Local Treasures: Michael Donahue

Sep 12, 2023

We don’t usually publish stories about our own writers. But when a certain curly-haired columnist is on your staff, you make an exception.

by Chris McCoy

August 7, 2023

8:00 AM

photograph by jon w. sparks

Michael Donahue is a sentimental sort. He’s worn this style of glasses for decades and keeps spare frames in a safe deposit box. He also covered bands at the now-defunct Antenna club and has his own weird way of keeping the memory alive.

There’s a saying in Memphis: It’s not a party unless Michael Donahue shows up. “I still get that,” says Donahue. “People just recognize me when I go out.”

To be fair, Donahue is instantly recognizable in his white, two-pocket shirts, thick-rimmed oval glasses, and voluminous hair. For decades, he has covered Memphis’ arts, culture, food, and social scene beginning with the Memphis Press-Scimitar and later The Commercial Appeal. Currently, his words and photos can be found in the “We Saw You” and “Classic Dining” columns and other stories in the Memphis Flyer and Memphis Magazine; both are published by Contemporary Media, Inc.

The future reporter was born and raised in Memphis. His mother was a registered nurse until she left the profession to raise her three children, including older brother Tom and younger sister Kathy. “My dad worked for Paramount Pictures, the motion picture distributing company,” he says, “so he was on Film Row.”

All the major movie studios used to have offices Downtown, taking advantage of the city’s central location to ship film reels to theaters all over the country. “One by one they all moved to New Orleans,” says Donahue. “They let him stay until he retired at 70, so Paramount was the only film company that was still here when he retired.”

photograph by jon w. sparks

Michael Donahue once thought he could excel during the Ultimate Championship Pro Wrestling South in 2018. He still imagines the possibilities. He’s going to quit covering parties just as soon as he gets that big rasslin’ contract.

Donahue discovered his talent for writing in elementary school, when his description of the class nativity scene earned praise from his teacher. “In high school, I wanted to be a teacher,” he says. “I went to Christian Brothers and we had to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Our teacher — and I’m not going to give him any credit for making me become a writer — just said, if anybody wants to write a short story after we finish [the book], I’ll give you extra credit. I liked the idea, so I wrote a short story that was very much like To Kill a Mockingbird.”

He continued to write short stories, and submitted one to Esquire magazine. “I’m 18, I get a rejection slip, but on the back of the rejection slip, it said, ‘Snow Storm’ is arranged well,” he recalls. “‘If you have anything else or in the works, give us a look.’”

The distinctive Donahue Style evolved over time. When working as a sacker at Seessel’s, he saw a customer wearing eye glasses that reminded him of actor Ryan O’Neal, and asked who the customer’s optometrist was. He’s kept the same style of frames ever since — more about that later. His two-pocket shirts are custom-tailored; he’s worn the same belt buckle since high school. As for the hair, that was inspired by the infamous (on-stage nudity!) Memphis State production of the musical Hair. “I was at the show and Gerome Ragni, one of the writers, was at the opening and his hair was all curly, just huge,” he recalls. “I’ll never forget, I thought that looked so cool.”

After CBHS, Donahue enrolled at Memphis State University “I majored in journalism because I wanted to be a fiction writer,” he says. “All the writers that I liked had some journalism degree or journalism experience. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker wrote for magazines, but yet they still wrote fiction. I remember asking one of my journalism teachers, ‘If I stay in journalism, is it going to mess up my fiction-writing ability?’ And she said, ‘Yes, true.’ But anyway, I fell in love with it.”

After graduation, he started working at the Press-Scimitar as a copy boy. “I chose the Press-Scimitar because I thought I could sleep late — it was an afternoon paper,” he says. “But it was the opposite, so I was at work at 5:15 a.m. picking up the mail on Third Street. I literally started at the very bottom, and I had to do that for three-and-a-half years.”

Donahue says the late 1980s and early 1990s were the golden age of partying in Memphis. “It used to be six to eight parties in one evening. I would start at the first location — which usually would be the Hilton — and then work my way back Downtown.”

Candy Justice, a Press-Scimitar editor and now a professor of journalism at the University of Memphis, recognized Donahue’s talent and gave him his first feature-writing assignment. “She gave me a story idea, which was, people who collect movies,” he says. “I’ve always been a movie fan. This was before VCRs, so people would literally collect 16mm movies. I did it, and she ran it on the cover of her section. She gave me another story about things I was interested in, and I sort of bloomed.”

His first crack at the party circuit came a little later, when he was assigned to cover an after-party for a performance of the New York Metropolitan Opera at The Orpheum, featuring Luciano Pavarotti. “I remember I wanted to get a quote from Pavarotti,” he says. “He was walking out the door, and I was following him. ‘Mr. Pavarotti, can I get a quick quote?’ Without turning around, he just waved his hands over his head, all the way to the cab.”

photograph by jon w. sparks

One of Mr. Donahue’s most popular columns has been “Classic Dining,” It requires interviews with chefs and restaurant owners, and visits to local eateries, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Donahue thought he had blown the assignment. “But the thing was, the next day, Milton Britten, the editor, loved that story. I guess because it was a different approach. He said, ‘I want you to do parties from now on.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, don’t make me do parties again!’ Back then, [those columnists] were older women who covered society events. But once you do something they like in journalism, you do it forever.”

Donahue upended the idea of the society column. “A stereotypical photo would be a punch bowl with this posed picture of all these women standing around the punchbowl with one serving, all looking in the camera,” he says. “We knew we had to cover the upper-class parties, because that was always a huge deal, with fundraisers and stuff. Back then, there was the Cotton Carnival, so there were plenty of parties. Then, when I went over to The Commercial Appeal, that followed me.”

After the Press-Scimitar’s last issue on Halloween 1983, Donahue moved over to the city’s morning paper, where he would quickly become a star journalist. “When I started, Mary George Beggs did parties and I did parties,” Donahue recalls. “[She] did the traditional society-type stuff, because she’d done that for decades. It was ingrained in her. So I started veering off into a different direction. For one thing — and I’m very proud of this — I would cover Black events, which we just didn’t cover. The funny thing was, back then, for every white fundraiser there was an equivalent Black fundraiser. They were the same [kind of] people, just different colors, and they were having identical events — fashion shows, teas, all that stuff. So I covered those.

“Then there was a white couple and a Black couple who did a party in Harbor Town, which they both hosted,” he continues. “So this was a first as far as I know. They called it the Us and Them Party, but they never would say who was ‘us’ and who was ‘them.’ The guests were a mixture of Black and white people. Here are these people finally coming together. Everybody’s college-educated. They all are business professionals. That party, people wouldn’t go home. You’d be in the kitchen watching these people meet each other. We’re getting to know Black people, we’re getting to know white people, in Memphis.”

Donahue says the late 1980s and early 1990s were the golden age of partying in Memphis. “It used to be six to eight parties in one evening. I would start at the first location — which usually would be the Hilton — and then work my way back Downtown.”

When Donahue got into a dispute with an editor, he says, ”She wanted to fire me. It was sort of a punishment that she thought up: I’m going to give you a daily column. You’re going to write a column four times a week, and it can be about anything you want. You can put your parties in it. This is a real punishment. But her biggest mistake was when she said, ‘And we’re going to run your picture!’ So my picture started being in the paper four days a week, with the hair. Nobody looked like that who wrote for the paper. So obviously, people started recognizing me.”

Donahue, a lifelong city dweller, decided he wanted a farmhouse, the older the better. “I always liked how, in the movies, everybody lived in New York City, but had their country home in Connecticut. Also, I’m a big antique collector, and I love country furniture.”

After years being ignored at society parties, Donahue became the center of attention wherever he went. “I remember when I got older, one of the pressmen who ran the printing press said, ‘We were so happy when your hair turned gray, ‘cause now we don’t have to use as much ink on your picture.”

With daily column inches to fill, Donahue covered the arts and music. Then a Midtowner, he lived in an old red-brick apartment building at Poplar and Avalon, just a few blocks from Antenna, the legendary punk rock club. “[Owner] Steve McGehee would let me write about the bands who were coming to town. Nobody else was writing about that.”

Donahue introduced Memphis to legends like the Red Hot Chili Peppers (still his favorite), Beastie Boys, and R.E.M., as well as scores of Memphis acts. “When I’d go shopping or go to the grocery store after work, if I’d see some guy with long hair, I’d say, ‘Are you in a band? Luther [Dickinson] used to say, ‘My mom still has that article on her refrigerator.’ I think my old articles are on a lot of people’s refrigerators.”

Meanwhile, the Christmas parties he threw at his apartment became legendary, too — a who’s who of the hip, the beautiful, and the interesting. “The premise of the Christmas party is: Invite everybody you know, and then everybody they know is supposed to invite everybody they know — which meant you had 700 people in that apartment.”

In 1988, the party lifestyle collided with another one of his passions. “I bought my horse and I was boarding it in Collierville,” he says. “It got to where it was costing as much to board my horse as to board me in my apartment. So I thought we should move in together.”

Donahue, a lifelong city dweller, decided he wanted a farmhouse, the older the better. “I always liked how, in the movies, everybody lived in New York City, but had their country home in Connecticut. Also, I’m a big antique collector, and I love country furniture.”

One night while making his rounds, he unexpectedly ran into someone who could make his country-home dreams come true. “I was wearing cowboy boots. She asked if I had a horse. ‘Yes,’ I said, and I’m trying to find a hundred-year-old farmhouse. She said, ‘I sell Mississippi real estate on the side, and I know where there’s a 150-year-old house.”

Donahue bought the property, called Maplewood, in the tiny community of Red Banks, Mississippi, about an hour’s drive out Highway 78, where he lives to this day with his horses, Cheyenne and Tex, and dogs Coco and Trixie, the latest addition. “She was walking down the street on a Saturday and just looked like a skeleton,” Donahue says. “Usually when you call those dogs, they’ll run away. So I called her, and she came right to me. I picked her up and took her to the vet.”

After 40 years, Donahue remains a fixture on the party circuit, and also writes a popular food column for the Memphis Flyer and for this magazine.

Occasionally, he throws parties at his four-acre Mississippi farm, with a voluminous guest list and entertainment by his nephew, musician Frank McLallen. He has taken measures to ensure his look endures throughout his lifetime. “When my first pair of these glasses broke, I ordered seven or eight more. I put them in my safety deposit box. All that’s ever been in there has been extra glasses frames, and the pattern for this shirt.” That’s Michael Donahue for you.

The only time he has taken a break from his constant routine of interviews, writing, and parties was in 2020. “During the pandemic, I was home alone basically for a year. Every single night — and this is not an exaggeration — I dreamed I was at this huge party. I mean, it was just gigantic. I was at a restaurant opening, and people were falling all over themselves, jam-packed in these rooms. I think it was withdrawal from covering six to eight parties a night, and then suddenly you’re alone, you’re cooking dinner by yourself, and you don’t see hardly anybody. It’s not like I wanted to go to a big party, but it was every night. I said, ‘My social life is when I go to sleep.’”

Chris McCoy is a freelance writer, filmmaker, and musician. He is currently the Film/TV Editor for the Memphis Flyer.

August 7, 2023

8:00 AM