Imagine; John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, co-hosting “The Mike Douglas Show.” In February 1972, the whole world was watching when rock music’s most controversial counterculture couple shared the couch for a week with Douglas, the former big band singer and then king of daytime TV.
What the world saw: Lennon and his self-proclaimed hero, Chuck Berry, sharing a chef’s apron while helping prepare macrobiotic eggrolls; comedian Louie Nye joining Yoko in a series of random telephone “Love Calls”; Douglas taking exception to former Chicago 7 defendant Jerry Rubin’s rants against Richard Nixon.
Baby Boomers who rushed home from school to catch these programs will especially want to make room in the time capsule for “The Mike Douglas Show With John Lennon and Yoko Ono,” a five-volume box set available on the Rhino Home Video label.
Based in Philadelphia, “The Mike Douglas Show” was “Middle America.” How did the former Beatle, media provocateur and songwriter of such anthems as “Power to the People” come to share the stage with the singer of “The Men In My Little Girl’s Life”?
John and Yoko’s appearance, said Mike Douglas in a recent phone interview, was a scheduling coup and “wonderful for the show.” But the couple’s outspoken views and controversial lifestyle did give him pause. “It was a trying week, it was not easy,” he said. “There was a long distance from where John was and I was in terms of our thinking. I was always concerned about alienating the audience. That’s why (as host) I was apolitical.”
The show that week was anything but. The guest list included comedian George Carlin, activist Ralph Nader and Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale. “People seem to forget,” Douglas said, that the show often featured controversial guests, such as Malcolm X and Jimmy Hoffa.
Yoko staged such performance art stunts as “Mend Piece,” in which a tea cup shattered on Monday was over the course of five days glued back together.
“Yoko was a little strange, but the whole week was strange,” Douglas said. “It was truly a happening.”
It being a variety show, frequent guest Louie Nye, a veteran of Sid Ceasar’s classic TV series, “Your Show of Shows,” was invited by Douglas to add, well, variety. In a phone interview, Nye echoed the words of his son, who asked him, “Dad, what the hell were you doing on that show?”
“John and Yoko were very nice to me,” he said. “They had me sign some kind of peace petition. I believed in peace, so I signed it.”
The week was a disappointment for some. “I remember being surprised that John and Yoko were going to be on that show of all shows, said Terri Hemmert, WXRT midday air personality and the designated host of the station’s annual “Rampant Beatlemania” broadcast. “(Douglas) was considered the lamest of the lame, `Mr. Polyester.’ The guests were not exactly my politial heroes. It was the cliched, cartoonish ’60s radical stuff. I remember thinking, `All-right, already.’ I wanted to hear some Beatles stories.”
There is an unsettling postscript. In December 1980 Douglas was taping a series of shows in Hawaii and invited Lennon to appear. “He said he would have loved to come,” Douglas recalled, “but that he was tied up with his new album. Had he come to Hawaii, he would not have been in New York (on the day that he was shot by Mark David Chapman). It preys on my mind, I must tell you.”
“The Mike Douglas Show With John Lennon and Yoko Ono” is available for rental and retails for $99.95. To order directly, call 800-432-0020.
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“The Mike Douglas Show With John Lennon and Yoko Ono”
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