Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Talk show host famous for the Jerry Springer Show, a controversial daytime TV phenomenon.
On the island
Eight records
I played the character Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago here in the West End.
I vividly remember it was the third week in January 1964. I'm sitting in my fraternity house studying for finals. Joel Picker, a fraternity brother of mine, came knocking on the door … And he says, you've got to listen to this.
This was back in the 1950s. We had just come to America. There was a radio in my kitchen, and I would sit there and listen. And what I remember, The Tennessee Walls, that was one of the first songs that, wow, and I remember my parents loved it, and we all would gather around the radio and listen to the song.
Blowing in the wind became the anthem of the sixties. … So that was the part of the 60s that was still pure. All things were possible.
This was the incredible year of nineteen sixty eight. In American politics it was unbelievable. … Dion wrote this song, and it kind of became such a powerful song at the time because it really said what we all felt. It was like they keep killing our heroes.
Here Comes the Sun has particular relevance to me because. It is the song that my wife marched down the aisle to in my wedding, in our wedding, and it is also the song that our daughter marched down the aisle to two and a half years ago.
Wind Beneath My WingsFavourite
This, when Katie, our daughter, became 13, she became Bat Mitzvah … we had a big party for her … And the background music was Wind Beneath My Wings. And it was just this beautiful tape. And it's the last video we had at my parents. And it's become this family tradition.
George R. Poulton and Ken Darby
My generation in America was Elvis Presley. So Elvis was the first superstar in terms of rock and roll. Every boy wanted to be Elvis. So when I hear Love Me Tender, it's my adolescence, my youth.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:33Does it sit comfortably with you that your life has parted into these two separate strands [politics and show business], and are you surprised at your own journey?
Well, I'm surprised at success because I believe it is luck. As a kid I wasn't thinking, gee, one day I'm going to be in show business. It never even dawned on me. Virtually every job I've ever had has been handed to me. Someone just said, Hey, we'd like you to do this. I mean, all these jobs I've had. I never sat down and said, gee, I would like to do that. It just happens.
Presenter asks
2:04What would the young idealistic guy working for Bobby Kennedy think if he was looking at this man now in this career?
You know, how lucky can one person get? But if I'm proud of e anything, it's that I never gave up my liberalism. Every job I've had, I've always been kind of on the side of the disenfranchised, whether it was the civil rights movement, whether it was my politics, whether it was as a talk show host, it's always the little guy versus the establishment. I still hang around with the same people I always hung around with.
Presenter asks
6:37Is an entertainment show the right place for neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, and is that really entertainment?
The keepsakes
The book
Just a photo album of all the pictures of my family's life, my friends' ... you know, just that would be the thing.
Well, I agree that's not entertainment, although there's a part of me that the only way we beat down these. What consider evil ideas is by sunlight. It's when you keep it quiet that it grows. But I was hired to host a show. I have nothing to do with who gets on the show, what the subjects are. I'm not allowed to know what the show is about. When I show up, I'm given a card, and on the card that I hold are the names of the guests, but that's all. I never know what their stories are. I never know anything about them. And the idea is, then my reaction will be authentic.
Presenter asks
11:35How has being a child of parents who escaped Nazi Germany shaped the person that you are?
It's um the fundamental part of my existence. It shapes my philosophy, it's made me a liberal, it's taught me, as we pass on to our daughter, that you never judge someone based on what they are, just on what they do.
Presenter asks
18:31What kind of a figure was Bobby Kennedy?
Yeah, he was my in my lifetime my political hero. I mean, I thought he was totally authentic. He wasn't very articulate, frankly. You know, John Kennedy could intellectualize how we ought to have civil rights or how poverty in the inner city is unacceptable. With Bobby, he would just walk into the neighborhood and say, this is wrong, and he would stutter and all that. But you kind of knew he really believed it. And that, to me, politics is authenticity. If you're real, people get it.
Presenter asks
21:39How did you react when you resigned from the Cincinnati City Council after it was revealed you had visited a prostitute?
I held a press conference one day and said I'm resigning from council and everyone says why what are you resigning for? And I said that several years ago I had visited a prostitute, and I was getting these these phone calls. So I didn't want to live my life being blackmailed. … So I told the public I'm an out. So I first resigned, and then I held a press conference saying why I resigned. … I was young, I was naive, it was wrong what I did. I probably overreacted, you know.
“Every job I've had, I've always been kind of on the side of the disenfranchised, whether it was the civil rights movement, whether it was my politics, whether it was as a talk show host, it's always the little guy versus the establishment.”
“Maybe when I 80 I'll give it up, but you never know when you have to get away.”
“In one generation, my family went from annihilation and a holocaust to this ridiculously privileged life I live today because of my silly television show. So I know America can work.”