The Phil Donahue Show

As part of the media blitz to promote the publication of her book, Elizabeth Takes Off, Elizabeth made an appearance on the long-running daytime talk show, The Phil Donahue Show.

Although Donahue typically taped before a live studio audience in New York, his conversation with Elizabeth took place fireside in Los Angeles. Resplendent in a red suit, she also wore the Night of the Iguana brooch and the Krupp diamond, both treasured gifts from Richard Burton.

The nature of the book—its explorations of self esteem and connection to Elizabeth’s weight gain and subsequent weight loss—seemed an invitation for interviewers to ask extremely personal and invasive questions, and Donahue was no exception. She handles them, however, with characteristic grace and equanimity.

“I hope it does help somebody. That’s why I wrote the book. Because if I can do it, anybody can do it,” she explains. She reveals that her publisher tried to dissuade her from featuring certain unflattering photographs of herself in the book, but she insisted that they be included.

The Phil Donahue Show launched as a local talk show in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967, and entered syndication in 1970. It ran for nearly 7,000 episodes before Donahue called it quits in 1996. TV Guide would go on to rank Donahue #29 on its “50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time” list, and the queen of daytime herself, Oprah Winfrey, famously said that “If there had been no Phil Donahue show, there would be no Oprah Winfrey Show”.