback and a cooking segment on macrobiotic foods, or welcoming guests including George Carlin, Chuck Berry, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale — the latter of whom appears to be spoiling for confrontation when he rails against the media’s treatment of the Black Panther Party, but is given the floor to show a short film on a program to provide meals, groceries and shoes in Richmond, California, with Douglas saying, “Your group is into some very new and positive projects.”
Douglas also picks his spots to gently prod Lennon into talking about being raised by his aunt, and how his mother told him the guitar was “all right for a hobby,” and his father returned to his life only after John became famous, as well as his relationships with his former bandmates.
“I talk to Paul about once a week,” says John. “Musically, we feel we can express ourselves better as individuals.”
The filmmakers make the wise decision to show Lennon’s performance of “Imagine” in its entirety, with John sitting at the keyboard, wearing an Easton, Pennsylvania, flannel baseball jersey, and singing in a quiet but powerful voice. It was the perfect cap to one of the most memorable weeks in the history of the television talk show.