Dr Joyce Brothers, the first of the television psychologists, has died at the age of 85.
Dr Joyce Brothers
New York born Joyce Bauer earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University but gained fame when she became the first woman to win the quiz show ‘The $64,000 Question’ in 1955.
From there CBS offered her a commentator role during a boxing match between Carmen Basillo and Sugar Ray Robinson. That made her the world’s first female boxing commentator.
In August 1958 she was given her own television show but it was to offer advice about relationships. She became the world’s first television psychologist.
Over the years Dr Joyce Brothers made hundreds of television cameo playing herself on ‘The Nanny’, ‘Frasier’, ‘Melrose Place’, ‘ALF’ and ‘The Larry Sanders Show’.
Dr Brothers had been a licensed psychologist since 1958.
