Longtime talk show host Mike Douglas has passed away and yes, I have an anecdote.
I barely met Mr. Douglas — just a quick handshake was all — but I feel like I knew him. First of all, I watched his afternoon talk fest for a long time, especially during the years it was being broadcast out of Philadelphia. Located there, he wound up with a guest list that was more esoteric, and therefore more to my liking, than if he'd been in New York, picking up whoever was plugging their latest movie or record album. Who else would have had Moe Howard on all the time? The show wasn't nearly as good after it relocated in Hollywood and began booking all the same people you could see on competing programs.
Also, I worked for several years with a producer named Woody Fraser who had produced The Mike Douglas Show and, many said, "discovered" its star. Woody was forever talking about Douglas and it was almost always a compliment. He spoke of a man who was keenly aware of his own strengths and weaknesses as a performer and who was willing to compensate for the latter through hard work and a strong dedication to doing whatever it took to make the show work. Once while I was associated with Woody, a current (and failing) talk show tried to hire him as a consultant to save the series from cancellation. I somehow wound up in the meetings where Woody made the point that the failing show's host was too non-participatory, refusing to do things that might muss his hair or tarnish his image. The host had refused to wear a funny costume in a sketch. The host had refused to be part of a stunt where jugglers would toss Indian clubs on either side of him. The host had refused to do an exercise demonstration with a bunch of leotard-clad starlets would have had him down on a mat…and so on. Woody was practically shouting, over and over, "Mike Douglas would have done that in a second. That's why he was on for so many years!"
Okay, so here's my Mike Douglas story. I'm backstage — this is after Douglas had moved his show to Television City in Hollywood — because a comedian I write for is a guest on what is about to be taped. I'm chatting with the Stage Manager and he says, "We're close to tape time. Mike will be down any minute now to tell us today's dirty joke and to stammer on the dirty words."
I say, "Beg pardon?" And the Stage Manager explains to me that someone had told Mr. Douglas that the way to establish a rapport with the crew on his show is to tell dirty jokes. Dirty jokes do not come naturally to this man so he'd delegated an assistant to dig some up and, each tape day before he comes down to the set, he memorizes one to tell the camera guys and grips.
Sure enough, Mike Douglas soon appears, expertly dressed and made-up, looking very much like a Big TV Star. He tells the Stage Manager, "Hey, get the guys together. I've got a good one," which is apparently what he says before every taping. Two minutes later, the lighting guys and the grips and the cable-pullers are all massed around him and there, displaying none of the professional ease he will shortly muster on-camera, he tells an utterly sexless dirty joke — the kind of dirty joke that's only a dirty joke because it has the "f" word in it. It's not a bad joke but it would be better if he could utter the "f" word without stuttering on it, which he can't. He adds about six "f's" to the beginning.
The crew laughs, more at his unease and to be polite, than at the joke. Then everyone disperses and Douglas untenses, since he's finished the part of his job he most dreads and now only had to go out and appear before millions of people. That's easy for him by now. In fact, as I watch him from the sidelines, I'm impressed by how totally in command he is of the show, and how devoted he is to making the guests look good. The comedian I write for scores big, both in his stand-up spot and especially after when he's seated next to Mike and Mike is throwing him the set-ups for pre-planned anecdotes. The segment is in no way about Mike Douglas being funny. It's all about my comedian friend.
Later, you could watch that show at home and think, "Boy, that comedian was good." And if you thought about Mike Douglas at all, you'd probably think of him as the dull one in the equation. But there's a reason The Mike Douglas Show was on for — what was it? Twenty-one years? — and that reason was Mike Douglas. The man who could do anything but tell a good dirty joke.