TV legend Regis Philbin, a household name during his ever-present, six-decade career on the small screen, died Friday of natural causes. He was 88.
Philbin, embraced by millions for a not-overly-polished familiarity and brisk speaking style that seemed more neighborhood than Hollywood, was a dominant TV force in daytime for more than two decades, co-hosting “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee” and “Live With Regis and Kelly.” He briefly became the king of prime time, too, as host of game-show phenomenon “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.”
Philbin’s family confirmed the news to USA TODAY in a statement sent Saturday by his representative, Lewis Kay.
“We are deeply saddened to share that our beloved Regis Philbin passed away last night of natural causes, one month shy of his 89th birthday,” his family wrote. USA TODAY
It all began with Bing Crosby during the Depression of the thirties. I must have been six or seven years old at the time. My family lived on the bottom floor of a two-story house on Cruger Avenue in the Bronx, and every night at 9:30, I sat by my little radio in our kitchen and listened to a half hour of Bing’s records regularly spilling out over WNEW. His voice was so clear, so pure and so warm that after awhile I thought of him as my good friend. Even though he was out in faraway, glamorous Hollywood and I was in the humble old Bronx, in my mind we truly were friends and would always spend that special half hour together, just the two of us.
I listened to those songs of the Depression era and, even as a kid, I understood
that the songwriters were trying to give hope to a struggling and downtrodden public. I grew to love those lyrics and what they said to me. I swear to you that those same songs have stayed with me for the rest of my life, and during various dark periods when I hit those inevitable bumps along the way, I would actually sing them to myself. Like “When skies are cloudy and gray, they’re only gray for a day. So wrap your troubles in dreams, and dream your troubles away.”
Woody Guthrie – This Land
The Home Front – V-E Day (edited clip)
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Canada Lee — 4/2/1944 — Slum Corrals
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Gene Klavan’s “Ballad Of The Long Island Railroad was first published here in 2013.
The watercolor (above) by Tom Saunders is based on the photo (below) published in Arnie Passman’s book, “The Deejays,”* But, the woman in the painting is not the woman in the photo. Explanation, below.
As WNEW’s first Station Manager, Bernice Judis often dropped in on shows at any time of the day or night. In the photo above, she is seen during an after-midnight visit to “The Milkman’s Matinee” when it was hosted by Art Ford. (1942-1954) In an e-mail to long-time friend, and ‘NEW alum, ABC’s Bill Diehl, Saunders explained: “I read that Bernice Judis was the manager who fired Art Ford for playing too much ‘jazz and international’ music, so I purposely eliminated her and put in a blond groupie instead.” Saunders identified correctly the cause of Ford’s firing, but not his executioner. Judis retired from WNEW in 1954 after 20 years with the station, and about four years before Ford got word while in Europe in April, 1958, that his services were no longer desired.
