Jerry Springer, known for his combative talk show and bizarre political career, passed away at the age of 79 in a suburb of Chicago. After completing his law degree from Northwestern University in 1968, he began his political career and was elected to the Cincinnati City Council in 1971.
However, a scandal regarding his involvement with a prostitute caused him to resign in 1974. Mr. Springer was re-elected to the council in 1975 and later became the mayor of Cincinnati in 1977. He ran for the governor of Ohio in 1982 but lost. He then transitioned to broadcasting, starting as a news analyst for Cincinnati’s WLWT-TV before rising to the positions of anchor and managing editor. In 1991, his talk show, “The Jerry Springer Show,” premiered, and by the mid-1990s, it was setting new standards for tawdry on American television. The show transformed the talk-show format into an arena for shocking confessions, adultery-fueled screaming matches, and not infrequent fistfights. Mr. Springer hosted more than 3,000 episodes of the show over almost three decades, with a peak audience of nearly eight million in 1998. Despite the controversy surrounding the show, Mr. Springer always ended every episode with the phrase “Take care of yourself, and each other.”
Born on February 13, 1944, at a London subway station serving as a bomb shelter during World War II, Gerald Norman Springer moved to the United States when he was five years old. In 1965, he graduated from Tulane University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He continued his education at Northwestern and law school, where he accepted a summer clerk position at a legal firm in Cincinnati in 1967, marking the beginning of his relationship with the city. Springer worked on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 before completing his degree.
Springer’s transition to broadcasting began in 1982, when he worked for Cincinnati’s WLWT-TV as a news analyst. He won or shared a number of Emmy Awards for local reporting in the following ten years. His talk show, “The Jerry Springer Show,” produced by Multimedia Entertainment, debuted in 1991. The original version of the show focused on issues and starred a Cincinnati news anchorman and former mayor. But by 1993, the show had started to include more sensational content. In a 1995 episode, Springer helped a young man lose his virginity by presenting him with a screen-hidden selection of five young women. Viewers were informed that one of the contestants was the young man’s 18-year-old virgin sister. The show had become a free-for-all, with hosts like Montel Williams and Sally Jessy Raphael also offering racy material, but no one did it as well or outrageously as Mr. Springer.
“The Jerry Springer Show” came to an end in 2018 after more than 3,000 episodes over nearly three decades. Although the show was controversial, Mr. Springer always ended each episode with the phrase “Take care of yourself, and each other.” In a 2007 interview with The Chicago Tribune, Springer described his birth during World War II in a London subway station that was serving as a bomb shelter. His family moved to the United States when he was five years old, and he graduated from Tulane University in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. In a 2008 commencement address at Northwestern, he shared his memory of passing the Statue of Liberty when he was five years old and asking his mother what they were looking at. She replied, “Ein Tag, alles,” in German, which means everything in one day.
