For five weeks in 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to Philly every Thursday. Here’s why.

It happened in Philadelphia in 1972: John Lennon and Yoko Ono cohosted a full week of The Mike Douglas Show, the afternoon talk show that reached a nationwide audience of 40 million.

And they didn’t come alone to the KYW television broadcast studio in the basement of 1619 Walnut St., which Lennon said reminded him of Liverpool’s Cavern Club where the Beatles got their start.

Lennon and Ono, who had moved to New York in 1971, brought along a week’s worth of guests with the intention of introducing Middle America to the leaders of the anti-Vietnam War and countercultural movement.

Along with Lennon’s hero Chuck Berry and comedian George Carlin, subjects interviewed by Lennon, Ono, and Douglas included such prominent figures as Yippies founder Jerry Rubin, Black Panthers leader Bobby Seale, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

The five 90-minute shows were released on videocassette in 1998 but have never been available digitally. But now a new documentary film, Daytime Revolution, directed by Erik Nelson and produced with the cooperation of Ono and Lennon’s son Julian, focuses on the week in February 1972 when “the revolution was televised.”

The movie will screen on Wednesday, on what would have been Lennon’s 84th birthday, in theaters across the U.S., including the Landmark Ritz 5 in Old City and Theatre N in Wilmington. It will be released on Blu-ray in November.

Daytime Revolution puts the shows in the context of the year of both the Watergate break-in and Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection victory. It was also the year that — seemingly spurred by Lennon’s advocacy of leftist policies on the most popular show on daytime television — the U.S. government began proceedings with the intention of deporting the Beatle.

Just before the Ono-Lennon shows aired, Strom Thurmond, the Republican senator from South Carolina, sent a letter to Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, notifying the White House that Lennon was “associating with New Left leaders” working to “dump Nixon.” It recommended terminating Lennon’s visa “as a strategy counter measure.”

(In another unorthodox Douglas booking, Mitchell’s estranged wife, Martha, would cohost the show during the thick of Watergate in 1974, with Richard Pryor as a guest.)

Lennon, however, as chronicled in the 2006 documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon, was granted permanent residency in 1976. That film was executive produced by Nelson, who always had a keen interest in Ono and Lennon’s historic week on the Douglas show, which originated in Cleveland in 1961.

It moved to Philly in 1965, with its mild-mannered and affable host who got his start as a big band vocalist and sang the Beatles’ “Michelle” before introducing Lennon and Ono. The show moved to Los Angeles in 1978. (When he left Philly, Douglas sold his home in Gladwyne to another Philadelphia celebrity: soul singer Teddy Pendergrass.)

“I knew it was mind-blowing at the time,” said Nelson, speaking via Zoom from New York.

Nelson, who has produced four Werner Herzog films, including Grizzly Man, was 16 in 1972 when he first saw the shows that he said, was Lennon and Ono’s effort “to send their subversive message to 40 million silent majority housewives.”

Lennon had released his second solo album, Imagine, in 1971. His performances of the title cut and “It’s So Hard” are included in Daytime Revolution, as is a duet with Berry on “Memphis, Tennessee” that features Ono punctuating the performance with her trademark screams.

For Nelson, spotlighting the Lennon and Ono week on The Mike Douglas Show, was a way of digging into both “my love of the Beatles and John Lennon, and my obsession with Richard Nixon,” whom he calls a “deranged, damaged, amazing compelling character in American history.”

The Nixon connections to the Douglas show were substantial. Roger Ailes, the future architect of Fox News, was the producer.

Ailes met Nixon as a guest on Douglas’ show in 1967 and joined Nixon’s campaign the next year. By 1972, he was working in the White House as a media consultant.

South Philly native E.V. Di Massa was a 24-year-old associate producer on the show in 1972. His recollections are featured in Daytime Revolution, which is a charming, often amusing, window into the era.

In the show, macrobiotic chef Hilary Redleaf cooks a meal that Berry says looks like “a soul brother pizza” after he and Lennon help each other put aprons on. Electronic musician David Rosenbloom leads a biofeedback session in which Ono, Lennon, and Douglas sit cross-legged and wear sensors on their heads, as Berry looks on suspiciously.

The shows were taped in front of an audience of only 100 audience members who had won tickets in a mail-in lottery. “We never told people who they were going to see, because it would have created chaos,” said Di Massa, in a Zoom interview from his home in Newport Beach, Calif.

The format always included cohosts, and often in-the-news guests, including Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the latter of whom is pictured with Douglas in a photo that hangs in the lobby of 1619 Walnut St. today. Weeklong hosts included Barbra Streisand, Jackie Gleason, and Sonny & Cher.

But in terms of fan frenzy, the show had never hosted anyone of the magnitude of a former Beatle.

“My aunt took me to see my first concert when I was 15, which was the Beatles at the Convention Center in 1964,” Di Massa said. “Who knew I’d be sitting across a desk looking at John Lennon eight years later?”

Shows were taped on five consecutive Thursday nights, with guests curated by Lennon and Ono. Douglas regulars like singer Vivian Reid and comedian Louis Nye were also on the show.

In one Ono conceptual art segment, mostly random strangers were picked out of a phone book and, if they answered their call, were told: “I love you.” Nye tried to call Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo, but couldn’t get through.

“John and Yoko lived in Greenwich Village, so every Thursday they would take a limo ride down, often with Jerry Rubin, and then they would ride back after the show,” said Di Massa. “Because it happened over five weeks, we had a lot of anticipation and excitement and we had crowds of autograph seekers gathering outside before they would arrive.”

“I was 24 and a lot of the staff were in their 60s and didn’t relate so well to John and Yoko,” Di Massa said. Douglas was 52 at the time, a generation older than his cohosts. “There were a lot of the booking people on the show who didn’t want some of the guests that John and Yoko brought in. So I became the John and Yoko whisperer.”

As Daytime Revolution moves through the five episodes, Douglas, who died in 2006, develops a growing rapport with his guests. “It all worked because Mike handled in beautifully,” said Di Massa.

“The material is so transgressive and kind of insane,” said Nelson. “But across the five shows, the progression and comfort level grows between John and Yoko and Mike Douglas, who’s the unsung hero and superstar of the film.”

“Daytime Revolution” screens on Wednesday at the Landmark Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St., landmarktheatres.com and Theatre N, 221 W. 10th St., Wilmington, theatre.com