Ultra-conservative talk show host Wally George has died of pneumonia.
I saw his show when I moved to L.A. in the 1980s, and I could not believe they’d let such an idiot on television. Wally (father of actress Rebecca De Mornay) would get some poor liberal sucker on Hot Seat and make great sport of humiliating him. Talk about walking into the lion’s den! The Liberal would have a message about how we should treat people with dignity or suppor the arts or how one politician or another should be removed from office, and Wally would shout at him, call him names, etc. while the audience chanted “Wally! Wally! Wally!” He’d usually end up physically throwing the guy off of his set. (Or have his security people do it.) Man, what a goon! I think he was a good example of why we called Orange County “Behind the Orange Curtain”. He really came of as a Fascist.
Of course it’s possible that it was all an act. Something to get people like me worked up and shouting at the TV. Maybe it was reverse psychology: show people a Fascist baboon, and that would show them the dangers of ultra-conservativism. But I think many people agreed with his “message”. So whether or not it was an act, I thought he was dangerous. In my opinion, he was just in it for the money. He saw that by being a flag-waving superpatriot, people would tune into his show. It didn’t matter if they were for him or against him, or even if he believed his own words. The sponsors still paid him.
L.A. is known (rightly or wrongly) as a Liberal city. It used to amuse me that so many cars I saw on the freeway in L.A. were from Galpin Ford – one of the sponsors of Hot Seat.
Well, frankly, good riddance. Did he ever do a damn thing that was worthwhile? Even his daughter wanted nothing to do with him – I believe her agent’s remark was something along the lines of “Miss DeMornay does not wish to be used by her father to his advantage”…
Now, I don’t know weather to laugh or cry. In 1983 I was living in west LA, and late at night I would tune into one of those TV wasteland channels that existed between channel 13 and channel 2, and there would be *that guy *, Wally somebody. I don’t even remember what his message was, the only lasting impression I have (and still get a smirk out of) is “Jeezus – what an ASS HOLE!” He would get some body to sit there while he badgered them, spewing the most off the wall TRASH I had ever heard in my life, when it was time for the victim to respond the studio audience (which seemed to consist of a small bleacher full of drunken, steroid using, Butch cut college age boys) would drown him out with wolf calls, chants of Wally, Wally, Wally, I * think * I remember him using a bull horn at one point to not allow his victim to be heard, (could be wrong on that - it was, after all, 20 years ago). Having come from a smaller, more liberal town, (Santa Barbara) I used to get chewed up and spit out every day by the metropolis of LA , then I started watching Wally. It changed my life and taught me how to a be * real * jerk. With the teachings of the Hot seat I was able to survive and attain bone head greatness, and can now survive in any city in the world. I’m kinda sad to see him go ::sniff, sniff::
Wally also had a daily half-hour program, “The Best of Hot Seat” which featured him chroma-keyed in front of an American flag while he introduced clips from his show and joked around with the off-camera crew. Right-wing gonzo TV at it’s best.
I haven’t seen Cheaters. You’ve read here about the format of the show. It had the flavour of a Klan rally. Or maybe a Nazi Party rally. Wally was up there ranting about how wrong the Liberals are, and how they’re ruining the country, and how could anyone belive what they do, and we-god-fearing-Americans-have-to-do-something-about-them.
As I said, I think it may have been an act. People paid him to be a right-wing radical. But whether he believed what he was saying or not, I think the audience did. That’s scary.
A co-worker told me she saw Wally George at a home show once. He was sitting alone in a booth and nobody was talking to him. She said it was sad.
I saw the show once on an ultra conservative UHF channel. It was immediately followed by the death metal hour show. That channel had some really messsed up programming, but that is an aside. The asshole in question had a gay guy who came on to talk about gay rights or something, I don’t know really because you couldn’t hear him speak. In the middle of it, Wally stood up, hit the guy in his face and knocked off his glasses to the chanting of his audience. I was completely shocked and wrote a letter to whatever the network was and never watched that station again. It wasn’t one of the regular networks it was some fly by night local UHF station that eventually went bankrupt. I would like to think that I had something to do with that.
One of my favorite guilty pleasures. I rememberone episode where he had some mud wrestlers from Orance County on the show and they were fighitng about something I can’t remember (I was distracted by boobies) and then two very buxom girls started to wrestle on stage and poor Wally didn’t know if he was coming or going. (heh).
I still recall how popular this show was back in the early eighties when Reaganmania was in full effect. Yes, I watched this show with my high school friends and we cheered along with Wally as the endless parade of druggies, sickos and psychos drooled on stage. Looking back on it, the only thing funnier than watching the spittle flying from his lips was how polite he became whenever an attractive woman came on the show. Does anyone else remember the Playmates who guested and how George would fly into a screaming rage at anyone in the audience who said a nasty word about them?
And come on everybody, sing the song one last time: It doesn’t take a super-genius to know… Getting high is getting looooooow.
military service ???
I’ve tried looking up Wally George information on the Internet and needless to say there isn’t much. I was wondering if he suffered from the “disease” of the super-patriotic, right-wing, 150 per cent Americans who talk tough but if there’s actual fighting to be done, they take the easy way out - avoiding it.
So, did he ever serve in the military?
I can’t believe he’s gone. Man, that show was such a gas. It was like Jerry Springer, but more insane. So much fun. RIP Wally. And thanks for the years of entertainment.
And no, I don’t think he ever served in the military, but I don’t think he was a draft dodger or anything.
Jeez, we used to get wasted in high school and watch Hot Seat just for the shock value. Before the “new wave” of trash talk shows that made Springer and his ilk infamous, there was Wally George. It was like a flaming train wreck- you just had to watch, even if you hated the guy. Note- I’ll bet much of it was staged.