{"id":2742,"date":"2020-05-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=2742"},"modified":"2020-06-05T01:42:17","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T01:42:17","slug":"joyce-davidson-television-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=2742","title":{"rendered":"Joyce Davidson, television personality"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joyce Davidson —a television personality in Canada and the United States – died on 7 May 2020 from Covid-19.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Davidson was a young housewife in Hamilton, Ontario when she entered a beauty contest and won $400 and a trip to New York City. Her contest victory led to her picture appearing in a few magazines. In 1954, the CBC Television's Hamilton affiliate, CHCH-TV opened and Davidson, who had been working in a factory, applied for a job and was hired as a kitchen helper on a cooking show. She then began appearing in television commercials on CHCH and then at CBLT in nearby Toronto.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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In 1956, she was hired to fill a vacancy as a presenter and interviewer on CBC Television's Tabloid, a national current affairs program with a light entertainment format and was also a contributor to CBC's Close-Up and On the Scene.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Davidson caused controversy while the Canadian media were reporting the upcoming visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1959. Davidson was on a trip to New York City when she was interviewed by Dave Garroway on NBC's Today show on 18 June 1959. She said on-camera, "Like most Canadians, I am indifferent to the visit of the Queen."<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Davidson was lambasted in the Canadian press and by many indignant Canadians for her comment. Within a few days, she resigned from CBC's Tabloid series. A subsequent Gallup poll showed that 64% of Canadians disagreed with her, although only 48% of respondents considered themselves significantly interested in the royal visit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Davidson moved to the United States where she did commercials and became a frequent contributor to the Today show as a "Today Girl". She was hired by Westinghouse Broadcasting to be the sidekick of Mike Wallace on a new talk show he was hosting titled PM East\/PM West.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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The five-night-a-week series, which featured Wallace and Davidson in New York and Terrence O'Flaherty hosting a separate segment in San Francisco, lasted from June 1961 to June 1962. Fans of occasional guest Barbra Streisand made and saved audiotapes of some of her appearances. Davidson can be heard talking for only a few seconds on that audio.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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A long segment with Davidson interviewing Boris Karloff survives in the sole video recorded episode, which is available for viewing at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Telecast on television stations owned by Westinghouse and in a few other cities on 12 February 1962, the episode does not include Streisand. Westinghouse designed PM East\/PM West to compete with The Tonight Show, which was then hosted by Jack Paar, but Paar and his network, NBC, attracted many more viewers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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In 1964, Davidson began working as co-producer of a television talk show titled Hot Line that was broadcast locally in New York. The producer, David Susskind, also appeared on-camera, but Davidson did not. The host was Gore Vidal, and Dorothy Kilgallen appeared on most episodes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Hot Line was a different show from Susskind's nationally known Open End talk show. Hot Line was the first television show to use the recently invented ten-second broadcast delay to amplify viewer phone calls on the air. Davidson screened the viewer phone calls. She also made the first approach to some of the people who appeared as guests on Hot Line, including Malcolm X, whom she invited for Hot Line immediately after he gave a speech at The Town Hall.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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The Hot Line telecast of 2 February 1965 turned out to be Malcolm's final television talk appearance during his lifetime, although he and his wife can be heard talking twelve days later on locally telecast newscast reports of the bombing of their home, which was located in New York's borough of Queens.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Late on 6 June 1971, an American talk show titled Joyce and Barbara: For Adults Only made its debut in syndication. The program fared poorly and disappeared several weeks later despite three advantages. Davidson's husband's nationally successful talk show served as a lead-in for it, her co-host was Barbara Howar and Bette Davis was the guest on the premiere.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Davidson hosted The Joyce Davidson Show, a Canadian weekday afternoon talk show produced by CFTO-TV for the CTV Television Network during the 1977–78 season. The show's theme song was "Breezin'" by George Benson.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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In 1980, she returned to CBC to host Authors, a series of long-form interviews with Canadian writers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Though born in Saskatoon, Davidson grew up in Hamilton, Ontario where she married Doug Davidson, a metal-lathe operator and amateur hockey and lacrosse player, when she was 17. The couple had two daughters by the time Davidson was 20. She divorced in the late-1950s. Davidson later said of the marriage “We were too young when we got married, and when we grew up we had nothing to talk about.” In 1966, she married David Susskind in Arlington, Virginia less than two years after they began working together on Hot Line. Davidson had a third daughter with Susskind. They divorced in 1986 after a long separation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Davidson died in Toronto on May 7, 2020 from complications of Covid-19. She had been residing in Meighen Manor, a long-term care facility where at least 38 residents had died from the pandemic by the time of her death.<\/p>\r\n<\/p>

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Joyce Davidson —a television personality in Canada and the United States – died on 7 May 2020 from Covid-19.   Davidson was a young housewife in Hamilton, Ontario when she entered a beauty contest and won $400 and a trip to New York City. Her contest victory led to her picture appearing in a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[47,15],"tags":[4113,4112,741,1144],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/wp-content\/uploads\/imageholder\/uploads\/Joyce_Davidson.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3945,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=3945","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":0},"title":"Jay Benedict, actor","date":"April 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Jay Benedict, an American actor who played Captain\/Major John Kieffer in the British detective drama Foyle's War, in the episodes \"Invasion\" and \"All Clear\" \u2013 died of Covid-19 on April 4, 2020. Benedict was born in Burbank, California. He lived and worked in Europe from the 1960s onwards. His theatrical\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Noteworthy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6680,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=6680","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":1},"title":"Joyce Brown, Nurse","date":"April 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Joyce Brown \u2013 a Registered Nurse and Nurse Manager at LIJ Forest Hills, Forest Hills, New York \u2013 passed away due to Covid-19. It was reported on April 16. 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