📽 Phil Donahue’s Memories in His Own Words (AARP Article)

[Spring2025]

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Phil Donahue in His Own Words.

Read (and watch) the late talk-show host’s reminiscences in TV’s definitive historical archive.

By Tim Appelo, AARP. Published August 21, 2024.

Legendary talk-show host Phil Donahue, who died Aug. 18 at 88, gave his career capstone interview in 2001 to the Television Academy Foundation, whose immense and ongoing oral history project documenting TV history was inspired by the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. Oscar-winning documentarian James Moll, 61, who launched the Shoah project with Steven Spielberg, chose Donahue as his first interview for the Academy. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Moll tells AARP. “I was nervous to sit down with one of the most brilliant interviewers of all time, but Phil instinctively knew how to calm my nerves. He was brilliant, insightful and humble, as warm and personable off camera as he was on, and his generosity — with his time and his thoughtful answers — was remarkable. What was supposed to be a two-hour interview turned into four and a half. Phil Donahue was a special human being. The world has lost a true pioneer, and he will be missed.”

https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/television/info-2024/phil-donahue-in-his-own-words.html