Rightist Gadfly Downey Brings Act to Anaheim

People who find “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” too refined for their tastes are in for a treat: Tonight, the pugnacious TV personality brings his act to Anaheim’s Celebrity Theatre, and he promises patrons a show that is longer, louder and more profane than the broadcast version.

He’ll even sing.

Fans of Downey’s late father, the Irish singing star of the 1930s and ‘40s, might be disappointed by that part of the show, however.

“My father would roll over in his grave,” Downey said. “He sang beautiful ballads, and there ain’t no beautiful ballads in my repertoire.”

Instead of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” Downey plans to sing such personal favorites as “Mr. Drug Dealer,” “A Lawyer Named Sue” and a new number, “Zip It,” which he noted “was inspired by a thing I say to guests.”

Downey’s singing (the record, “Morton Downey Jr. Sings” is scheduled for release later this year) reflects a more complicated personality than casual viewers of his show might imagine.

The son of Morton Downey Sr. and dancer Barbara Bennett, Downey recalled an angry childhood and a broken home; his mother left when he was 9, and though his father retained custody, Downey found himself shipped off to military school at age 10.

Downey, now 56, said he never fit into the life planned for him by his celebrity parents, wealthy and influential people who counted the Kennedys among their friends. “I never went to the proms and debutante balls they wanted me to go to,” he recalled from his New York office earlier this week.

Instead, Downey said, “I took off when I was 17,” beginning a lifelong odyssey that only recently brought him celebrity as a vulgar right-winger with a nationally syndicated TV show.

He recounted his history with some imprecision: After his military service ended in 1954, the New York University dropout came to California to break into the music business. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, he was “involved” in the production of two pop hits, “Wipeout” and “Pipeline.”

Despite his desire to head his own rock band, Downey was unable to make it as a singer and songwriter. Instead, with the help of a friend, he got a job as a disc jockey and went from doing late-night shows under the moniker of “Captain Midnight” to prominence in such radio markets as Providence, R.I.

The 1960s, Downey recalled, included stints as an ITT salesman and as a campaign aide to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Downey said he was with Kennedy in Los Angeles when the senator was assassinated in 1968; the depression following that event led him to compose a book of poetry, “Quiet Thoughts Make the Loudest Noise.”

Downey, who in a recent show proposed court-ordered emasculation for convicted rapists, acknowledged that his support of the liberal Kennedy might surprise some of his viewers.

“I liked what he stood for. I liked his (determination),” said Downey, using a metaphor of male anatomy. “I believe if Bobby were around today, he’d still make a good President.”

Downey himself, however, established greater ties to the nation’s right-wing fringe. He ran for the presidential nomination of the American Independent Party in 1980 and in recent years has been linked with such figures as conspiracy theorist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.

He said he became acquainted with LaRouche to “penetrate” his organization but nevertheless acknowledged reading from LaRouche publications on his programs.

He maintained that “this guy had tremendous intelligence” about world events, even as he called LaRouche, who recently was convicted of swindling senior citizens to pay for his political organization, “a completely dangerous Adolf Hitler type.”

Downey’s claims go on and on; he said he smuggled refugees out of Nigeria during the Biafran war in 1969, helped found the now-defunct American Basketball Assn., sang in Las Vegas hotels and made money giving motivational speeches.

“It was what I called ‘Combat Conversation,’ how to put someone on the defensive and then allow them to come forward with their own ideas,” Downey said of his work in the human-potential movement.

In the early 1970s, Downey said, he even taught political science and poetry at the University of Notre Dame as a “lecturing professor,” although school officials said they have no record of his presence on their faculty.

It was only after his return to radio, however, that the poet/singer/songwriter/entrepreneur/adventurer/politician began the rise that would place him among such 1980s phenomena as Geraldo Rivera and Wally George.

After another of his business ventures went broke, Downey said he answered a Florida radio station’s want ad for a talk show host in 1982. As he developed his combative, self-righteous broadcast style, Downey was fired regularly by station management he offended--only to be picked up in larger radio markets.

Downey had made it as far as Chicago by 1987, when New Jersey’s WWOR-TV signed him for his TV program. The show went into national syndication this season. It airs locally on KABC-TV Channel 7 at midnight on weeknights, although the channel announced plans Friday to drop the show because of sliding ratings.

“The Morton Downey Jr. Show” has been roundly castigated by critics, who are offended by its preference for shouting matches over discussion and for encouraging emotional, ignorant outbursts from audience members instead of reasoned examination of issues. One writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Ron Powers, called the program “the most horrifying show of the ‘80s.”

Indeed, Downey enjoys inciting his rowdy, blue-collar audience with such topics as the North American Man-Boy Love Assn., a group that seeks to legalize pederasty, and a Delaware legislator’s proposal to flog convicted drug dealers.

In one recent program ostensibly about the U.S. trade imbalance, Downey used his stage to denounce unnamed advocates of “one-world government” and engaged in heated, abusive argument with an audience member who asserted that Japanese-built cars are more reliable than domestic models.

Downey asserted that he is promoting the public good through his show, which he said is “80% issues.”

His audience, he said, is unable to understand complicated topics presented in a more cerebral fashion, so he endeavors to make current events palatable.

“I’m giving them information in a way they can accept,” he said of his fans. “When someone is being fed medicine, they swallow it a lot easier if they coat it in sugar.”

Comparing himself to the urbane host of ABC-TV’s “Nightline,” which precedes his program in Los Angeles, Downey said, “Ted (Koppel) does what Downey does in a soft way.”

Downey, in fact, cast himself as a folk hero to his following, seeing them as poorly educated, frustrated people who are left out of the U.S. mainstream.

“Am I a Jean-Paul Sartre existentialist? No. Am I a William F. Buckley philosophical left-winger? No,” he said, parenthetically insisting that Buckley, considered to be a father of modern intellectual conservatism, is actually a leftist.

Instead, Downey said: “I’m the guy who lives in a row house in Queens. I’m the woman who has to take food stamps to the store in order to feed her kids. I’m the guy who’d like to get off welfare but can’t, because the system wants to keep him poor. I’m all of those things.”

Downey clearly enjoys his late-found notoriety, but he said he does not expect to remain a talk-show host forever (an attitude that, given Friday’s action by KABC, may prove practical).

Eventually, Downey said, he would like to take on “a total, complete advocacy role. I want to pick out something like the homeless or child abuse” to rail about.

Another presidential candidacy might be in the cards as well, although Downey said, “We don’t need another loudmouth in the White House.”

Meanwhile, however, Downey savors his prominence, quickly dismissing critics who decry his act as the epitome of “trash TV.”

He warned: “They should remember that behind every house is a trash bag, and in that bag is trash, and that trash represents a piece of people’s lives. Are you just going to denounce that trash, to say that a piece of life is unimportant?”

And if that rhetorical metaphor isn’t enough to assuage critics, Downey added that his show “is no trashier than ‘Leave It to Beaver’ was.”

Morton Downey Jr. appears tonight at 7 at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. Tickets: $19 to $26.50. Information: (714) 999-9536.