DeCaro - The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes from More Than 145 Stars of Stage and Screen

W HEN MIKE DOUGLAS, whod had a big band hit with Ole Buttermilk Sky in 1946, and Merv Griffin, who scored a million seller with the 1950 novelty song Ive Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts, became talk show hosts, they made sure their programs had cooking segments. Theyor at least their producersknew who their audience was: housewives. These women werent singing about buttermilk and coconuts, they were cooking with them in kitchens across America, and every day their eyes were glued to their sets. In fact, the marquee outside the Douglas studio for a while read YOUR WIFE SPENT THE AFTERNOON WITH MIKE DOUGLAS.

The man born Michael Delaney Dowd Jr. but rechristened Mike Douglas by bandleader Kay Kyser often said that no matter how much excitement or controversy guests on his syndicated talk show might stir up, the celebrity cooking segments generated the most mail (and this was a man who spent a week chatting and singing with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the Vietnam War, mind you!). He estimated, in 1969s The Mike Douglas Cookbook, that as many as 70,000 fans wrote in for recipes each week.

Cooking shows today make stars of chefs. Talk shows made chefs of stars. Watching a celebrity don an apron did something that no other part of a talk show could do: it humanized celebrities. Many of these singers, comedians, and actors were extraordinarily talented performers. But in the kitchen, they were just like us.

A New Jersey housewife would never be able to sing Splish Splash as engagingly as Bobby Darin did on a 1970 installment of Mike Douglas, but at home on her range she could recreate the stir-fry noodles with mushrooms, onions, and tamari sauce that he made that day; and the noodles would turn out just as yummy as his, and maybe even better. At dinner, shed be the one making the splash.

Cooking segments also made for good comedy. Frequent talk show guest Hermione Gingold, an actress and raconteuse extraordinaire who appeared in such films as Gigi, Bell, Book and Candle, and A Little Night Music, recounts, in her hilarious 1988 memoir How to Grow Old Disgracefully, her experience making her signature chicken dish on The Merv Griffin Show. Before curtain time, she put the recipe down the front of her dress for safekeeping. When the moment came to cook, she couldnt find the paper and she began rooting around in her cleavage on national television. Ever the helpful host, Merv asked if she needed help. No, the bawdy Brit barked, I know my way round.

Dinah Shore, a singer, actress, and avid golfer who most famously dated a much younger Burt Reynolds in the 1970s, knew her way round, too. A kitchen, that is. Shores stints hosting the talk shows Dinah!, Dinahs Place, and Dinah and Friends led to a second career as a cookbook author. Her book Someones in the Kitchen with Dinah is worth checking out. During a show, one cooking segment went particularly awry, though. Shores guest was the legendarily confrontational comedian Andy Kaufman, appearing in the guise of his lounge-lizard character Tony Clifton. He sang On the Street Where You Live, then was belligerent with Dinah and Charles Nelson Reilly. Tony was slated to cook, but insisted on singing instead. As the story goes, he dumped a pan of raw eggs over Shores head, and she was so offended she demanded the footage be destroyed. The spot never aired.

All of these years later, you can decide if the recipes of the legendary talk show hosts that follow deserve air time.

K NOWN AS AN EMOTIONAL AND URBANE TV presence, Jack Paar is considered one of the greatest talk show hosts of all time. A former actor (he played Marilyn Monroes boyfriend in one film) and comic, Paar filled the very large shoes of Steve Allen as the host of The Tonight Show and was as comfortable talking with Richard Nixon as he was gossiping with Elsa Maxwell. He saw magic in the strange pairings of guests on his show. Thus, on one installment, Muhammad Ali recited poetry while Liberace played piano accompaniment. As for his special recognition, Paar was as famous for quitting The Tonight Show as he was for hosting it. When the network censors nixed a joke about a water closet in 1960, he walked off the show and didnt come back for three weeks. During that time, no doubt, he had plenty of time to make his favorite soup.

Serves 4

1 quart water

1 teaspoon allspice

3 bay leaves

1 onion, diced

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 pound ground beef

cup cracker crumbs

1 egg, slightly beaten

2 tablespoons milk

1 small onion, minced

teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons flour

4 tablespoons vinegar

cup cream

Combine water, allspice, bay leaves, onion, and salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer until the flavor of the spices releases. In a large bowl, combine ground beef, cracker crumbs, egg, milk, minced onion, and salt. Mix well and form into meatballs about the size of walnuts. Drop into boiling spiced water. Cover pan and boil for 30 minutes. Combine flour and vinegar to form a paste. Add a little water to thin if necessary. Drizzle into soup slowly, stirring until mixture is thick. Add cream. Remove meatballs. Strain liquid. Serve over rice or riced potatoes; that is, potatoes put through a potato ricer.

A N AFFABLY SQUARE FAMILY MAN who was married to the same woman for more than sixty years, Mike Douglas launched his talk show in Cleveland in 1961, moved it to philadelphia four years later, and finally to Los Angeles where it ran from 1978 to 1982.