JOHN AND YOKO ON MIKE DOUGLAS
By Bonnie Kent

(Instant Karma!, issue #8 in 1983 ran a special feature on The Mike Douglas Show. One of our subscribers had worked on The John Davidson Show and had come across some old production material from its predecessor. We ran one sheet of the production sheets in that issue - two others were not printable due to a fading problem. But, we'll let BONNIE KENT tell her story as it was told in that old issue of IK! 13 years ago.)

As many of you know, John and Yoko were co-hosts on "The Mike Douglas Show" for a week in 1972. Also as many of you know, "The Mike Douglas Show" later became "The John Davidson Show." As most of you don't know, though,I was an assistant for "The John Davidson Show" and my main duty was to care for and build up their library. This library consisted of files on every well-known person you could think of. Within these files were newspaper and magazine articles and clippings, some first-hand research, and certain specific material (such as booking forms, scripts, research notes, etc.) of anyone who had been on the show.

Within this library were not only the files from the two years "The John Davidson Show" was in existence, but also the files from the many years that the same company made "The Mike Douglas Show." Among the files: A John and Yoko file.

In 1982, the Davidson show was cancelled. The production company was not going to do another talk show in its place, so there was no need to save the files. Many were being destroyed. After being around them for so long and contributing to many of them, I thought of how much care and material went into those files, so, when the show closed its doors in April of 1982, I took most of the John and Yoko file home with me.

Among the items were booking forms, which all people who come on the show have in their file. There were also research notes, including information about John and Yoko and others who would be appearing with them. Also, a script of questions, but no answers. The script was used for the producers and writers, as well as for Mike Douglas.

There were two very obvious things I noticed about the scripts. One is that they were typed up very quickly with many spelling and typing errors. Two is that anything political was edited out. It was fine to talk about certain aspects of music, but once things became too political, the producer seemed to become nervous. For this reason, while the writers wrote in a few political questions for Mike to ask John, whoever had the final say over the script put big red scratches through that section.

There were also some notes on which songs should be sung on the show. Someone originally wanted John to sing the song "Gimme Some Truth", but when the line, "Some short-haired yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dicky" was discovered, a question mark was placed after the song notes, later replaced by a "NO!"

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