About
Mel came on the the daytime talk show The Mike Douglas Show twice, first on December 28, 1967, and next on January 11, 1968. It's unclear what Mel was doing on the show. Perhaps he was promoting his new film The Producers, which came out in 1968.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the show:
A former big band singer, Douglas moved to television in the 1950s. The Mike Douglas Show started December 11,1961 in Cleveland as a local show on Westinghouse's KYW-TV (now WKYC-TV), it proved popular and, in July 1963, was syndicated by Westinghouse to all five of its owned-and-operated stations. By 1967 the show was available in 171 markets and seen by an audience of six million viewers a day.
The program featured light banter with guests and musical performances. Each week would have a different co-host who would appear every day with Douglas. The program was initially aired "live" on KYW-TV in its city of origination, but after off-color on-air remarks by Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1965 (she called Morey Amsterdam a "son of a bitch"), the producers taped all shows in advance of broadcast. This allowed for the editing-out of any objectionable material. The program then aired in Philadelphia on a one-day tape-delay basis. Live broadcasts (with a seven-second delay) were attempted in Philadelphia only on a few special occasions thereafter, such as when the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup.
In August 1965, the show moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia to a small basement studio located in the KYW-TV building at 1619 Walnut Street (see photos on right). This studio held 140 seats. In July 1972, the show moved to a new studio in the newly constructed KYW-TV studios at 5th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. That studio ("Studio A") was the first and only studio especially constructed for the program. While the overall new studio was larger, it accommodated only 120 seats. The original musical director in Philadelphia was Ellie Frankel. In 1967, Joe Harnell, an accomplished musician, composer, and band leader took the position of musical director. Harnell continued as musical director through 1973. Joe Harnell was followed by musical director Frank Hunter and the show ended with musical director Joe Massimino. During much of its time on the air, it remained strong in ratings, consistently finishing among the most popular daytime television shows nearly every season. Douglas took the success lightly. He made a surprise visit to the set of Match Game in 1976, a competing show which managed to score higher ratings than Douglas' program during the mid-1970s, in order to congratulate host Gene Rayburn on making the game show the #1 daytime TV show.
The show's run spanned 21 years and more than 6,000 episodes. In 1978, production of the show moved to Los Angeles, where it remained until the end of the show's run in 1982.
If you have any information to contribute about this program, or maybe photos or videos, please contact me.