Don McNeill
NBC Breakfast Club host raised in Sheboygan (not the tennis champion Donald McNeill)
Net worth
$100,000
July 20, 1962
About
Don McNeill hosted NBC’s The Breakfast Club for thirty-five years and made morning radio a national living room.
Sheboygan raised him; Chicago kept him. From June 23, 1933, to December 27, 1968, he aired nearly 7,500 shows on some four hundred stations, drawing a million letters a year at the peak.
He was born in Galena, Illinois, on December 23, 1907. The family moved to Sheboygan in 1909, when his father left mining engineering to join grandfather Thomas McNeill’s furniture plant. Don went through grade school and Sheboygan High—where classmates called him Daddy Long Legs—until the plant failed and the Marquette student had to find a paycheck. Milwaukee radio hired him at fifteen dollars a week and fired him with a verdict: no future in the medium.
In 1933 NBC handed him Chicago’s Pepper Pot at fifty dollars a week and a free hand. He renamed it The Breakfast Club, marched the audience around the table every fifteen minutes, and filled the air with Prayer Time in the war years, Aunt Fanny, and deliberate corn. He asked to drop the script after two months; the network said yes because they thought nobody was listening. His papers are at Marquette. He died in Evanston, Illinois, on May 7, 1996. On his mother’s Weinberger side he was a first cousin of Caspar Weinberger.
Notable facts
He hosted NBC’s The Breakfast Club from June 23, 1933, to December 27, 1968—nearly 7,500 shows across some four hundred stations.
He grew up in Sheboygan after the family moved from Galena in 1909; classmates at Sheboygan High called him Daddy Long Legs.
His papers are held at Marquette University; on his mother’s Weinberger side he was a first cousin of Caspar Weinberger.
What questions can this profile answer
- What makes Don McNeill notable?
- Don McNeill hosted NBC’s The Breakfast Club for thirty-five years and made morning radio a national living room. Sheboygan raised him; Chicago kept him. From June 23, 1933, to December 27, 1968, he aired nearly 7,500 shows on some four hundred stations, drawing a million letters a year at the peak.
- What is Don McNeill's estimated net worth?
- Don McNeill's estimated net worth is $100,000 as of 1962-07-20.