Mike Douglas
Merv Griffin
Bob Braun
I could never keep them straight.
MTV, I think, ran some Mike Douglas some years ago where John and Yoko co-hosted, and had some of their counter-culture friends as guests. One memory is that Lennon and Yoko were peforming with Chuck Berry, and she let out a scream. Berry’s eyes widened as if to say WTF!, but he didn’t miss a lick. I think on their next set they turned off her mic.
Douglas’s shows had little teaser blurbs at the bottom of the screen about what was coming up next. One show had Suzy Quatro as a guest. The blurb said, “Your mother won’t like Suzy Quatro!” Upon seeing that, my mother asked, “Who is Suzy Quatro?” I think this was before Leather Tuscadero, so I didn’t know, but it was a reference to the song she would be singing, “Your Mother Won’t Like Me.”
He had an obscure singer named “Julia DeJohn” singing “Swearing to God.” As I recall, she was rather heavyset. There’s practically no information on her, but as I recall that was a stage name and her real name was something like “Julia Giovanni.” I think I found an obit for her long ago.
Another singer I remember was Marlena Shaw. I thought, “Wow! What a beauty!” But her career never really went anywhere, but apparently she did better than DeJohn.
Anybody remember the commercials with the really sappy song?
“Mike . . . makes . . . my day!”
My aunt liked him so if I was at her house I saw it. Seemed like a good show.
Cleveland Ohio originally, then, Philadelphia.
I always wondered where the celebrities came from for shows like Match game and Gong show… who the heck was JP Morgan (woman) she was always on Gong show. Brett Somers on Match Game? Who were they??
Jaye P. Morgan. A singer who actually had her own TV show back in the Fifties. Brett Somers’ claim to fame really is just game shows unless you count playing Oscar Madison’s ex-wife.
I never knew this, but according to Wikipedia, she was married to Jack Klugman in real life. Previously married to Robert Klein.
Jaye P. Morgan became a singer by the time she was 19 and had a number of hit songs in her twenties. In her thirties she acted in some TV shows and sang in nightclubs. At the time she appeared on The Gong Show, she was 45. She hasn’t done very much since then that you might have seen, although she’s still alive now at 88.
Brett Somers was in her fifties when she appeared on The Match Game and The Gong Show. She didn’t do that much after those shows. She died in 2007 at the age of 83.
I suspect that what happened to both Morgan and Somers was what happened to most actresses after they turned 40, which is that acting gigs pretty much go away except for some of the top actresses.
I believe that the Robert Klein that Brett Somers was married to was not the comedian Robert Klein.
I remember it well. In the years between Mike Douglas’s retirement and Rosie O’Donnel’s ascent, daytime television was a wasteland of transvestites, paternity tests and incest confessionals. The world really fell apart without him, or at least one small corner of it.
I loved both the Mike Douglas and the Merv Griffin shows, for different reasons. The Mike Douglas show engaged my curiosity, and he was actually capable of asking difficult questions; the Merv Griffin show had a lot of interesting showbiz folks, and was often pretty ribald. if you told me half the guests on Merv Griffin were drunk, I’d believe you.
Was it this woman, or at least part of the combo? Apparently they were a one-hit wonder from years before, and from the Philly region.
Marlena Shaw appears to have stepped back to raise a family, but she still performs occasionally in her late 70s.
wasnt it on mike Douglas where john Lennon got in a fight with al capp over politics and made capp look like such a fool that the lil Abner strip was finally put out of its misery?
No, it wasn’t on Mike Douglas, or Merv Griffin, for that matter.
Rather, it was Lennon’s “Bed-In for Peace,” which took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, in May and June of 1969. The event, which took place entirely in Lennon’s hotel rooms, received a lot of media coverage–including the argument with Al Capp, which was broadcast on TV. So while you would have seen it on TV, it was a news broadcast, not the Mike Douglas Show.
heh, it mainly still is except on the big 3 …
Li’l Abner kept going until 1977, Capp’s death. A lot of people felt Capp won that debate. I think they both came out looking pretty awful.
But John Lennon did serve as guest host for the show for a week once, maybe that’s what nightshadea was thinking of.
In case you did not know, Merv Griffin made a fortune from creating Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
I remember the blurb on the radio news break when she died. The announcer said, “Brett Somers is pushing up [blank].”
Yep, that’s she.