Key Points
- Former US talk show host Jerry Springer has died aged 79 after a brief illness.
- He rose to fame as host of The Jerry Springer Show.
- Springer also served as a councillor and mayor of the city of Cincinnati.
Jerry Springer, the one-time mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional families willing to bare all on weekday afternoons, has died aged 79.
Known for chair-throwing and bleep-filled arguments, was a favourite US guilty pleasure over its 27-year run, at one point topping Oprah Winfrey's show.
Springer called it "escapist entertainment" while others saw the show as contributing to a dumbing-down decline in the country's social values.
"Jerry's ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word," Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and friend of Springer's since 1970, in a statement.
"He's irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely but memories of his intellect, heart and humour will live on."
Springer died peacefully at home in suburban Chicago after a brief illness, the statement said.
Fellow former talk show host Ricki Lake was among those to pay tribute to Springer on social media, describing him as "a lovely man".
Who was Jerry Springer?
Gerald Norman Springer was born February 13, 1944, in a London underground railway station being used as a bomb shelter.
His parents, Richard and Margot, were German Jews who fled to England during the Holocaust, in which other relatives were killed in Nazi gas chambers.
They arrived in the United States when their son was five and settled in the Queens borough of New York City.
He studied political science at Tulane University and got a law degree from Northwestern University.
He entered politics as an aide in Robert F Kennedy's ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign.
Springer ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970 before being elected to city council in 1971.
In 1974 — in what The Cincinnati Enquirer reported as "an abrupt move that shook Cincinnati's political community" — Springer resigned.
Jerry Springer was a councillor and mayor of the US city of Cincinnati before he became a talk show host. Source: Getty / Cincinnati Museum Center
In a subsequent admission that could have been the basis for one of his future shows, Springer said he had paid sex workers with personal cheques.
Then 30, he had married Micki Velton the previous year. The couple had a daughter, Katie, and divorced in 1994.
Springer quickly bounced back politically, winning a council seat in 1975 and serving as mayor in 1977.
He later became a local television politics reporter with popular evening commentaries.
Springer began his talk show in 1991 with more of a traditional format but after he left WLWT in 1993, it got a sleazy makeover.
It made him a celebrity who would go on to host a radio talk show and America's Got Talent, star in a movie called Ringmaster, and compete on Dancing With the Stars.
Jerry Springer appeared on Dancing With the Stars in 2006. Credit: Adam Larkey/Disney General Entertainment Con
After more than 4,000 episodes, the show ended in 2018, never straying from its core salaciousness: Some of its last episodes had such titles as Stripper Sex Turned Me Straight, Stop Pimpin' My Twin Sister, and Hooking Up With My Therapist.
In a "Too Hot For TV" video released as his daily show neared seven million viewers in the late 1990s, Springer offered a defence against disgust.
"Look, television does not and must not create values, it's merely a picture of all that's out there - the good, the bad, the ugly," he said, adding: "Believe this: the politicians and companies that seek to control what each of us may watch are a far greater danger to America and our treasured freedom than any of our guests ever were or could be".
Springer also contended that the people on his show volunteered to be subjected to whatever ridicule or humiliation awaited them.
"With all the joking I do with the show, I'm fully aware and thank God every day that my life has taken this incredible turn because of this silly show," he told the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2011.
