Although Jerry Springer passed away in 2023 at the age of 79, his legacy continues through “The Jerry Springer Show.” His controversial tabloid talk show first aired in 1991 and ran until 2018. He had a brief stint as the host of “Judge Jerry,” a television courtroom show, from 2019 to 2022, but it was far from the talk show that made him a household name. The HBO show “Hollywood Demons” dedicated an episode to “The Jerry Springer Show,” exposing some of the secrets that went on behind-the-scenes.
The Segment That Made One Producer Quit ‘The Jerry Springer Show’
“The Jerry Springer Show” had a segment called “Secrets Revealed” in which guests invited someone they knew on the show to reveal their secret in front of a live audience. It was one such segment that led former associate producer Houston Curtis to quit the show.
In 1994, the show aired an episode called “Surprise! I’m A Drag Queen.” In “Hollywood Demons,” Curtis recalled how an adult son “had a surprise” for his mother, who Curtis described as “the sweetest little old lady” from Alabama.
‘It Was Very Wrong And It Felt Horrible’
“I told her, ‘You know, your son has a surprise for you, and he wants to share it with you on The Jerry Springer Show,” Curtis recalled, as per Entertainment Weekly. The show paid to fly her out to Chicago, put her in a nice hotel, and even ordered a limo to take her to the show.
During the show, her adult son, who was in his late 30s or early 40s, came out dressed “in full drag” and performed a song that he had written for her. “All the lyrics written bashing his mother, who, to my knowledge at that point, was probably the sweetest person I ever booked on the show. She sat there with so much class and integrity, and just took it,” Curtis recalled.
After the segment, Curtis was concerned for the woman’s well-being and went backstage to check on her. He said that she burst into tears in his arms. “I was only a kid in my 20s, but I just knew it was wrong. It was very wrong, and it felt horrible,” he recalled. “That night, I called Burt Dubrow [the show’s creator] and I said, ‘Burt, I quit.’”
Curtis Reveals How ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ Encouraged Fights
Although the show started as a run-of-the-mill talk show, the fights quickly boosted ratings, making it one of the most-watched talk shows of all time. Curtis revealed that they used to employ sneaky tactics to encourage physical fights among guests to boost ratings.
“Let’s say that I have two brothers in a conflict. When you’re prepping the guests, you tell one of them, ‘If your brother says something you don’t like, you can yell at them, you can get up in his face, you can even spit on him. But whatever you do, don’t hit him,’” Curtis explained. “And you don’t tell the other person any of that.”
“Once you produce one person to get up and spit in someone’s face, and then you don’t give any instruction to the other one, the other one is going to haul off and knock the hell out of the one who did it, and boom, you got a fight,” he added.
Jerry Springer Passed Away From A Brief Battle With Pancreatic Cancer
According to PEOPLE magazine, the talk-show host, who served as the mayor of Cincinnati in the 1970s, passed away in his Chicago home following a “brief illness.” Jene Galvin, a longtime friend and a spokesperson for the family, told NBC News that Springer died from pancreatic cancer.
Rabbi Sandford Kopnick of Cincinnati’s “The Valley Temple” told PEOPLE that Springer’s “illness was sudden,” adding, “He died of cancer, and he didn’t have cancer for very long.”
He remembered Springer as “a kind and generous person who was not really best pictured on his television show.” He called Springer “very, very smart,” adding, “He was a remarkable family man, and he was somebody who understood what it means to pay it forward.”
“Hollywood Demons” season 2 premieres on Monday, April 20, at 9 PM ET on ID and will be available to stream on HBO Max. New episodes air each Monday.
