At a glance
- Don Lane passed away after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease in 2009.
- Today, PJ Lane is honouring his father’s legacy in I Love Your Faces: The Don Lane Story. He wrote, and stars in, the musical spectacular.
- The Don Lane Show was Australia’s first “national” tonight show, running for almost a decade. It was also one of the first Australian shows to be syndicated in the US. Don’s sidekick was Bert Newton and together they regularly drew ratings exceeding 3 million.
When PJ Lane was a kid, he thought his dad’s claim to fame was as a sports broadcaster for the ABC, calling American football and basketball games. Born in 1984 – a full year after Don Lane had wrapped up his eponymous variety show – he was too young to have watched the Lanky Yank and his jovial sidekick, Bert ‘Moonface’ Newton, dominate the TV landscape, regularly exceeding ratings of three million and drawing some of the biggest international names on to the show’s set over eight years.
Instead, he was there to witness his dad’s second coming, one which saw Don swap a traditional television audience for younger viewers who were obsessed with American sport.
“His joke was that when he first came to Australia in the 1960s, it was, ‘Hey, Don. I’m a big fan. Can I have your autograph?’” PJ tells The Weekly today. “In the 1970s, it was, ‘My mother’s a big fan of yours. Can she have your autograph?’ In the 1980s, it was, ‘My grandmother’s a big fan.’ Then in the 1990s, it was, ‘My kids are big fans of yours, they watch the NFL on the ABC.’
“I just grew up with a guy who was surrounded by sports.”
No wonder, then, that PJ – who watched his dad coach basketball – got into the game himself. He was naturally talented and also driven. And so Don packed up his Sydney home to take his teenage son to Los Angeles (where he himself had once worked), so that PJ could pursue his dream of getting a basketball scholarship.
“It was at that time,” PJ recalls, “that he started to unpack the boxes of The Don Lane Show and we began watching it together.”
Don would give a running commentary as they watched the episodes, regaling his son with tales of the incredible people who had appeared on the show from a young John Farnham to international sensations including KISS, David Bowie and Sammy Davis Jr.
“He was a great variety show host,” says PJ. “But I think that anyone who knows him would say that his live act was much better than what you’d get on television.”
It was as PJ was finishing high school in 2002 that he noticed a few changes in his dad.
“Just things such as balance issues and coordination,” he says. “And then I went off to college.”
But when he next returned home, it was clear that something wasn’t right with Don, his deterioration obvious. In 2007, Don was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. PJ quit his burgeoning professional basketball career to return to Australia and help care for his dad as his health failed.
“It was a really stark decline,” PJ says of how swiftly Alzheimer’s took hold. “The heartbreaking thing for me was watching someone who was so larger than life lose all that charisma that made them who they are.”
Don passed away in 2009.
As he grieved, PJ continued his discovery of his father’s work. He always thought a biopic would be made of Don’s life at some point, but the call never came.
Attending the 2024 funeral of legendary comedy writer Mike McColl-Jones (the man who provided jokes for, among others, Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton), he was approached by several people who said they’d like to be the ones to make a documentary about his father.
“I said, ‘This is great. I love this!’” PJ says of his initial reaction. “But then it kind of hit me that there’s an idea that’s been brewing for a long time, to have Dad’s life told in music. Almost as a musical.”
At first, he approached musical theatre contacts, but soon he realised he wanted to write it himself. And so, in a nod to his dad’s famous TV sign-off, I Love Your Faces: The Don Lane Story was born.
PJ stars in the show. It’s big and glossy, an homage to the traditional entertainment of the time with glittering dancers, a live band and plenty of anecdotes about the man who ruled our TV screens for years. But equally it’s an origin story.
Born Morton Donald Isaacson on November 13, 1933, to Jacob and Dolly, Don grew up in New York City. His mum, a Catholic who had converted to Judaism after meeting Jacob, nurtured his early talent.
“His mother saw there was a talent contest at the local church,” PJ says of how Don got his start. “And it was her idea for him to go and do this Jerry Lewis bit where he mimes to classical music while eating crackers, with a toothbrush, stuff like that. It didn’t go very well.”
Not that this put off Don, who now had a taste for performing in front of an audience and wasn’t about to stop.
“You have an entertainer who’s working every bowling alley, every bar mitzvah,” says PJ. “Every birthday party. Everything he can do to try to get a gig.”
And then he was drafted into the US Army aged 21.
“He needed to get out of being shipped to Germany,” PJ says. “And so he entered the All-Army Entertainment Contest, and he won. That got him two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. So that was where it started.”
It was then that Morton adopted the stage name of Don Lane. First, he played nightclubs on the east and west coasts. Soon Vegas beckoned – but it was a tough gig playing secondary showrooms to audiences just not interested in his act.
“They’ve just lost a bunch of money gambling, so they’re given free tickets to go and see [Don],” says PJ. “He’s got to perform for this infuriated audience that doesn’t want to be there.”
Nevertheless, it was here that he befriended renowned club performer Wayne Newton, who would prove critical in young Don’s next step.
Channel 9 producer John Collins was in the US in 1965, looking for a new host for the show Sydney Tonight. Wayne sent them to Honolulu, where Don had just landed his first headlining show. When John asked Don if he’d like to go to Australia, he said, as recounted by PJ: “Australia? How would you like to go f**k yourself?” Despite this, John convinced him to put down an audition tape. And before he knew it, Don was on his way Down Under.
Replacing a series of temporary hosts, Don was an immediate hit. His initial six-week contract was immediately renewed, and for four years he was Sydney’s answer to Melbourne’s Graham Kennedy, the host of top Victorian variety show In Melbourne Tonight.
“He said he was a bigger star on that than he was on The Don Lane Show,” PJ says of the success his father found. “(Dad) had his own chauffeur, his own butcher, someone doing his cleaning. He had a house in Vaucluse that was paid for, he had a butler. It was incredible. And then he was offered The Music Man in the US.”
Returning to the States in 1969, Don finally got his due as a headliner in the Vegas production of the huge Broadway musical. You’d walk down the Strip and see the names up in lights: Sammy Davis Jr, Johnny Carson, Don Lane.
From there, he pivoted to American television, landed a role alongside Steve Martin in sketch comedy series The Ken Berry WOW Show – created as a summer replacement for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.
It wasn’t picked up for a second season, but it introduced him to a new audience. And then, in 1975, Don returned to Australia to appear in a benefit concert for victims of Cyclone Tracy. At the same time, in Melbourne, Ernie Sigley had just been installed as host of his own show for Channel 9 in the old In Melbourne Tonight slot. But he’d done the unthinkable in the first episode to go to air – he’d thrown out a tirade at Kerry Packer, who owned the network. The next day, Don got a call from the media mogul himself.
“He said, ‘Pack your bags, we’re going to Melbourne’,” PJ recalls of how Don returned to Aussie TV.
“They gave him 24 hours to turn it around. He and the producer figured out the format – it would be ‘Vegas meets Johnny Carson’. And they called it The Don Lane Show. That lasted for almost a decade. It was two or sometimes four shows a week, and it was one of the first Australian shows that was syndicated in the US.”
At a time when television had been regionally based, it was also the first national ‘tonight’ show on our screens. Taking advantage of newly available technology, The Don Lane Show was able to do live satellite interviews, as well as welcoming acts from ABBA to Robin Williams, Muhammad Ali to The Village People. It also championed talented locals including the aforementioned newcomer John Farnham and the likes of Rhonda Burchmore.
And then, of course, there was the magic chemistry between Don and his compatriot Bert Newton.
Don fought hard to get Bert on board, says PJ. The network “didn’t really want it. They wanted a Wheel of Fortune letter-turner, a barrel girl.”
From the outside looking in, Bert and Don didn’t have much in common. They lived very different lives. Bert loved a drink; Don was a teetotaller. Bert had a family in Patti and the kids; Don was single. But each had fought their way up through a chorus of boos in a world before social media documented every failed joke, and the magic when they got together was unrivalled.
“People like Dad and Bert developed their craft through years of work and trial and error,” says PJ. “Dad was groomed in the old hostile Vegas showrooms and Bert was on radio from the time he was 15. So by the time they got this opportunity when they were in their 40s they just knew what they were doing.”
Bert had a joke for every occasion, while Don was as charming as he was a boundary pusher. It led to unmissable television as he conducted unscripted interviews with their guests while Bert ad-libbed along.
It would become the highest-rating variety and talk show in Australian history, not dipping even as it was cancelled. With a two-hour live show becoming increasingly expensive to put out, the last episode aired on Don’s 50th birthday in 1983. But a new role awaited Don – that of family man.
He met and married talent agent Jayne Ambrose, and they had PJ together. And while they split up four years later, they remained friends. Don, says PJ, was a hands-on dad who “was very experienced with life but also very intuitive.
“He could read me very well,” he recounts. “As a kid, he understood what my passions were and would help guide that.”
Weekends were spent with his dad.
“It was fun time,” he says. “Running around, basketball and video games.”
Along with Jayne, Don enrolled PJ in piano lessons and fostered his talent for performing. For a time, PJ had a performing arts scholarship to The Scots College ahead of his move to the US. So making a transition into entertainment was a natural fit when he returned to Australia, having given up basketball to help care for his ailing father. After his dad passed, PJ landed a series of acting roles – but the passion wasn’t there.
“The ups and downs were driving me nuts,” he says. “Acting wasn’t really for me. I had a great agency [in LA] and they kept pushing me. We eventually had a phone call. They said, ‘We don’t think your heart’s in this.’ I said, ‘I kind of agree with you.’”
PJ got into coaching basketball, something he loves and finds incredibly fulfilling. But the chance to follow in his dad’s footsteps? To get on stage, to sing, to play piano, to tell stories? That is what he was born to do.
“I’m not trying to put tickets on myself,” he demurs, “but it’s like what Dad would say: I was born to be on stage. When I’m up there, I feel more comfortable than I do in general conversation. It’s like, ‘This is where I’m meant to be.’”
This – and the chance to share his father’s legacy with a whole new generation – that saw PJ throw his own money into producing I Love Your Faces.
“It’s more than dollars and cents here,” he says of the passion he has for the show.
“It is almost like a passing of the torch. It’s something I have a duty to keep alive.”
I Love Your Faces: The Don Lane Show is touring nationally. Find out more HERE
This article originally appeared in the September 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
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