Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club

99.99999% of the time I adamantly resist the despised designation “the most famous [x] you never heard of”, mostly because young writers and editors seem to assign it to EVERYBODY, and almost always I have most certainly heard of just about everybody they do this to, and, what’s more, have long been fully cognizant of their importance. After all, I have heard of a LOT of people. And yet, until recently, I had never heard of Don McNeill (1907-1996). And McNeill was a very important guy in broadcast history. In fact, he was so important I won’t bury the lede as I often do; I’ll tell you his contribution right up front. Don McNeill is the guy who pioneered the morning show. The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, and to a lesser extent Fox & Friends, and Morning Joe all follow the template established by McNeill, and the fictional The Morning Show depicts it. How he did that, and why he has been forgotten…coming up next.

First, a little on his background. McNeill attended Marquette University, outside of Milwaukee, and got in on the ground floor of radio just after graduating in the mid to late ’20s. Initially he was employed writing and announcing the news. Back then, many stations were owned by newspapers. In succession, he worked at WISN (The Milwaukee Sentinel), WTMJ (The Milwaukee Journal), and WHAS (The Louisville Courier-Journal). By 1932 he had paired with singer Van Fleming as Don and Val, The Two Professors. Their show The Coo Coo College was broadcast nationally by NBC out of San Francisco.

In 1933, McNeill auditioned to take over a morning show originally called The Pepper Pot, which was on the NBC Blue Network, later to become ABC. McNeill renamed it The Breakfast Club, and made it all his own, mixing news and variety, music, jokes, skits, and celebrity interviews. Billing himself as “The King of Corn”, he kibbitzed with the studio audience, read letters and took suggestions from listeners, and even occasionally led the assembled in prayer like a televangelist. Initially broadcast from a suite atop the Hotel Atherton, the show’s original sponsor was Swift, the Chicago-based meat packer. Regulars included Fran Allison (of Kukla, Fran and Ollie) playing “Aunt Fanny”, Bill Thompson (later the voice of Droopy), gagster Sam Cowling, and the comedy country band Captain Stubby and His Buccaneers, along with singers like Anita Bryant and Annette King (better known to posterity as Republican Congresswoman Charlotte Thompson Reid). Ted Mack began his career as a guest host on the show.

There were several attempts to bring the show to television. It was simulcast on both media in 1948, and then later from 1950 to 1951, and 1954 to 1955. But it was never reimagined for the televisual experience as it needed to be in order to truly take hold. That’s where The Today Show made its strides. Occasionally, McNeill would appear as a guest on other programs like The Colgate Comedy Hour or The Ed Sullivan Show. He was a panelist on I’ve Got a Secret many times. And he hosted a short-lived tv game show called Take Two in 1963.

At any rate, The Breakfast Club also earned a place in the history books as being the LONGEST such show to stay on the air — over 35 years. (The record has since been bested, of course). It was still being broadcast as The Don McNeill Show as late as 1968.

Which means that I was 3 years old when McNeill went off the air. He made a couple of appearances on the Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas shows around 1970, and later narrated a Bicentennial Minute, but other than that he was pretty firmly retired. He taught at his alma mater for a couple of years, and served on several boards. And pretty much vanished from history! I had never heard of him until stumbling across mention of his show while researching my upcoming book about radio and television variety.

Other than his formal innovations to the broadcast medium, I can think of another point of visibility, hiding in plain sight. John Hughes named his 1985 comedy The Breakfast Club after a nickname for a real life high school detention he had heard about from a friend. Surely that nickname arose from the radio show.

Youtube’s got numerous clips of both the radio and tv versions of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club, so have at it!