Stanley Siegel

Stanley Siegel was a New York City-based talk show host best known for his unscripted, unconventional interviews on The Stanley Siegel Show, which premiered in 1975 on local channel WABC, and aired for five years.

Siegel was notable for his colorful manner with guests and out-of-the-ordinary antics, such as his on-air therapy sessions with a psychoanalyst. He interviewed celebrities, politicians and newsmakers of the day, including Truman Capote; Frank Zappa; Gloria Steinem, whom he persuaded to perform a tap dance; and Norman Mailer, with whom he re-enacted the firing-squad scene from Mailer’s book about Gary Gilmore, The Executioner's Song.

In 1960, Siegel graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in debate. He became a freelance radio reporter in Vietnam, worked as a correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, was the host of a dance party broadcast in Tacoma, Washington, and hosted a morning show in Nashville, Tennessee.

In the mid-1970s, he was hired by WABC to host A.M New York, where he quadrupled the show’s audience. Siegel also appeared in the films When Nature Calls and Lightening, the White Stallion, starring Mickey Rooney as a rich gambler with a prize horse.

He went on to appear on Lifetime’s America Talks Back and RLTV’s Stanley on the Go, a travel show launched in 2010, in which Siegel was as adventurous and unfiltered as ever.

Siegel died January 2, 2016, in Los Angeles. He was 79.