The New York Times - USA (2020-07-26)

THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIESSUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 0 N 25

Regis Philbin, the talk- and game-
show host who regaled America over
morning coffee with Kathie Lee Gifford
and Kelly Ripa for decades, and who
made television history in 1999 by intro-
ducing the runaway hit “Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire,” died on Friday night.
He was 88.
His death was announced by his fam-
ily in a statement. The statement did not
say where he died or specify the cause.
In a world of annoyances, Mr. Philbin
was the indignant Everyman, under
siege from all sides — by the damned
computers, the horrible traffic, the in-
considerate people who were always
late. There was no soap in the men’s
room. Hailing a cab was hopeless. Losing
a wallet in a rental car? Fuhgeddabou-
dit! Even his own family was down on
him for buying a chain saw!
And was it possible, he wondered, to
ask ever so softly in a crowded pharmacy
where to find the Fleet enemas without
the clerk practically shouting: “Whad-
daya want, buddy? A Fleet enema?”
“Aggravation is an art form in his
hands,” wrote Bill Zehme, the co-author
of two Philbin memoirs. “Annoyance
stokes him, sends him forth, gives him
purpose. Ruffled, he becomes electric,
full of play and possibility. There is mag-
nificence in his every irritation.”
From faceless days as a studio stage-
hand when television was barely a dec-
ade old, to years of struggle as a news
writer, TV actor and sidekick to Joey
Bishop, Mr. Philbin, with patience, deter-
mination and folksy, spontaneous wit,
climbed to pre-eminence relatively late
in life on talk and game shows.
Regis, as he was universally known,
was a television personality for nearly
six decades and an ABC superstar since
1988, when his New York talk show went
national. But he also wrote five books,
appeared in movies, made records as a
singer, gave concerts and was a one-man
industry of spinoffs, from shirts and ties
to medical advice and computer games.
By almost any measure — ubiquity,
longevity, versatility, popularity — he
succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of
a stickball-playing kid from the Bronx.
Near the end of his career, Forbes put his
net worth at $150 million, and Guinness
World Records said he was the most-
watched person in television history,
with more than 17,000 hours of airtime —
equivalent to two full years, night and
day. (The previous holder of that record,
Hugh Downs, died this month.)

His forte was unscripted talk. Shun-
ning writers and rehearsals, relying on
trivia and his own off-the-cuff comments
in a 15-minute “host chat” and then on
good chemistry with co-hosts and
guests, he ad-libbed for 28 years on “The
Morning Show” (1983-88), “Live! With
Regis and Kathie Lee” (1988-2000),
“Live! With Regis” (2000-1) and “Live!
With Regis and Kelly” (2001-11).
Unlike most late-show monologues,
Mr. Philbin’s were personal: self-mock-
ing accounts of life’s woes and misadven-
tures. The rest of the show might be any-
thing: Ms. Gifford talking about her
pregnancies or her dogs, Chardonnay
and Chablis; Regis dancing with Chip-
pendale hunks, unable to get his pants off
over his shoes, hopping about in his un-
derwear.
Mr. Philbin and Ms. Gifford often ex-
changed barbed put-downs — he chided
her for being late; she called him a jerk —
but they rarely drew blood, even when
the topics were the infidelities of her hus-
band, the sportscaster Frank Gifford, or
allegations that child labor was being ex-
ploited in Honduras to make the Kathie
Lee clothing line for Walmart. (She de-
nied knowledge of sweatshop conditions
and campaigned to protect children from
them.)
Along with homemaking advice, cook-
ing demonstrations and celebrity inter-
views, Mr. Philbin had a predilection for
sports guests. A Notre Dame alumnus,
he talked football, boxing and basketball
like the teammate he had never been. He
worked out in a gym regularly, but he
also shamelessly exaggerated his own
prowess. He once put on wrestling togs
and skull-and-crossbones tattoos for a
WrestleMania skit.
“Our show is Reege living out his jock
dreams by racing across Columbus Ave-
nue in traffic to catch passes from Joe
Namath and Terry Bradshaw,” Ms. Gif-
ford wrote in a memoir. “It’s Reege muss-

ing up wrestling manager Freddie

Blassie’s hair and getting a chair tossed

at him; shadowboxing with Razor Rud-

dock; weight lifting with Joe Piscopo;

jousting with American Gladiators Lace

and Gemini.”

After Ms. Gifford’s departure and an

interregnum with no regular co-host, Ms.

Ripa joined the show in 2001 and was

judged a refreshing change: sprightly, ir-

reverent, clever at playing the chatter-

box sidekick to the irascible Mr. Philbin.

He often made a joke of looking bored

while she rattled on.

In one episode, the “American Idol”

star Clay Aiken playfully put a hand over

her mouth to shut her up.

“That’s a no-no,” she snapped, com-

plaining that she had no idea where his

hand had been.

While still doing his morning show, Mr.

Philbin in 1999 became host of the origi-

nal American version of “Who Wants to

Be a Millionaire.” Modeled after a highly

successful British quiz show, it soared to

popularity overnight as the highest-

rated prime-time game show in televi-

sion history. At a time when game shows

were often seen as disreputable ghosts of

the past, an astonishing 30 million view-

ers tuned in three nights in a week.

The show, whose concept was so em-

phatic that its creators put no question

mark in the title, single-handedly lifted

ABC to first place from third among the

networks; made Mr. Philbin ABC’s big-

gest star; raised the stock value of the

network’s parent company, Disney; and

revolutionized ideas about what consti-

tuted a prime-time hit.

A tournament-style show in which

contestants answered consecutive mul-

tiple-choice questions for cash sums ris-

ing to $1 million, “Who Wants to Be a Mil-

lionaire” was addictive. It was designed

around relentlessly rising tension, with

throbbing music, flashing strobe lights, a

loudly ticking clock and Mr. Philbin, the

inquisitor, posing questions on a scale of

silly to impossible and then demanding,

“Is that your final answer?”

“To sit in the audience, with the lights

underneath the Plexiglas floor swiveling

in all directions and a huge camera boom

sweeping overhead, is to feel as if one

were inside a giant pinball machine,”

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New

Yorker in 2000.

“The music is driving me crazy!” Mr.

Philbin screamed during one show. He

winced when he had to read some of the

easier multiple-choice answers. (What

makes shirt collars stiff? Starch, glu-

cose, Viagra... )

As ratings skyrocketed, other net-

works scrambled to develop comparable

game shows — Fox called its version

“Greed” — and “Who Wants to Be a Mil-

lionaire” was credited with reviving the

game show genre and with paving the

way for reality shows as a cornerstone of

television programming. A surge of un-

scripted, competitive reality shows, in-

cluding “Survivor,” “American Idol” and

“Big Brother,” followed in its wake.

Mr. Philbin hosted “Millionaire” from

1999 to 2002, sometimes five nights a

week, as its popularity rose, and, per-

haps inevitably, faded. Critics said over-

exposure led the public to tire of it. Mer-

edith Vieira replaced him on a retooled

syndicated daytime version of the show

in 2002 and remained its host until 2013.

The show has had several hosts since

then; it was recently revived for a limited

run on ABC with Jimmy Kimmel as host

and features celebrity contestants.

In 2004, Mr. Philbin returned for 12

episodes of “Who Wants to Be a Super

Millionaire,” offering prizes up to $10 mil-

lion, and in 2009, on the 10th anniversary

of the first broadcast, he hosted an 11-

night prime-time reincarnation.

Regis Francis Xavier Philbin was born

in Manhattan on Aug. 25, 1931, to Francis

and Filomena Boscia Philbin. His father,

a personnel director, settled the family in

the Bronx. Regis, named for a Roman

Catholic high school in Manhattan that

his father had attended, was long be-

lieved to be an only child, but he revealed

in 2007 that a brother 20 years younger

had died.

“I never talked about him because he

was a very private guy,” Mr. Philbin said

in 2007 on “Live! With Regis and Kelly.”

“I’ve respected that all these years.”

Regis, a skinny boy who took up

weight lifting, graduated from Cardinal

Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1949

and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociol-

ogy at the University of Notre Dame in

Indiana in 1953. After two years in the

Navy, he began his career as a stagehand

at KCOP-TV in Los Angeles. He soon be-

came a news writer.

In 1957, he married Catherine Faylan.

They had two children, Amy and Danny,

and were divorced in 1968. In 1970, he

married Joy Senese, who was Joey Bish-

op’s assistant. The couple had two chil-

dren, Joanna and Jennifer, known as J.J.

Mr. Philbin is survived by his wife, his

daughters and four grandchildren.

Danny Philbin, who worked for the De-

fense Department, died in 2014.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Philbin was a

sportscaster and news anchor in San

Diego, and in the 1964-65 season he

hosted his first talk program, “The Regis

Philbin Show,” on Saturday nights at

KOGO-TV. It was syndicated nationally

for 13 weeks and later aired on KTTV in

Los Angeles.

From 1967 to 1969, he was the an-

nouncer and sidekick on “The Joey

Bishop Show,” one of ABC's many at-

tempts to challenge the ratings domi-

nance of Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight

Show” on NBC. In the early ’70s he

hosted “Regis Philbin’s Saturday Night

in St. Louis” on KMOX, a CBS affiliate

there. From 1975 to 1981 he co-hosted

“A.M. Los Angeles,” a top-rated show on

KABC, first with Sarah Purcell and then

with Cyndy Garvey.

In 1983, Mr. Philbin teamed with Ms.

Garvey in New York on WABC’s “The

Morning Show.” Two years later, Kathie

Lee Johnson — she became Gifford after

a divorce and remarriage — replaced

Ms. Garvey as his co-host. In 1988, the

show went into national syndication and

became “Live! With Regis and Kathie

Lee.”

From 1982 to 1987, he also hosted

“Regis Philbin’s Lifestyles,” a magazine

show on Lifetime that addressed health,

diets, exercise and beauty. Throughout

the ’80s and ’90s he was a professional

whirlwind, with appearances on sitcoms,

talk and game shows, dramas, comedies,

variety shows, Miss America pageants

and specials for Thanksgiving, Christ-

mas and New Year’s Eve. He also ap-

peared in a number of films, usually as

himself.

Mr. Philbin, who lived in Manhattan

near the ABC studios and in Greenwich,

Conn., was showered with awards, in-

cluding Daytime Emmys for “Live! With

Regis” and “Who Wants to Be a Million-

aire” in 2001, for lifetime achievement in

2008 and for “Live! With Regis and

Kelly” in 2011. He was inducted into the

Television Hall of Fame in 2006.

Among those paying tribute to Mr.

Philbin on social media was President

Trump. In a post on Twitter, Mr. Trump

called Mr. Philbin “one of the greats in

the history of television” and added, “He

kept telling me to run for president.”

He co-wrote “Cooking With Regis and

Kathie Lee” (1993) and “Entertaining

With Regis and Kathie Lee” (1994) and

wrote three memoirs: “I’m Only One

Man!” (1995) and “Who Wants to Be

Me?” (2000), both with Mr. Zehme, and

“How I Got This Way” (2011).

In his last book, he recalled going on

the “Late Show With David Letterman”

after announcing his departure from

daytime television. The two old friends

talked airily of retiring together and rid-

ing off into the sunset. Paul Shaffer’s

band struck up a galloping cowboy

rhythm, complete with harmonica.

“So you and I are on the horses,” Mr.

Letterman said. “We’re slumped in the

saddles, and we ride down Broadway.

And then we get a kid to come out on

Broadway. And we have him saying,

‘Shane! Come back, Shane! Shane, come

back!’ And then we ride right out the

door and right down to Times Square.”

“Right out the door,” Mr. Philbin said.

“I love it. Will we be singing ‘Memories

... ’?”

“No. We’re not singing ‘Memories’!”

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Christina Morales contributed reporting.

ABC/STEVE FENN

Regis Philbin, TV’s Beloved Indignant Everyman, Dies at 88

RICHARD DREW/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Regis Philbin, the original host of the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,”

kept America in stitches weekday mornings for over two decades with his self-mock-

ing accounts of life’s woes and misadventures as the co-host of “Live! With Regis

and Kathie Lee,” above, from 1988 to 2000, when Ms. Gifford departed. He gained a

new co-host in 2001 in Kelly Ripa, left, and kept up his shtick until he retired in 2011.

CHAD BATKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Philbin’s wife, Joy, often filled in as a co-host on “Live!,” and joined

him for ABC’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” broadcast in 2005, above.

PETER FOLEY/EPA

Climbing to pre-eminence

relatively late in life on

talk and game shows.