Joyce Davidson speaks about LUX soap during a commercial on the CBS television variety program, 'The George Gobel Show' on Oct. 11, 1959, in Hollywood.CBS via Getty Images
She was glamorous and ambitious, outspoken and quick-witted, a bright blond comet that streaked across the country’s black-and-white TV screens in the early days of CBC Television, before she was driven out of Canada by the censorious climate of opinion that marked the 1950s. Joyce Davidson went on to build a broadcasting career in the United States, where she married the producer David Susskind and socialized with movie stars, authors and celebrated media personalities.
What happened to Ms. Davidson, who died of COVID-19 in a Toronto long-term care home on May 7 at age 89, is perhaps the sharpest illustration we have of the social and political attitudes of an earlier, more narrow-minded Canada.
In June, 1959, she was a host of Tabloid, the popular nightly news and interview show on CBC Television, produced in Toronto, when she was invited to go to New York to appear on Dave Garroway’s Today show on NBC. Since the Queen was about to visit Canada, Mr. Garroway asked if his guest was looking forward to the event.
“Like most Canadians, I am indifferent to the visit of the Queen,” Ms. Davidson answered. Back home, her candour unleashed a firestorm. “An insult!” cried Nathan Phillips, then the mayor of Toronto. The Toronto Telegram, her brother Brian Brock recalls, ran a huge headline, “Joyce slams Queen.” MPs in Ottawa demanded that the Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, do something.
“The royalists threw eggs and rocks at Joyce’s house in Rosedale after she came home from New York,” Mr. Brock said. “And the sponsors of her show, Sunbeam Corp., dropped her, didn’t want her.”
In those days, on-air personalities would stop in the middle of a show and extol the virtues of a headache remedy, razor blade or soft drink, while holding up the product. Such commercials were their major source of income.
David Susskind, New York television producer, and his bride, the former Joyce Davidson, Toronto, television personality, pose in Washington, on April 22, 1966.The Associated Press
The CBC received 593 phone calls, of which 540 denounced her. A week later when letters about the incident started to arrive, the broadcaster had to hire extra secretaries. Of 1,861 letters, 1,300 ran in her favour. It made no difference. The CBC suspended Ms. Davidson.
Most distressing to Ms. Davidson was that her two daughters, aged 10 and 8, were taunted at school and accosted by reporters.
In his memoirs My Times, Pierre Berton wrote: “The furore was so great that the CBC, to its undying shame, buckled under the pressure and dropped Joyce from the program for several days.”
“Joyce was not fired by CBC. It was, however, difficult for her to stay,” Mr. Brock said. “Her revenue from commercials had disappeared. She was the subject of vitriol in the press and by the public. And she had two daughters to support.”
In 1960, news editors named Ms. Davidson the most newsworthy woman in Canada. That summer, an article about her experiences ran in Chatelaine magazine under the plaintive headline: “Must I leave Canada?”
In Here’s Looking At Us: Celebrating Fifty Years of CBC-TV, author Stephen Cole contends that it was not only her comment about the Queen’s visit – which she never retracted – that led to her exile. “Eventually she was hounded off the air,” according to Mr. Cole, “for telling Pierre Berton in an interview that a woman who was still a virgin at age thirty was 'unlucky.‘” Opposition was stoked by the Catholic Church, which did not consider virginity a curse.
Born Joyce Inez Brock during the Depression in Saskatoon on April 14, 1931, she was the eldest of four children of Myrtle (née Johnson) and Eric Brock. Her father, a First World War veteran, had come from England and her mother was one of 11 children of a fair-haired Norwegian family. Mr. Brock said he and his siblings had 48 cousins. The Brocks soon moved to Hamilton, in search of work since many large companies such as Stelco and Firestone were established there.
TV star Joyce Davidson returns from New York. June 19, 1959.John Boyd/The Globe and Mail
To support the family, her mother found a job as a secretary to a scientist at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. then tasked with producing the rubber components of the DEW Line, a string of defensive radar installations in the Far North. Eric, the father, had health problems as a result of his war experiences. “Our father came and went,” Brian Brock recalled.
At 17, Joyce married a lathe operator and lacrosse player named Doug Davidson. Their daughters Shelley and Connie were born in quick succession. Many people noticed Joyce’s beauty – you couldn’t miss it. Her mother-in-law entered her photo in a beauty contest, and Joyce was one of two winners out of 50,000 entries, winning a trip to New York as Miss Oneida Silver Plate.
When CHCH-TV launched in Hamilton in 1954, she was hired to work as an assistant on a cooking show. She began to take trips to Toronto to make commercials, signing a contract with Sunbeam appliances. By the time she was 23, her marriage was over.
It was around this time that Ross McLean, CBC TV’s legendary program creator, saw Ms. Davidson, and decided that she would be the perfect replacement for Elaine Grand, host of his suppertime television show Tabloid, who was moving to England.
Tabloid was a breezy current-affairs show covering an astonishing range of topics and inviting an eclectic parade of interview subjects. They included “prime ministers and postmen, bankers and dancing girls, chimpanzees and poets, artists, actors, milkmen (and) tramps,” wrote Peter Gzowski in Maclean’s magazine. Mr. McLean often wrote the intros and scripts himself.
Tabloid made Ms. Davidson a celebrity, reportedly with an annual income of $50,000 – a lot of money then. Mr. McLean became her mentor and close friend, urging her to improve her diction: “Say new. Not noo!” he instructed.
After the suspension, although she continued on Tabloid, her income and work possibilities in Canada shrank while opportunities arose in the States. Dave Garroway wanted her back on his show, and Lever Brothers chose her, with her perfect complexion, to represent Lux soap in the U.S. In 1961 she left Canada with her children for New York.
Joyce Davidson, seen here on June 19, 1959, was immediately hired by Westinghouse Broadcasting – later merged with CBS – as the female host of the nightly talk show PM East-PM West.John Boyd/The Globe and Mail
She was immediately hired by Westinghouse Broadcasting – later renamed CBS Corp. – as the female host of the nightly talk show PM East-PM West, opposite broadcaster and actor Mike Wallace. Mr. Wallace was reluctant to be on camera with Ms. Davidson and insisted that she not get any publicity. Among the most memorable interviews Ms. Davidson did for the short-lived show (it lasted a year) were one with horror actor Boris Karloff and another with the 19-year-old Barbra Streisand.
Game shows were ubiquitous in the 1960s and Ms. Davidson was a panelist on To Tell the Truth – lightweight fare that can now be seen on YouTube. In 1964, she began working as co-producer with Mr. Susskind of his celebrated talk show Hot Line, with Gore Vidal as host. By then the two producers were in a relationship. The 10-second broadcast delay had just been invented, and Hot Line was the first to use it, enabling people to call in to express their opinions without the risk of racist or obscene comments getting on the air. Ms. Davidson vetted the callers and lined up guests but was not on camera.
She briefly co-hosted an interview show Joyce and Barbara: For Adults Only with Barbara Howar in June, 1971, but that show was cancelled after a few weeks.
In 1966, she married Mr. Susskind in Arlington, Va., after he divorced his first wife. Their wedding was front-page news on both sides of the border. They lived in the UN Plaza building, overlooking the East River; the building was home to many famous people including Johnny and Joanna Carson, Vidal and Beverly Sassoon, and Merv Griffin. Mr. Brock recalled arriving to visit Ms. Davidson and finding Oscar-winner Sidney Poitier sitting on her couch.
“We lived next door to Gloria Vanderbilt and Wyatt Cooper. Truman Capote went in and out,” recalled Samantha Susskind Mannion, the daughter born a year after the couple married. “My parents were hard-working, driven people and very extroverted. They liked to have parties and went out to dinner almost every night.”
Her mother, she said, although lacking in formal education, was “one of the smartest people I knew. I never saw her without a book.” She loved fashionable clothes, especially the chic designs of Christian Dior and the extravagant evening gowns of Arnold Scaasi. To her daughters, she emphasized the importance of posture. “Pull your shoulders back, sit up straight! She was only 5-foot-4 but because of the way she carried herself, she looked much taller,” Samantha recalled.
When Samantha was 12, her parents moved to Park Avenue and their daughter saw them grow apart. They split up in 1984 and divorced in 1986, a year before Mr. Susskind, then 66, died of a sudden heart attack at the Wyndham Hotel, where he had a suite.
“I went with Joyce to the funeral,” Mr. Brock recalled. “He and Joyce were talking about getting back together before he passed away. She was still very fond of him.”
After Mr. Susskind’s death, she moved back to Toronto and took an apartment in the Manulife Centre. She had been commuting while taping The Joyce Davidson Show for CFTO-TV in the mid-70s and doing half-hour interviews with writers for the CBC for a daytime show called Authors.
In 1981, she went to India for three weeks to work on a documentary about Mother Teresa, which eventually aired on PBS – the show she was most proud of having done. The same decade, she co-hosted the ACTRA Awards with Roger Abbott on CBC. Eventually she retired to enjoy her grandchildren.
About eight years ago, Ms. Davidson was forced by Parkinsonian dementia to move into a long-term care home in Toronto. The home – Isabel and Arthur Meighen Manor – has been under lockdown since March. Her family was not able to be with her at the end. She was predeceased by Mr. Susskind, by her sister, Constance, and brother Jerry. She leaves her other brother, Brian Brock; three daughters, Shelley Stallworth, Connie Christopher and Samantha Mannion, all based in the U.S.; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
Editor’s note: (June 2, 2020): An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Joyce Davidson took out U.S citizenship.