TALK IS HIS FORTE : On the Radio, Host Finds Room to Breathe

It’s only a start, and it might not last, but Chet Forte is bubbling with enthusiasm over his long-awaited chance to rebuild his life.

In the four years since compulsive gambling cost him everything he owned and led to his conviction for fraud and income tax evasion, Forte has been treated like a leper in the television industry that was once his domain. Not until radio station XTRA hired him as co-host of its afternoon sports-talk show was he able to find a job.

Even that reprieve could end when Forte, 56, is sentenced Nov. 22, but he is trying to keep such a grim thought in the back of his mind. What matters to him most at this point is that he is enjoying himself for the first time since his high-flying years as the director of ABC’s Monday Night Football.

From noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, Forte and Steve Hartman field phone calls from XTRA listeners and hurl oral barbs at each other. They invariably disagree, and their arguments give the show a spark that has boosted its ratings significantly.

“This is the most fun I’ve had in my entire life,” Forte said.

More fun than when he was winning Emmys for Monday Night Football and living the life of the rich and famous?

“I mean that,” he said. “I had a lot of wonderful years at ABC, but this seems more fulfilling that anything I’ve ever done.

“Howard Cosell used to tell me, ‘Chester, one of these days I’m going to give up television, but not radio.’ I didn’t believe him, but now I see what he meant. Radio gives you a forum in which to express your opinions. TV is so structured that you don’t have time to dwell on an issue at length.”

Forte even sees some similarity between the formats of the XTRA show--he has been on since May--and Monday Night Football.

“You never knew what Cosell was going to do,” Forte said. “You never knew when Don Meredith was going to sing, ‘Turn out the lights.’ When Steve and I go into a show, our listeners wonder which side each of us is going to take. I regard the show as analogous to Monday Night Football.”

As pleased as he is with his new career, and as hopeful as he is that he will be given probation, Forte feels let down by his former colleagues at ABC.

“I’ve never heard from Roone Arledge, or Don Ohlmeyer, or Frank Gifford or Jim McKay,” Forte said. “When you have a disaster like I did, I guess you lose some friends. The only exception has been Chuck Howard, who lined me up for a show on ESPN one time.

“The guys in my old camera crew call me, but none of the bigwigs do.”

When ABC Sports was contacted for a comment on Forte, a public relations spokesman said that nobody was available.

“Does it hurt me?” Forte said. “Of course it does. People have said to me, ‘Maybe they were never your friends.’ They could be right. Maybe we were just forced together in business.”

Forte told of a letter he wrote recently to Cosell, now retired, who was best man at his wedding.

“It was about a month ago,” Forte said. “I said, ‘I don’t know what kind of friendship we have today, but nobody will ever take away the great shows and the great times we had together.’ I have some wonderful memories.”

Actually, Forte has heard from Gifford, but only indirectly, and not in a pleasant vein. Gifford ripped him in a book, “The Game Behind the Game,” written by Terry O’Neil, now executive producer of NBC Sports, who had a brief fling as producer of Monday Night Football.

O’Neil quoted Gifford as saying of Forte, “He’s a very talented director, but I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

Asked what might have led to this remark, Forte said, “I couldn’t answer that in a million years. He might have blamed me because Cosell was the star of the show, but that was Arledge’s decision, not mine.

“I can understand O’Neil being harsh on me. He started as a producer of Monday Night Football and didn’t make it into the season. After two preseason games, I went to Roone (Arledge) and told him O’Neil wasn’t cutting it. Roone got him out of there.”

Although Ohlmeyer, now an independent producer in Los Angeles, hasn’t contacted Forte, he told The Times a year and a half ago: “Chet was the most talented guy ever in the business. I feel sorry for him.”

Two current ABC broadcasters, Dan Dierdorf of Monday Night Football and Keith Jackson of college football, have been guests on the XTRA show.

“I understand that the PR department at ABC told Dierdorf they didn’t want him on,” Forte said. “He said to them, ‘I’ve already been on.’

“What are they afraid of? I’m not out to trash ABC. Chet Forte is the guy who has been indicted and is awaiting sentencing. I’m the guy who ruined my life. ABC’s posture regarding Chet Forte totally mystifies me.”

Forte was an All-American basketball player at Columbia, a 5-9 guard with a deadly two-handed set shot. He averaged 28.9 points in 1956-57 and was named player of the year by United Press International, beating out Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor.

Adjudged too small for the NBA, Forte was cut by the Cincinnati Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) after being drafted in the sixth round. He played two seasons in the Eastern Basketball League, meanwhile breaking into TV with CBS as a production assistant in 1958. He switched to ABC in 1963 and stayed 14 years, directing telecasts of every event from the Olympics to political conventions.

Forte’s gambling phobia started innocently enough in 1960.

“We were in this bar in Hackensack, N.J., near where I lived,” he said. “One guy said, ‘Let’s bet a couple of games.’ I bet three baseball games, $20 a game, and predictably, I lost them all.

“I was not only a compulsive gambler, I was a bad gambler. I always bet the whole card, in basketball, football and baseball, and I usually lost. I was a bookie’s delight.”

By the late ‘60s, Forte was hooked. He was making big money--his yearly salary got as high as $900,000--and lived in a $1 million home on a 2.1-acre lot in fashionable Saddle River, N.J. For a man of his means, it was easy come, easy go.

Eventually, though, the losses piled up to the point where Forte could no longer handle them. All told, they reached about $4 million. He had to take out huge loans to pay his bookies, and a nine-count indictment in 1990 charged that he failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts to banks, casinos and the IRS.

On top of all that, Forte had serious health problems. He suffered a heart attack and underwent angioplasty; he had skin cancer on his leg, and cancer cells were found on his chest.

Everything is under control now, although Forte would like to lose several of the 185 pounds he is carrying. He weighed a mere 135 when he was playing basketball.

In April 1990, Forte’s home was sold at auction for $900,000. He was $1.5 million in debt, but he didn’t declare bankruptcy because he wanted to pay off his creditors in full.

“I’m a very lucky man,” he said. “My wife, Patricia, has stayed with me, and we still have a lot of very good friends. This thing is on my mind every single, solitary day. I’ve started to pay some of the money back, but I’ve had a lot of bills following me. One good thing is that don’t owe any money to bookmakers.”

Forte’s wife has taken a job, and he also has been helped by his ABC pension, his mother’s Social Security and the kindness of friends.

Beyond this, Forte says he owes a lot to his attorney, Larry Lustberg of Newark, N.J. Besides lending legal aid--he had several counts dropped in exchange for Forte’s cooperation in another case--Lustberg has become a caring friend.

“Larry has been my strength through all this,” Forte said. “He came to me as a public defender, and he has been the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Many gamblers rely on so-called inside information, but Forte doesn’t buy the idea.

“It’s strictly a guessing game,” he said. “That’s why gambling is such a scary thing. Take horse racing, for example. The only guy who has any inside information is the horse, and he can’t talk to you.”

Forte recalled the time he bet on a game between the Lakers and Royals in the late ‘60s. It was in Cincinnati, and he produced the telecast for ABC.

“Cincinnati was a one-point favorite, and I liked the Lakers,” he said. “So I made bets for myself and the guy who was directing the game for us. I think we bet $15,000 between us.

“A half hour before the game, I went past the Laker bench and saw Jerry West (now the Lakers general manager). I asked him how he was doing, and he said, ‘I feel OK, but I’m not going to play.’ I said, ‘Oh, my God. Jerry, excuse me, I’ve got to go.’ I went to the phone and changed my bet to Cincinnati, and the Lakers won by 37 points.”

Forte estimates that he bet as much as $100,000 in a day.

“But I hit my all-time high the last time I ever gambled,” he said. “I was in a casino in Atlantic City in ‘88, and I lost $208,000 playing blackjack. I was with somebody else, and I was supposed to split with him. When we lost, he ran out on me.

“After that, I just quit betting. I had to. Basically, I had no money.”

Although many compulsive gamblers have to go through rehabilitation to kick the habit, Forte did it cold turkey.

“I started going to Gamblers Anonymous a year ago,” he said. “Now young gamblers call me with their problems. They figure, ‘If this guy can do it after all he’s gone through, why can’t I?’ I seem able to relate to them.”

Forte will expand his area of influence Dec. 21, when he conducts a seminar on the evils of gambling at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.

“I don’t think compulsive gamblers get the respect that alcoholics and drug addicts do,” he said. “Gambling is a sickness, too, and like the others, it causes lying, cheating and denial. When you’re in recovery, you have to take it one day at a time.”

Forte left ABC in January, 1987, at his own request, and received a buyout payment of $300,000.

“I had a year to go on my contract,” he said. “I had no beef against ABC. I just needed the money to pay off debts.

“One thing I want to make clear is that I never let my gambling affect my work. I led three lives--that of a TV director, a gambler and a family man. Basically, my family was in last place, and that was sad.”

Forte and his wife have a daughter, Jacqueline, 12. His mother, Ida, also lives with them in a rented house between Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe.

“Ironically, we’re near the racetrack,” he said.

How did the unlikely union of XTRA and Forte come about? It turns out that the idea was the brainchild of Bruce Marr, a television consultant based in Reno.

“It started with a call from a guy who had heard Forte being interviewed,” Marr said. “The guy said Forte might make a good talk-show host. So I had some people track him down in Richmond, Va., and arranged to have him do a two-hour talk show in Norfolk. I had a friend who owned the station, and he pre-empted the regular program.

“The first few minutes were kind of rocky, but after that, he just took off. Once I heard him, I called the people at XTRA, and they took it from there.”

John Lynch, president and CEO of the Noble Broadcasting Group, parent company of XTRA, said of Forte’s hiring:

“We had reservations, but Chet isn’t an ax murderer, and he has about a 50-50 chance of getting probation, so we took a chance on him.

“We realize that he wouldn’t be available to us if it hadn’t been for his misfortune, but his misfortune has become our fortune. The show’s ratings have gone up 100% in San Diego and well up in L.A. as well.”

Forte replaced Brad Cesmat as Hartman’s sparring partner, and Tom McKinley, president of Noble Broadcasting of Southern California and general manager of XTRA, explained why:

“We felt that there was too much similarity between Brad and Steve (Hartman). When Bruce Marr found Chet, we were confident that we had the right guy.”

Both Forte and Hartman consider the chemistry between them ideal. So do Chris Visser, who produces the show, and Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton, whose long-running talk show follows them at 4 p.m. Hamilton has dubbed them “loose cannons,” and they use that designation as a sort of trademark of their off-the-wall chatter.

“Chet is the ideal complement to me,” Hartman said. “I’m an X and O guy, and he’s a man of emotion. The blend has been perfect.”

Through it all, of course, Forte wonders what lies ahead, but Lynch is optimistic.

“Chet isn’t a threat to society,” Lynch said. “It’s better for him to work and pay his debts than to be incarcerated. If there is any logic to our court system, he won’t go to jail.”

Judging from Forte’s fan mail, XTRA listeners agree with Lynch.

“I’ve received hundreds of letters of support,” Forte said. “I send them all to Larry Lustberg, and recently he asked me, ‘When are you going to send me the negative letters?’ I said, ‘There are no negative letters.’

“I think if it were left up to the people, I’d get probation.”