JAN HERMAN : He Won’t Sit Still for Anything : TV: Wally George has been going at liberals and other targets almost nonstop from the ‘Hot Seat’ at Anaheim’s KDOC for 9 years now. Tonight, though, he’s celebrating 10.

Meet Walter Lloyd George--Wally George for short or, as his ranting audience knows him: “Walleee! Walleee! Walleee!”

Mondays through Fridays at 3:30 p.m. he appears on his KDOC Channel 56 television show “Hot Seat Highlights” against the backdrop of an American flag, a setting he likes to think will stir memories of the movie “Patton.”

But up close, the TV studio looks ramshackle, and George does not seem even remotely military. If anything, he gives an impression of dubious civilian authority. His personal hallmark is, for example, a wiglike helmet of straw-colored hair--admittedly in a theatrical class by itself but no match for George Patton’s pearl-handled revolver.

And the idea that this self-styled “Mr. Conservative” is a media firebrand to the right of Attila the Hun--a repeated description in the press--is frequently contradicted by his on-air commentaries against racism, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party and anti-Semitism.

While George, 56, is without question a right-wing liberal-baiting, anti-abortion, law-and-order ideologue, the common notion that he holds maverick political opinions was more or less dispelled earlier this week by his on-show endorsement of George Bush for a second term.

“Well, nobody else is for George Bush. How many people do you hear on the air saying they like George Bush? So I am a maverick,” insists the Oakland-born entertainer, who is holding a “10th Year Celebration” tonight at 11 as the host of his other KDOC broadcast, the weekly “Hot Seat” talk show.

The fact that “Hot Seat” didn’t make its debut until July 16, 1983--nine rather than 10 years ago, after an earlier show on KDOC with a different format--is just one more of George’s many contradictions.

Tall and thin, with his watery eyes and ingratiating snaggletoothed grin, he is standing in his cramped office surrounded by the memorabilia of an oddball career that began on the radio in Glendale four decades ago when the teen-age Wally got a job as a disc jockey despite a terrible stutter.

Tacky emblems of fan worship adorn the walls. Among dozens of mementos are drawings of him as Elvis and Superman; a plastic ornament called a Wallyburger; an embroidered “I Love Wally” sampler; an autographed picture from Pat Boone (one of KDOC’s owners) that says: “To Wally, a David in a world of Goliaths.”

On the floor of this shrine to egotistical kitsch is a waist-high pile of videotapes from the nine years of “Hot Seat” broadcasts, consisting largely of interviews with all sorts of low-rent political guests--”liberal lunatics” and “fascist fanatics,” he calls them--as well as the usual “strippers, mud wrestlers and bimbos of all sizes and shapes.”

On the desk is an elbow-high stack of photocopies offering the latest proof of George’s hunger for publicity on any terms. He whips the top sheet off the stack and proffers it for inspection. It is a tabloid article from the July 7, 1992, issue of the Star, which gives an inflated account of an old feud with his estranged movie-star daughter. The headline: REBECCA DE MORNAY’S DAD BLASTS HER AS BITTER, TWISTED & ‘OUT TO RUIN ME.’

“You know she’s my daughter, don’t you?” asks George. He can’t help basking in the reflected glory of her celebrity even while conceding that she grew up in England without knowing him and wants nothing to do with him now. “What really bothers me more than anything is that she has given interviews saying I never tried to contact her until after she became a star. It’s not true. I embarrass her.

“She hangs out with left-wing actors like Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton. They don’t like me because I’ve bad-mouthed Hollywood and the kind of crap they’ve been grinding out for years. They’re anti-America, anti-police, pro-violence, all that kind of stuff. So they’ve convinced her I’m bad for her career.”

In fact, nothing would be better for George’s career--short of a ratings miracle--than a sensationalized reconciliation with De Mornay in a large-circulation tabloid. All his years trying to drum up controversy on “Hot Seat” have failed to gain the show the visibility he craves, either in Southern California or nationally (“Hot Seat” has been carried for 20 months by the Channel America network).

George’s KDOC audience is too small to be rated, according to the Nielsen Media Research Co. That means both the weekly “Hot Seat” and the daily “Highlights” reach fewer than “24,400 households within the Los Angeles viewing area,” Nielsen’s Jo Leverde said.

Similarly, Channel America does not reach enough viewers nationwide to be rated, although network founder David Post said from New York that “Hot Seat” has exceeded his expectations. Besides the 100 stations affiliated with the 4-year-old Channel America, another 50 stations pick up the show on an unaffiliated basis, Post said. (“Highlights” became a regular network offering this month.)

“Wally George gets a ton of mail,” Post added. “I’ve seen the mail. He gets much more than we get for any other show.”

George disputes Nielsen, maintaining that it doesn’t count all the cable markets that “Hot Seat” reaches. But he won’t give his own estimate of how many viewers watch his show. (KDOC and George were sued successfully several years ago by a former station employee who charged, among other things, that he was fired in the early ‘80s because he would not go along with falsified ratings figures to boost the station’s advertising sales.)

George does claim to get “an average of 200 to 300 letters a week,” however, not only from fans in the United States but also from viewers who see “Hot Seat” on Channel America in England, Germany, New Zealand and Australia.

Post said Channel America buys time on a broadcast satellite that reaches many Caribbean and Central American markets and also some in South America but that it cannot reach Europe or beyond.

Whatever the case, there is no disputing that George is “Hot Seat’s” one-man band. He books the guests, writes the commentaries and produces the show. His third wife, Janis, answers the mail, he said, “but I autograph the pictures.”

George even serves as chief prop man. Once a week he takes down three framed posters from his office walls--dated images of Richard Nixon, John Wayne and a NASA shuttle launch--and trundles them onto the “Hot Seat” set, where he rehangs them for his late-night broadcast.

“I’ve done the show 52 weeks straight, every year for 10 years, without a vacation,” George said, not unlike the dairy farmer who never misses a milking.

Even if he’s bending the truth--and only this week George apologized to viewers for rerunning a show on Monday--that’s a record to be proud of.

The “10th-Year Celebration” of “Hot Seat” airs today at 11 p.m. on KDOC Channel 56.

WALLY GEORGE

Career Highlights:

1949: At age 14, gets his first broadcasting job, as a radio disc jockey on KIEV in Glendale. The job lasts six years.

1956: On to bigger and better things at radio station KTYM in Inglewood, broadcasting daily from a drive-in restaurant in Culver City. He goes from car to car, microphone in hand, taking record requests.

1960: Goes to work as a disc jockey at KULA in Honolulu.

1962: Goes to work for KUAN in Guam.

1964: Back to the mainland to work at KHUN in Eureka.

1969: Launches “The Wally George Show” on KTYN-FM in Inglewood.

1972: Branches out to television, achieving local notoriety as producer and co-host of “The Sam Yorty Show” on KCOP in Los Angeles.

1979: Gets his own TV talk show, “The Wally George Show,” on KCOP. He also gets a radio talk show on KGBS.

1982: Takes “The Wally George Show” to KDOC in Anaheim.

1983: “Hot Seat” makes its debut. KDOC televises the show weekly. George also starts a daily call-in “Hot Seat Hotline” but drops it because the same callers keep jamming the lines. Shortly afterward, he launches a daily “Best of Hot Seat,” eventually renaming it “Hot Seat Highlights.”

1992: July 11, George has a “10th Year Celebration” of “Hot Seat” after doing the show for nine years.