[7] After serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II on a munitions ship,[7] he resumed his performing career as a staff singer for WMAQ-TV in Chicago.

[11] In 1953, Douglas was host of Showcase, a weekly program on WGN-TV in Chicago, and he sang on The Music Show on the DuMont Television Network.

[citation needed] Then living in Burbank, California, Douglas tried to keep his singing career going in the late 1950s working as house singer for a nightclub and traveling to perform elsewhere.

The Mike Douglas Show rapidly gained popularity, and ultimately, national syndication in August 1963 on other stations owned by KYW-TV's parent company Westinghouse Broadcasting.

Guests ranged from Truman Capote, Richard Nixon, Jerry Lewis, and Edward Everett Horton to The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits and Kiss, with an occasional on-camera appearance by Tim Conway (who would later be discovered at WJW-TV, also in Cleveland).

Moe Howard of The Three Stooges was a guest several times, with a pie fight inevitably happening at the end of the interview,[16] and platform speaker on nonverbal communication (body language) Dr. Cody Sweet.

After the move to Philadelphia, Douglas also attempted to revive his own singing career, logging his lone Top 40 single as a solo artist, "The Men in My Little Girl's Life", in 1966.

[19] The afternoon show was usually quiet with an eclectic mix and such an approach would occasionally lead to confrontation, such as when soul singer James Brown took offense at racially charged comments from talk show host/producer David Susskind, who wondered on-air why black students often did not mix with white students, even after civil rights legislation and advances in integration.

Chuck Berry, Ralph Nader, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Yellow Pearl (Nobuko JoAnne Miyamoto, Chris Iijima)[20], Vivian Reed, David Rosenboom and George Carlin appeared on the program.

Near the end of its run, the series switched to a traveling roadshow format and became The Mike Douglas Entertainment Hour, but this change failed to boost falling ratings.

He also held a landmark interview with Dr. Martin Luther King that revealed his wisdom about civil rights and his prophetic stance on the Vietnam war.

40 years after Douglas began his talk show at KYW-TV, his granddaughter Debbie Voinovich Donley designed successor WKYC's new broadcast facility on Lakeside Avenue, completed in 2002.

[25] Although the exact cause of his death was not revealed, his widow, Genevieve, told the Associated Press that he became dehydrated while golfing a few weeks earlier on a hot Florida summer day.