Regis Philbin Says Goodbye

And that’s the sad truth behind all the hosannas and hoopla that surrounded Regis Philbin’s grand send-off on Friday.

After so many years and over 17,000 hours on the air the 80-year-old entertainer took his final bow on “Live! With Regis and Kelly.” Maybe not on Monday, but someday soon, a new co-host will settle into Mr. Philbin’s chair. If anything, morning television will most likely go on even more smoothly than before.

In a daytime landscape filled with bland, polished hosts and smarmy good cheer, Mr. Philbin was crumpled, nasal and histrionic. He was a snaggletooth amid cosmetic dentistry and porcelain veneers.

It wasn’t his age that set him apart. CBS is preparing to bet big on seniority, recruiting Charlie Rose and Gayle King to overhaul “The Early Show” in January.

In a way, that incongruous casting choice may be as much a tribute to Mr. Philbin as it is an effort to mimic the oddball chemistry of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. For all the diversity of race and gender on morning talk shows, there isn’t a wide range of personality or pizazz.

Mr. Philbin was beloved by viewers partly because he didn’t try to be likable. Feisty and always antic, he could be embarrassingly candid, and his humor was often needling. His former longtime co-host Kathie Lee Gifford, who left his show in 2000 and was later hired by NBC as a co-host on “Today” with Hoda Kotb, returned on Thursday to reassure him that he would enjoy retirement.

“Does it nag at you that you are missing something?” Mr. Philbin asked her, then wondered if he would need to return, “like you crawled back to Hoda?”

He promised he wouldn't cry on Friday, and to his credit, he didn’t. He mostly looked embarrassed and impatient with all the sentiment.

Networks love to milk retirement specials: Oprah Winfrey's farewell lasted an entire season and was more opulent than a pharaoh’s funeral.

The producers poured on the bathos for Mr. Philbin, and even gravitas, filming his final walk from his dressing room to the stage in black and white and putting up a plaque in his honor at the studio. The mayor gave him the key to the city; his wife, children and fans made video tributes. The studio audience was filled with old friends and famous faces. Mr. Philbin made fun of that.

“V.I.P.’s?” he barked. “Where are they? Tony Danza’s the biggest name here.”

He didn’t well up when his co-host, Kelly Ripa, tearfully talked about the joy he brought viewers — and she cited those with cancer, mothers nursing babies and a little boy staying home to avoid a math test. When he finally had the floor to say goodbye, Mr. Philbin spoke briskly and briefly, thanking people with generic terms like “my lovely co-hosts” and the “prop-house guys.”

That was fitting. Even in his younger days there was always a showbizy Damon Runyon element to his on-air persona. He never lost his Bronx accent, and comedians loved to impersonate the way he speaks — like a racetrack announcer with a head cold. He still seemed to live in a world where people send opening-night telegrams, and men call the waitress “doll” and get together to “have some laughs.” Mr. Philbin recently published an autobiography, “How I Got This Way,” and he proudly told viewers earlier this week that he was a guest on NPR. This is how he put it: “I’m there for my book, which is opening today.”

Mr. Philbin made insecurity and professional envy part of his shtick, but he was not always kidding. He told Katie Couric on the ABC show “20/20” that he was leaving partly because he was unhappy with the contract offered him, which he said “wasn't what I expected or I thought I deserved.”

When Ms. Couric asked him to name his greatest regret, he mentioned the fact that he had spent so many years in relative obscurity on local shows in Los Angeles and New York before going national in 1988.

“I wish I didn’t have to wait till I was in my late 50s before the good part of my life started in this business,” he replied, dead serious. “That’s what I regret, that it was kind of a late start for me.”

Stars and would-be celebrities keep nothing back about their love lives, addictions or personal tragedies on television, but they are rarely candid about their professional disappointments or missed opportunities. Onstage Mr. Philbin told funny, off-the-cuff anecdotes and didn’t bother viewers with sob stories and personal demons. Even after bypass surgery in 2007, he came back to the show determined to play down his brush with mortality.

He did the same on Friday, and it was refreshing. There will be plenty of other popular morning hosts, but that kind of restraint and old-school showmanship actually is irreplaceable.