Siegel once asked Marlo Thomas if people thought she was "bitchy." She was understandably not very amused. (Image by Ronni Bennett.)
Back before American media was engulfed in its faux-reality mania, in which emotionally damaged recruits are encouraged to act out every last pathology to pump up the ratings, TV host Stanley Siegel and his questionable taste and utter neuroses were considered controversial. During the 1970s, his raucous live morning show on the local ABC affiliate made his name as famous in New York as any politician, athlete or Broadway star.
Siegel invited his therapist to psychoanalyze him each week on the air, he allowed a wasted Truman Capote to sit down as a guest when he was clearly in no condition to do so and he angered a good number of politicos and entertainers with his brash questions. He was the anti-Brokaw, and it worked wonderfully well for a while.
In the 1977 New York magazine article, “Give Us a Kiss, Stanley,” which was written by the journalist and playwright Jonathan Reynolds, Siegel was analyzed a little bit more. These days the talking head appears to be attempting to get some sort of travel show off the ground, but Reynolds’ piece captures Siegel at the height of his entertaining narcissism. An excerpt:
“Every day, Siegel wallows guiltlessly in his own persona, exulting in the dust, high jinx and cobwebs he reveals. He is funny, frightened, confused, weepy, sexual, evangelistic, and overbearing right in front of everybody’s eyes. In terms of emotional exhibitionism, Stanley Siegel makes Jack Paar look like Thomas Pynchon.
In the nearly two years he has been on WABC-TV at 9am, he has sextupled the ratings of his dreary predecessors, increased WABC’s rate card from $35 to $100 for every 30-second spot sold, knocked the venerable Not for Women Only and mega-venerable Concentration out of their time slots, and gained a host of admirers from Robert Evans to Eleanor Holmes Norton.
People tune in to the Stanley Siegel Show to see how Stanley feels–for if there is one predictable element in the program, it is that it will always be clear just how Stanley feels.”